She was the fosterchild and possibly maternal niece of Julia da Silva Cardoso, and the de facto wife of the businessman Caetano José Nozolini (1800-1850), Portuguese governor of Cape Verde.
On her mother’s side Correia descended from the Bijagó, the ruling matrilineage on the island of Orango, the largest and most important in the archipelago of the Guinea coast.
[6] To provide a broader understanding, the successful replacement of Mattos by Mãe Aurélia and Nozolini signifies a shift from a Portuguese-African connection to a Cape Verdean-African one in Bissau.
Until the 1880s, Cape Verdean and Luso-African traders faced their primary competition not from Portuguese rivals but from French trading interests based in Senegal.
Starting from the 1830s, French, Franco-African, and Senegalese traders began to expand their presence into the Bissau trading domain, encompassing the Geba and Grande rivers and the Bissagos archipelago.
Their increasing influence is evident through marriage alliances involving the children of Mãe Aurélia, Nozolini, and other Luso-African families in Cacheu, Ziguinchor, and other areas of the Guinea-Bissau region.
In December 1825, Captain Domingos Alves de Abreu Picaluga, a Portuguese army officer new to Guinea, replaced Mattos as the praça commander.
The rebels, led by several officers and the chaplain, were quelled with the help of a British warship, but it was Nozolini, commanding a group of sixty Papel grumetes, who played an important role in restoring order.
French-owned trading companies played a crucial role in this process, providing farmers with credit and seeds in exchange for their harvested crops.
As men's contributions from fishing, hunting, and gathering diminished during conflicts, women's role in rice cultivation and other food production became relatively more crucial, especially during shortages when inter-island exchanges and mainland commerce were restricted.
However, the company started to decline gradually and eventually fell apart in the 1860s due to debts and disagreements over inheritances among the various members of the Correia and Nozolini trading families.