French engineer Pierre Victor Boulitreau was born in Paris on 21 May 1812, He began his engineering studies at the Conservatory of Arts and Crafts and concluded at the Polytechnic School, both in his native city, in 1834.

In 1929 it had 27km of railway that connected to the Great Western line, four locomotives and 44 wagons (from 8 to 10 tonnes). It had the capacity to process 400 tonnes of sugarcane and manufacture 3,000 litres of ethanol in 22 hours.

The Casa Forte (Strong House) sugarcane plantation, the originof the current neighbourhood, was created in the mid-16th Century by Diogo Gonçalves, from part of the land that was given to him by the owner of the Pernambuco Captaincy, Duarte Coelho.

Founded in 1890, with the name Correia da Silva factory, in honour of the State’s vice-governor at the time, it was originally built by the Englishman Carlos Sinden and his father-in-law Felipe Paes de Oliveira. This name, however, was never recognised, and the factory was always called ‘Catende’.

The neighbourhood of Caxangá originally was a settlement founded by Canon Francisco Pereira Lopes at the end of the 18th Century.