From São Miguel to Rhode Island
José-Louis Jacome, April 21, 2025
My Luso-American Family
Part !
In the 1950’s, my family left the Azorean island of São Miguel to establish in another island, Montreal, Canada. My father arrived at Pier 21, Halifax, on April 29, 1954 aboard the Homeland ship. Four years later, on March 25, 1958, we landed in Montreal, my mother and the 3 children. The family was reunited. Immigration talks and stories had been part of our family discussions for a long time as they were in most Azorean families. Since their discovery, the islands had had some good times but generally speaking life has been quite difficult in the archipelago. For most Azoreans, it was most of the time a day-to-day survival battle especially in the winter months when fishing was impossible for days or even weeks. Work was scarce, the vast majority, about 95% of Azoreans lived from farming. The typical farm worker or campones, worked an average of 92 days per year (1). In the 1950s, their average salary was 10-15 escudos or about 50 cents for a hard and long work day. It was very difficult to make a life with such a poor salary.
In my family, both on my father side and my mother one, we had family members that had left for America in the early 1900s. My mother’s aunts, Belmira and Marianna do Rego Raposo, went to the New Bedford area, in Massachusetts. They left São Miguel on October 12, 1916, aboard the Fabre Lines Roma ship sailing to Providence R.I. The two brave teenagers, aged 18 and 16 respectively, joined thousands of Azoreans and
Portuguese who moved to New England to work in the cotton mills. They responded to a distress call from their father who often voiced how challenging it was becoming to feed the family of nine children.
My father also told us many times about Manuel and Maria dos Anjos Jacome, his father’s brother and sister who immigrated to the United States in the early 1900s. His second brother, Hermano, went to Brazil apparently. We never heard about him afterwards. Grandfather José was the only one who stayed in São Miguel. In 1952, when Canada opened its doors to Portuguese immigration, my father told him he wanted to seize the opportunity. Grandfather José was not to happy and tried to convince him not to do so. He did not want to see the whole family deserting São Miguel. My father did not listen. And her sister Deodata followed years after with five of her six kids. In the end, grandfather José lost his whole family to immigration. He died alone.
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I lost contact with the Jacome family members that went to the USA. I tried many times to get in touch with them during the last decade, especially with Manuel and Maria dos Anjos Jacome and another Jacome, a cousin of my father that I met in Newport in 1978, also called Manuel. My last attempt was in the summer of 2018 when I spent almost two weeks in the New Bedford, Newport, Middletown and Fall River areas presenting my book From one Island to Another and, at the same time, tried to find a Jacome and Raposo relative in these areas. I have never been able to complete Manuel, Maria dos Anjos and the other Jacome stories with hard documents or facts until recently, thanks to the precious help of some new friends, Michelle Saslow in Rhode Island and Lucie Laranjo in Laval, north of Montreal.
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In January 2019, I got an unexpected email from Michelle da Ponte Jacome Saslow from Middletown, Rhode Island. I had never heard or met her. She has been working on a Jacome family tree for some years, a project she wanted to complete for Joseph and Michael Jacome, her two sons from her first marriage with Joseph Jacome Jr.
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She went to São Miguel in the summer of 2018 and talking to Mario Moura, a local writer and historian, she asked if he knew about a Jacome family from Ribeira Grande, my native town in São Miguel. By pure coincidence, Mario had met me only some weeks earlier in June at the launch of my book and exhibition in Ribeira Grande. He told her he knew a guy, José Jacome, who wrote a book about Azorean immigration. He was living in Montreal, Canada. That’s it. He knew no other Jacome relative. He gave her my coordinates and she contacted me a few months later. At that point, I told her there was one or two Jacome families in Ribeira Grande and most probably her sons and I should have very close roots. Later on, she gave me access to her Ancestry research. I rapidly recognized many Jacome individuals I always heard of. I could not believe it! In one shot, I was getting a big chunk of my family tree. I was very excited and thankful. This is one of the greatest events resulting from the publication of my book in May and June 2018. Surprisingly, there has been a few.
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Her work confirmed that there were effectively two Jacome families in Conceição, Ribeira Grande in the late 1800; José Jacintho Jacome and Ermilinda Rodrigues and Jacintho Jacome and Maria da Gloria Souza. Both José Jacintho and Jacintho are sons of Manuel Jacintho Jacome and Anna Emilia. Manuel Jacintho had more children but I never heard about them. They either did not move from nearby Ribeira Seca, their ancestor native area or died very young which was quite common in those days. Even in the 1920s, in my father’s family, 6 of the 8 children died within two years after they were born, many a few days after. He and his sister Deodata were the only ones that survived. In the Azores, up to the 1950s, 25% of a typical cemetery was occupied by death babies. Church
bells had a special sound to announce the death of a baby, very short and close sounds. When hearing the bells, Azoreans would say Po Ceu, Po Ceu (to heaven, to heaven), according to my cousin Fernando Maré. The bells rang often!
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Jacintho had his house up rua dos Foros also called Cabo dos Foros, on the way to Lagoa do Fogo, the nearby extinct volcano. He was born in 1862, in Conceição, Ribeira Grande, rua de São Sebastião, today still the name of the lower part of rua dos Foros. His brother Antonio was also born in Conceição, on rua Funda. The other three brothers; Manuel 1, Manuel 2 and José Jacintho were born in nearby Ribeira Seca. The latter lived most of his life in rua das Rosas. Jacintho married Maria da Gloria Souza in 1883. They were 21 and 22 respectively and had 9 children. Maria died in 1937. She was 76 and Jacintho died 12 years later, in 1949 at 87. We left in 1958. In 1976, some 18 years later, when I returned for the first time to São Miguel, all these people had died. I did not even meet my grandfather and grandmother, José Jacome and Maria da Gloria Costa. I met some of the Raposo clan, on my mother’s side.
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My parents established in the house of Jacintho Jacome when they married on July 23, 1948. Humberto Camara, one of my father friends, told me a couple of years ago that he brought some food to them at this house the day after they married. Jacintho was not living there anymore. I was born there on May 18, 1949. The year after, my parents bought a house in rua das Rosas. My brother Manuel Carlos and my sister Terezinha were born there. We lived in it until we immigrated to Canada. At that point, the Jacintho house, belonged to my grandfather José who had inherited it from his father Jacintho. Later on, it was given to my father. I have visited the house when I first went back to São Miguel in May 1976. Nobody was living in it. The little two floor house still had a dirt floor and no bathroom, running water and electricity. If you needed to go to the toilet, you would go to the small backyard and do it there in the open air in a corner dedicated to it. There wasn’t even a little shack. When there was a pile of it, the family would sell it farmers to enrich neighbouring lands. Men would carry it in big wicker baskets trough the house to an ox car parked on the street. Unbelievable!
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From the second floor, one could see the first floor through holes and cracks all over the place. The two rooms were quite small. A very narrow wooden stairway linked it to the corridor of the first floor. I can’t imagine how a large family could live in it. My father took care of the house until he died in 1987 with the help of a dedicated procurador, sr Domingos Amaral. It stayed in the family until 2010 approximately when it was sold almost for nothing by my uncle Nicolino Laureano. There was a law in Portugal, one that probably still prevails today, preventing any home owner to remove a family from a rented place. Trying to sell a house with such a constraint is quite difficult.
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I will always remember this visit. The house looked so poor and dark. My 20-years in Canada had completely washed my eyes from such distressed sites. They could simply not decrypt what they were seeing. One thing that got me really puzzled was an open space adjacent to the kitchen. It was dedicated to the family animals, according to my cousin Fernando. Jacintho had a donkey. I just could not believe it. Animals and humans living under the same roof! Up to there, I had only seen something alike under Christmas trees. Since this memorable day, I often say that, like Jesus, I was born in a poor house and surrounded by animals, at least a donkey. Imagine the smell, the sanitary conditions and the rest of it, the floor being, as I described earlier, made of black hard dirt.
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Since my first virtual encounter with Michelle Saslow in January 2019, we have continued to work together on the Jacome tree and story. Her two sons’ ancestor, Manuel Jacome, is in fact my grandfather José’s brother. This was a very emotional discovery. He was born on December 12, 1890 in Conceição, Ribeira Grande and died when he was 63 years old on August 27, 1953 in Newport, Rhode Island. He worked 15 years for the Pecham Coal Company as a driver and previously, around 20 years, for the Green End Ice Company. He had one daughter and seven sons, one of them, Jesse, died in action during World War II. Manuel was born like all the Jacintho children, in the house up rua dos Foros, the same house I was born almost 60 years later. As I wrote in my book, he effectively immigrated to the US in the early 1900s, on April 28, 1911 precisely.
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Another great encounter resulting from the publication of my book came in January 2020, when I met Lucie Laranjo, of Laval near Montreal. One cold winter day, I delivered to her house a book she had bought from me. We talked about our respective immigration stories and soon started discussing about genealogy. She is very interested by the subject and rapidly became a great contributor to my own story. Lucie has an exceptional ability for searches. I now call her my Sherlock Holmes. Soon after we met, she started sending me numerous files and information, resolving some of my memory fragments related to my Luso-American family. I had written about it in my book, including the story around Manuel and Maria dos Anjos immigration to the USA, but the stories were based on very vague souvenirs. I now had documents and hard facts. This made me very happy.
Lucie’s contribution has been invaluable. Her researches allowed me to clarify Manuel and Maria dos Anjos stories. She found valuable documents about their immigration to the United States. Manuel Jacome, age 20, left São Miguel on April 28, 1911 on the SS Cretic ship. He arrived at the port of New York on May 5, with $10 in his pockets. The 5’6’’ brown-eye man was joining his brother-in-law, Manuel Pereira, living in Melville Station near Middletown, Rhode Island.
Manuel Pereira is his sister Maria dos Anjos’ husband. They married in Conceição, Ribeira Grande on January 30, 1904 and had two children. He left São Miguel, alone, on March 3, 1908 and arrived at the Boston harbour on March 9 aboard the SS Romanic. He was 38 years old. Maria dos Anjos, 29, joined her husband four years later with her two sons, José and Manuel, 8 and 5 years old respectively. They also arrived at the Boston harbour on December 9, 1912 on the SS Canopic ship after 7 days of sailing. The Manuel and Mary Perry (Maria dos Anjos) couple had 4 more kids in the USA; Raymond, Frank, Jesse and Mary, all born in Middletown. Thank you so much Lucie. Because of you, I now have facts that I have been looking for a long time. Finally, I can put names and even
some faces on members of my Jacome family who immigrated to the US and some of their descendants. I hope I will meet some soon.
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I knew I had Jacome family members in the area but lost contact mostly after both my parents died in 1987. Until there, we had regular contacts with some family members in the States and the Azores. I visited some on my own in the 70s. The last Jacome I met in the US was one of my father’s cousins, Manuel (Jacome) Perry in 1978, son of Maria dos Anjos. He was married to Madeline Silveira. The couple lived in the Newport area. Manuel also came several times to Montreal. In September 1958, he came with his brother José and his daughter Barbara.
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September 1958, in front of our apartment, 6605, Dominique Street, Montreal.
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From left to right; José (Jacome) Perry, 54; my mom, Ilda, 31 and my father, Manuel, 37; Manuel (Jacome) Perry, 51; his daughter Barbara (Mello) and wife, Madeline (Silveira) Perry, 43. Front row; my brother Manuel Carlos, my sister Terezinha and myself, José Luis, 9 years old.
I still remember this visit and especially Barbara. She was in the late teens. She looked very gracious. Her perfume smelt like summer flowers. Generally speaking, with only a few months in Canada, perfumes were still a strange and novel thing to me. In São Miguel, they were rare. In fact, only flowers had a nice smell. Humid street stones and cow and manure smells filled the air and impregnated our clothes a lot more than perfumes. In the island, the closest thing to Barbara perfume would come in the big white cotton bags we received from America once in a while, sacos de roupa. We really loved to open one of these and smell the colourful, beautiful and mostly scented fabrics and clothes sent to us. We would fight to put our head first in the bag and take a deep breath while mom was busy opening the precious bag and shouting some coriscos to her turbulent kids.
The documents Lucie found also helped finding where Manuel (Jacome) Perry and his brother José fitted. They are the two sons of Maria dos Anjos and Manuel Pereira, born in São Miguel in 1907 and 1904 respectively. In 1978, when I visited Manuel Perry, he was still working as a concierge at a Newport huge mansion. He worked as a gardener most of his life. Madeline was employed by General Electric for many years as a machine operator. My cousin Helena and her mother, Deodata da Costa Jacome, also visited them in the 1970s. She says Manuel was then taking care of the Rockefeller mansion. My wife Fernande and I visited a few of Newport’s palaces with him and his wife Madeline. I still remember some of the words he said. “This one is made of stone blocks imported from a German castle”. “This one has 6 washrooms. And one is for the dogs”! We laughed. I was 29 and convince myself Americans could not be as crazy. I was still a bit naive...
Summer 1978, Newport, Rhode Island; Manuel Perry, 71, his wife Madeline, 63, and me. I was 29.
In the summer of 2019, Michelle Saslow returned to São Miguel, this time with her two sons, Michael and Joseph who, very unfortunately died since then. They met the only Jacome still in Conceição, Ribeira Grande, my cousin Laudalino. They also went to the Museu da Emigração Açoriana located by the Monte Verde beach, just a few steps away from the church Nossa Senhora da Conceição. Michelle bought one of my books. Then, she sent me the following picture showing her son Joseph with the book. That made me very happy.​
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When I first talked to Michelle in 2019, I still wasn’t sure about the ties between our two families. But today thanks to her, to Lucie and a bit of my work, I am so happy to confirm that her sons Joseph, Michael and I are all from the same Jacome tree branch. We are all descendants of Jacintho Jacome and Maria da Gloria Souza. Manuel Jacome, born December 1890 (Joseph and Michael ancestor) and Maria dos Anjos Jacome, from Middletown, are their kids and the brother and sister of my grandfather José. Manuel was born in the same tiny house I was born up Cabo dos Foros. I can also confirm that Manuel Perry (Jacome) is Maria dos Anjos’ son. Wonderful discoveries indeed! Now, I know that my Luso-American family is much bigger than I tough. Thank you so much Michelle. You have started it all. I owe you one.
Joseph Jacome, summer of 2019, with my book.
Museu da Émigração Açoriana, Ribeira Grande, S. Miguel, Azores.
Reference
1. Carlos Cordeiro & Artur Boavida Madeira (2004), Nos Primordios da emigração açoreana para o Canada; Leituras e contextos. Portuguese Studies Review, May 12, 2004, p.177-189
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About the author
Born in São Miguel and living in Montreal since 1958, I published a book in 2018 about Azorean immigration to Canada in the 1950s. “De uma ilha para outra” was published in Portuguese and French. The book and an exhibition that accompanies it were presented in Montreal, São Miguel, Toronto and Boston. The book is sold in Montreal, Toronto and São Miguel, and through my Website. I continue to publish information and stories relating to the first big wave of Azorean and Portuguese immigration to Canada in the 1950s through my Website jljacome.com and my Facebook page D’une île à l’autre.
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