In 1984, the Regional Secretariat of Education and Culture acquired the current building to install the Ethnographic House, which in 1991 was inaugurated with the designation of S. Jorge Museum.
The building dates from 1811 and was built to the north of the then-existing Fort of St. John the Baptist or Ponta do Aougue (no traces are left) by the Beneficiary and Hearer Father Francisco de Azevedo Machado Neto, descendant of Captain Gaspar Nunes Neto, a native of the parish of Ribeira Seca to make his home there, sunny and bordering the sea.
However, legend has it that on the ground floor there is a compartment where former owners executed those who displeased them. One of the walls is uneven, with large stones insight because one of the executioners, in the last agony, put his bloody hand on it, leaving marks that lime could not cover.