Azorean Migration to California Part 2

In Part 1, I indicated that the city of San Leandro, Caliornia attracted the greatest number of Azoreans in the west. Some of the foreign born people enumerated in San Leandro in each of the decades did identify their country of birth as Portugal. Without further investigation, I cannot determine if these are Azoreans or from Portugal or some of each.

Robert Santos' paper on the Azorean to California migration noted that Massachusetts was the first area in the United States that attracted the Azoreans. By the 1850s the busiest ports were in New England. Each week dozens of whaling ships left the ports in New England. Those Azoreans working on whaling ships had the opportunity to come to Massachusetts.

In some cases, the men jumped ship and permanently settled in and around New Bedford, Massachusetts. Others served on the ships until discharged and then permanently settled in America. By the 1870s, direct shipping was begun from Horta, the location of the US Consulate in the Azores, to Boston. This allowed for an easier journey by family members to New England. As the male immigrants in New England saved enough money for passage, they sent for family members.

San Francisco was also a whaling ship port in the 1800s. With the discovery of gold in California, people from within the United States and throughout the world were attracted by the prospect of becoming wealthy. The some Azoreans working on whaling ships used the opportunity when they were in port at San Francisco to jump ship.

By 1860, the majority (86%) had settled in the Central Coast, Sacramento Valley and the Sierra Nevada. About equal numbers were in the Central Coast (35%) as were in the gold country (34%). They were occupied in whaling, farming or gold mining.

Twenty years later, interest in gold mining greatly diminished. Only 6% of the Azorean immigrants are found in the gold country, whereas almost 83% are found in the Central Coast (71.5%) and Sacramento Valley (11%). They are primarily engaged in farming in the East Bay where San Leandro is situated.

I also happened to notice that some of the people I found in the census between 1900 and 1940 were born in Hawaii and whose parents were born in the Azores. Mr. Santos' paper included a subheading, "From Hawaii."

By 1870, Mr. Santos indicates there are around 400 Portuguese living in Hawaii. They were primarily members of the crew aboard whaling ships who jumped ship when the ship was in port for supplies. Then in 1877, Hawaii faced a labor shortage in the sugar cane industry. The Hawaiian government offered to pay transportation costs for Azoreans who to immigrate to Hawaii with the provision that the immigrant work in the cane fields for 3 years.

The immigrant was offered monthly pay, food, lodging and medical care. Men represented the majority of the immigrants (42%), but entire families seized the opportunity. Women accounted for 19% of the immigrants and children, 35.6%. However, by 1890 the Hawaiian Portuguese began migrating to the Bay Area.

The Hawaiians viewed the Portuguese laborers as of a lower class. The hardworking Azoreans were offended. Some moved to the mainland while others took steps to asimilate into the Hawaiian population. They changed names, moved out of field jobs and intermarried.

The Hawaiian transplants also settled in San Leandro. Many settled along or near Kanaka Lane (Row or Road). The street was later renamed Orchard Street because of the number of fruit orchards planted by the Azoreans living there. I was curious to see what Orchard (now Avenue) looked like in 2012. If it were a street being laid today, Orchard is not likely a name that would fit.

Sources:
The Portuguese in San Leandro by Meg Rogers. San Francisco: Arcadia Publishing Company, 2008.

San Leandro by Cynthia Vrilakas Simons. San Francisco: Arcadia Publishing Company, 2008.

American Experience Whaling Ports of the 1850s.

Azoreans to California: A History of Migration and Settlement by Robert L. Santos. Denair, CA: Alley-Cass Publications, 1995.

Azorean Migration to California

I was looking at the newly released 1940 US Census images for various enumeration districts in Sonoma County, California. Since the images for this census are not indexed, I had to look at each image within a given enumeration district.

As I browsed through the images looking for people named Houston, I happened to notice quite a few of the residents were either born in the Azores or were the offspring of one or more parents born in the Azores. The only thing that I really knew about the Azores was that they are islands in the Atlantic Ocean governed by the Portuguese government.

The instructions on the 1940 Census form states, "If foreign born, give the name of the country in which birthplace was situated on January 1, 1937." Similarly, the instructions on the 1930 Census form states, "If of foreign birth, give the name of the country in which birthplace is situated." This instruction is consistent in the previous enumerations.

Since Azores or Azores Islands are not the name of a country, I was a little surprised to see it recorded in the Place of Birth field. I was curious about why so many Portuguese had settled in Sonoma County. I found a paper written by Robert L. Santos of California State University, Stanislaus, about the migration of people from the Azores to California.

Reading the paper, I learned that city of San Leandro had the greatest concentration of immigrants from the Azores in the west. I looked at the enumeration of that city in 1880, 1900, 1910, 1920, 1930 and 1940 and found that in most cases the enumerator wrote Azores Islands in the Place of Birth field rather than Portugal.

I was now curious to find out why these citizens of Portugal seemed to be emphatic about being from those islands. Mr. Santos paper provided much of the answer.

The Azores are comprised of nine islands formed by volcanic action. Only about 40% of the land on these islands are inhabitable because of the volcanic terrain. Wikipedia claims the total land area of the Azores is 906 square miles while WorldAtlas.com claims a land mass of 893 square miles. In either case, the total inhabitable area is about 1.5 times the land area of Los Angeles.

Overpopulation, food scarcity and droughts periodically created problems for the inhabitants. One of the earliest bouts of hunger in the Azores was in 1680. Gold was discovered in Portuguese-controlled Brazil about that same time. The Portuguese government offered incentives to Azoreans to permanently settle in Brazil, primarily to work in the gold mines.

In the 1830s potato rot and a grape fungus plagued the islands. The fungus resulted in the virtual decimation of the wine industry. Then in 1877, the islands citrus crop suffered from orange blight. The crop yield was a third of normal. Unlike the hunger of 1680, the Portuguese government did little to aid the inhabitants during these periods.

In 1800, Portugal instituted a mandatory conscription law in which 14-year-old boys were conscripted into the military. By 1873, a family could pay a surrogate to replace a son but the Azoreans were too poor to take advantage of the new law. To avoid conscription, parents secreted their sons off the islands aboard whaling ships that stopped at the islands.

Throughout the 1800s, the majority of Azorean immigrants to America were males between the ages of 14 and 44. These men and boys would work two or more years aboard a whaling ship before settling in America.

Because of these factors, Azoreans held very little allegiance to Portugal. Although these immigrants would state that their mother tongue was Portuguese, when asked the name of the county in which they were born they stated, Azores or Azores Islands.

To Be Continued...

Source:
Azoreans to California: A History of Migration and Settlement by Robert L. Santos. Denair, CA: Alley-Cass Publications, 1995.

Tropico, California and the Emily Craig Murder

Awhile back I was doing some research to find out more information concerning Mary Griffith Stoutenburg's son, Walter Stoutenburg Rawlings when I came across his whereabouts in 1920. He was living in California and was married to Edna.

From the census image, I could determine that Edna was born in California between 1892 and 1893. Her father was born in Illinois; her mother, in California. As she would be 17 in 1910, I assumed that she would be single and living in California. Getting no where, I gave up looking and moved onto other persons of interest.

By chance, last week I found a record of the marriage in 1914 in Los Angeles County of Walter S. Rawlings and Edna Craig that included the identification of the parents of both parties. I learned that Edna's mother was Emily Hunter and her father was J. Craig. Since Edna was born in California about 1892 and was married at and living in Los Angeles County, I decided to look for her in the Census of 1900 and of 1910.

I felt that I had a the best chance of finding the given name of her father by searching for her in the 1900 Census as she was only 7 then. I found an Edna Craig who was born in June 1892 living at 743 Castelar Street in Los Angeles. (Castelar Street is now Hill Street.)

The head of household was 36-year-old John Snyder whose wife was 28-year-old Emily. They had been married 7 years. I assumed that this Emily was either divorced from J. Craig or that J. Craig was deceased. Later I learned that I was both correct and incorrect.

There were some things in this record that struck me as odd. First, the three children, of which Edna was the youngest, were recorded as lodgers and not the step or adopted children of John Snyder. His wife, Emily, was recorded as having no children and no children living in 1900. For whatever reasons, sometimes stillborns or infants dying shortly after birth are discounted. My initial inclination was she had no children of this marriage and that fact was what is recorded.

Finally, I was curious about Mrs. Snyder's parents' birth locations. They matched those of the children. I found it particularly odd that Emily's mother was born in California. If Emily Hunter was born about 1871, then her mother would have been born about 1850 or earlier. There were not very many woman of Northern European ancestry who were born in California before 1850. Until 1848, California was a Spanish terrritory.

I entered the information I found in the 1900 Census to my family tree, but added a note about my concerns. The next step, was to find Edna Craig in the 1910 Census. I found her living as a student at the Girl's Collegiate School on Adams Boulevard near Hoover Street. Either she or the school administration did not know where her father was born except that he was born in the United States.

She was the only student enumerated at this address. The others were employees of the school. Combine this with the oddities I noted in the 1900 Census, I began to wonder who Mrs. Emily Snyder really was. At this time, I don't know who she is, but I do know that she was not Edna Craig's mother because Emily (Hunter) Craig was murdered in 1894 by her estranged husband, John Craig.

My assumption, based on the 1900 Census, that Emily was either a widow or divorced was correct. Emily Hunter divorced John Craig shortly before he killed her. Two years after her own death, she became a widow when John Craig was hung at Folsom Prison in Northern California for murdering her and her parents.

The various newspaper accounts of the murder say that she was murdered at the Hunter Ranch in Tropico, California. She had taken her three children there to live with her brother, George. John Craig wounded his brother-in-law, killed his wife then looked for his children. A servant had managed to get the children safely out of the house and into hiding.

John Craig then went the home of his mother and father-in-law on Buena Vista Street in a suburb of Los Angeles and shot them dead. He unsuccessfully tried to kill himself.

Tropico, California

Having lived in Southern California for thirty-seven years, I had never heard of Tropico, California. At first only I found information about an abandoned mine, Tropico Mine in Kern County. But then I learned of a section of Glendale, California called Tropico.

A 1908 map of Tropico provided me with the names of the streets in the town, some of which sounded familiar. I compared the streets on the 1908 map with Google maps and was able to determine where the former town of Tropico was.

The Southern Pacific Railroad was on the west side of the the town. The Amtrak and Metro-Link trains both have a stop here, the Glendale Station. The north-south street names are mostly unchanged. They include San Fernando Road, Central Avenue, Brand Boulevard and Glendale Avenue. Los Angeles Avenue on the 1908 map was not a contiguous street. It terminated at Cypress Street and resumed a few blocks away at Tropico Avenue. Today the northern portion is Los Angeles Street and the southern extension is Gardena Avenue.

Many of the east-west street names are changed with Tropico Avenue the most significant. You will find it on Google maps under is current name, Los Feliz Road. Cypress, Laurel and EulaliaCerritos Avenue. Two streets north of Tropico (Los Feliz) whose names were changed are Wilkinson Court and Victor Court. They are now called Fernando Court and Palmer Avenue, respectively.

According to A History of California and An Extended History of Los Angeles and Environs, Volume 1 by James Miller Guinn (Los Angeles: Historic Record Co., 1915), Tropico was laid out as a town in 1887. Page 441 reads, "The San Pedro & Salt Lake road passes along the borders of the town, affording easy access to  the city (Los Angeles)." This was a railroad that connected Salt Lake City to San Pedro at Los Angeles Harbor.

The land around the town was divided in to lots for fruit raising of which the primary crop is strawberries. The Los Angeles, Tropico & Glendale Trolley was completed about 1905 providing a 20-minute ride to Los Angeles. I'm sure that many Angelenos would love to have only a 20-minute commute nowadays.

The town was incorporated in 1911. Tropico was annexed to Glendale in 1918. Over time most indication of its existence disappeared.

Sources:
Look for the James Guinn book at Google Books

An aside:
Glendale is a city north of the downtown Los Angeles near Griffith Park. The University of California Santa Barbara Library has a photo of a building in Tropico, California. It is a lone building with what looks like tumbleweeds or other desert plants in the landscape. The photo was taken in 1978 by John S. Kiewit. The library subject is:

Tropico (Calif.)
Buildings-California
Glendale (Calif.)

The building in the photo does not look like anything I have seen in Glendale. The vegetation looks more like desert than the vegetation of the very urban city of Glendale. I found a website that has several photos of buildings near the old mine site. Click on the photo on the right to see the gallery of photos. The photo at UCSB is very similar.

Aunt Eleanor's Journal, January 17, 1982 - An Aside

As I was rereading Aunt Eleanor's journal entry of Janaury 17,1982, I had an Aha! moment.

My mother told me about her mother's spinning wheel that was in Aunt Eleanor's possession. She implied that Aunt Eleanor would be giving the spinning wheel to one of her sister's granddaughters.

I assumed that my grandmother actually was in possession of the spinning wheel. After I read, Aunt Eleanor's journal, I learned that the spinning wheel belonged to her grandmother. My grandmother had asked her grandmother for the spinning wheel. Since my grandmother died so young, Aunt Eleanor came into its possession.

Between my marriage and birth of my daughter, Aunt Eleanor came to California to visit my mother who seemed to imply that Aunt Eleanor was going to decide which my grandmother's granddaughters would receive the spinning wheel. My mother invited me to come to her house to meet with Aunt Eleanor.

When I arrived at my mother's house, Mom was shocked at what I was wearing. She was convinced that Aunt Eleanor would not give me the spinning wheel. I was wearing expensive designer jeans, a silk blouse and heels. My mother focused on the jeans as she felt that her aunt would disapprove of a female wearing jeans or pants.

I don't believe that Aunt Eleanor said a thing about my jeans or even had a reproachful look when she saw me. In 1991, when I saw Aunt Eleanor at a family reunion, she was wearing pants.

As far as I can tell, pants had nothing to do with her decision. She did not give the spinning wheel to any of my grandmother's granddaughters but instead donated it to a museum. I never learned where the museum was but the spinning wheel served many more people than it would have if it had ended up in anyone's livingroom.

Although I am happy that the spinning wheel is in a museum where many can view it, I wish that I had a picture of it

Georgia, the Peach State, vs. Early and Late Crawford Peach

I was trying to find some information on Edwin Stoutenborough. That journey led me to William Henry Crawford who, as it turns out, created the early and late Crawford Peach. William Henry Crawford lived in Monmouth County, New Jersey from 1809 to 1874 when he died. He was married to my relative, Leah Conover.

I had never heard of a Crawford peach. Since the creator of this peach was married to a relative, I felt compelled to press on and learn about this peach. It is a freestone peach. I like freestone peaches because I can easily remove the fresh from the pit (or stone). I then made a Google search query on this peach.

Not surprisingly, I came across the State of Georgia. Afterall, Georgia is the Peach State. On a trip to Georgia many years ago, I came across Peachtree Street, Road, Park, Hotel, etc. Eveything seemed to be related to a peach tree in Atlanta.

In my Google search, I found a Crawford County in Georgia that is noted for peach growing. Thinking that this county was named for my New Jersey relative's husband, I grew excited only to learn that Crawford Co. is named after US Senator William Harris Crawford and not after William Henry Crawford. I guess the saying, "Close only counts in horseshoes" applies here.

As my dad would say, "Sam Hill." I only heard my dad swear when he cut his head while working under the car or something akin.

OK, so Crawford County, Georgia wasn't named for my relative's spouse. My son graduated from Georgia Tech in Atlanta. Their mascot is a yellow jacket. I thought that was a bit weird, but after what I learned about the Peach State doesn't seem quite so odd.

According to Kathryn C. Taylor of the University of Georgia (2003), Georgia peaches are primarily grown in Crawford, Peach, Taylor and Macon counties. However, she then indicated that Georgia (the Peach State) produces less peaches than South Carolina and California. Georgia isn't the biggest peach producing state but I wondered what happened in New Jersey that knocked it off the peach map.

I found an article on the History of the New Jersey Peach written by Ernest Christ, a professor emeritus at Rutgers University. It seems that the San Jose scale decimated the New Jersey peaches in 1886. This scale came from China on plants imported to California. The scale reached New Jersey on plum trees from California. The scale killed thousands of acres of peach trees in New Jersey by 1920.

Moving to California in the 1950s and 1960s

As we grow older, we don't realize that so much time has passed. Things that were commonplace to us are unknown to the later generation(s). I know why my parents moved our family to California from Minnesota but my children do not. Why? Because the subject did not come up in conversation.

As I spend time trying to piece together my family tree, I often wondered why did my ancestor move from one place to another. Then I realized that my descendants may not know why my parents moved unless I document it.

When we moved to California, hardly any of my classmates were born in California. We all had moved from some other place. I had never seen so many different license plates until we lived in Orange County, California. At that time, an automobile owner did not have to re-register a car until the registration from the state in which the owner left expired. Everywhere I looked, I saw a license plate from another state. My classmates were mostly born in some other state, Canada or Mexico. I erroneously assumed that most people living in California in the 1960s were born elsewhere.

Thirteen years ago, my husband and I moved to the Bay Area from Los Angeles. I made many friends, most of whom were born in California. So much for my theory that most people in California in the 1960s were born somewhere other than California. Then the question for me was why are there more native born Californians of my generation in Northern California and so few in Southern California?

I don't have all the answers but I know what was happening in Southern California when my family moved there. The aerospace industry was very strong in Southern California at that time. My father was a machinist and found work at Hughes Aircraft Company in Culver City, CA within a few weeks of our moving from Minnesota to California. My father had lived briefly in California around the World War II years as did other men who served in the Pacific in that war. He saw much opportunity for himself and his family by moving to California.

I am the eldest in a large family. My father had hoped that he could provide the opportunity of a college education for each of his children. When I entered the University of California at Berkeley my annual tuition was $240. The tuition at the University of Minnesota at that same time was $900 a year. My dad told me that the cost of higher education in Minnesota versus the cost in California was a primary reason that he moved us to California.

My father's parents and two sisters were already living in California when we moved. It was a very hard move for my mother as she left so many of her close relatives behind. Most of the family events centered around my mother's family and not so much around my father's family. My father had wanted to move to the Bay Area but my mother's aunt and sister had moved to Southern California. So as a concession to my mother, my father moved the family to Orange County, California.


Even though my mother's aunt and sister were living in California, my mother complained about California. California was too dusty and dry. After I married, my mother and father took a trip back to my mother's beloved Minnesota. That was the end of her complaints about California. I guess the humidity and mosquitoes in Minnesota proved too much for my mother.