As the title says, the Internet has frustrated me to no end these past two weeks! It was like I would find bits and pieces, but not what I needed, or I would be one click away from a document I wanted, and then a little error message would pop up, saying I needed to be a member to access the information and for only $35 I can have access to public documents like immigration records, census reports, and newspaper articles. Doesn’t the word “public” denote that it should be accessible to anyone? I don’t see public restrooms at parks with signs saying $1 per flush!
Anyway, because I hit so many roadblocks in searching for things like immigration records, census reports, and news articles from the 1950s, I have instead decided to focus on the Azores this week, since many people have probably never heard of them. As I said last week, the Azores are a chain of 9 small islands in the middle of the Atlantic ocean, owned by Portugal. American actually has a military base on Terceria, because these islands are a pretty logical midway stop in the Atlantic. The climate on the islands is comparable to Hawaii, and they actually look slightly similar. The islands are at the intersection of three tectonic plates—the North American Plate, the Eurasian Plate, and the African Plate. As we know from other regions like the Himalayas and our own west coast, this leads to mountain ranges, earthquakes, and volcanoes. Most of the islands have calderas which, similar to Oregon’s Crater Lake, have been filled in with rain water and are now lakes.
This is an example of one of the crater lakes on Flores (www.azores-islands.info.uk). Notice the hydrangeas in the foreground of the picture? These are pretty much everywhere on the islands and most homes of Azoreans in the US have hydrangeas planted somewhere in the yard.
One of the main things that first attracted Americans to the Azores was whaling. Whaling was a huge industry on the islands, with plants for processing the whale into blubber and even a scrimshaw industry. In fact, on the island of Faial, you can find an entire museum of scrimshaw art (Azores.com/faial). On the island of Flores, a popular local swimming hole is actually where the whalers would bring a whale up out of the ocean to be processed. The island of Pico actually has a statue of a whaler, dedicated to the memory of the Azores past boom industry (www.intltravelnews.com)
Because of their skill in whaling, many Azoreans moved to the East coast, particularly Massachusetts and Rhode Island, to work in the American whaling industry. However, there was a whaling industry along the California coast, and many Azoreans also moved to California for that very reason. When the whaling industry died out in America, Azoreans took to other jobs, like fishing and agriculture, which were popular occupations on the islands as well. In the case of my family, my grandparents came from the island Flores in 1951 or 1953 and moved to Antioch. I always thought this was kind of weird, because most migration patterns had the Azoreans moving to either the central valley or closer to the coast, particularly in Monterey, San Jose, and San Leandro. While I was scouring the internet for anything and everything I thought could relate to my blog, I found an article on JSTOR about current works by Portuguese authors. One of these authors was Mateus L. Fraga, who came from Flores in 1951 to Antioch. Because the islands are so small, Fraga and my grandfather’s ages so close, and because the dates matched up so closely, I knew there had to be a connection here. My dad was home so I asked him what he knew about this guy. He said my grandparents knew him and were friends with him, and that he even had a copy of the book. That was exciting, because the book is out of print and Pleasanton’s rinky-dink library caters almost exclusively to children’s books. Unfortunately, my dad right away added “and I have no idea where the book is”. So now its not just the internet that’s acting like a complete tease! So far I have been unable to find the book online or find it in a library, but I will ask my dad’s cousin and uncle, because they are kind of the family record keepers and I know they will have a lead on this book!
Lastly, I’ll talk a little about architecture. The Azores have a really specific look to their homes and their churches. Homes are typically built with stone, with white plaster on the walls. Older homes are more stone than plaster, and newer homes are more plaster than stone (facebook.com). I took this photo from my cousin's facebook page (I texted her and she said it was ok!). She visited a few of the islands over the summer, and this is actually our grandparent's old house. You can see in places where the plaster was (its now peeling off), and you can see a newer house in the background with pretty much all plaster.
Home architecture doesn’t seem to have made it to the Bay Area, but church architecture, at least in one place, did. The typical church in the Azores has white plaster walls, with dark brown wood (blog.ratestogo.com). This photo is actually a former convent on Sao Miguel, but this is pretty representative of church architecture.
In the Bay Area, we don’t see many examples of this specific type of architecture, except in San Jose. (www.123rf.com).
This is Five Wounds Portuguese National Church, a Catholic church in San Jose, and it features the typical Azorean style of church architecture. The colors are slightly different, but you can see the similarities between the Azorean and the Californian church.
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