Leite and Loureiro Family Collection [1902-1980]

Among Lowell’s prominent Portuguese families, the Leite and Loureiro families, spanning several generations, with roots in mainland Portugal, Graciosa in the Azores, and Brazil, have contributed to the city’s workforce and trade unions, and, significantly, to its politics and culture. Notable figures include Belarmino and John Leite, father and son. Beginning in the 1940s, Belarmino led Lowell’s Portuguese Colonial Band. And John Leite, the long-time president of the Merrimack Valley Musicians Union, AFL-CIO, was a graduate of Lowell High School and Lowell State Teachers College, and a well-known professional horn player and band leader. Moreover, the Loureiro branch of the family in this collection has ties to U.S. Representative Lori Loureiro Trahan, who was born in Lowell in 1973, grew up in Lowell’s “Back Central,” Portuguese neighborhood, and was elected to the U.S. Congress in 2018. She is the first Portuguese-American female to serve in Congress.

Roots of the Leite family in Lowell date to the early 1910s, when two young brothers, Joao and Belarmino Leite, immigrated from Brazil. Their parents were from Graciosa. Manuel da Cunha Leite (b.1855) married Maria Isabel do Gloria Cordeiro (b. 1852) in 1876 in the village of Praia. They had nine children, eight born in Praia or in nearby Fonte do Mato, before they moved to Bahia, Brazil around 1900. In 1905 their youngest child, Adalice Teodomira da Cunha Leite (1905-1980), was born in Bahia. Seeking other opportunities, one of the sons, Joao (b.1886) immigrated to the United States and settled in Lowell where, by 1911, he worked in a textile mill. About one year later the youngest son, Belarmino (1892-1970) joined his brother in Lowell and also found work in a cotton mill. In 1913, Belarmino married Violante J. Sousa (1894-1979), also from Praia on Graciosa. The wedding was at St. Anthony’s Church. in “Back Central,” where they resided. Violante Leite also worked in a cotton mill and had two daughters, Wilhemina, born in 1914, and Mary L., born in 1926.

In the 1920s with the closing of a number of Lowell’s large cotton mills, Belarmino and Violante, with their two daughters, moved to Manchester, New Hampshire. They found employment in the large Amoskeag Cotton Mill, with Belarmino working in the highly skilled job of loom fixer and Violante working as a spinner. They had two more children, Helena Cunha, born in 1929 and John J., born in 1933. The Leite family returned to Lowell in the late 1930s, settling in a home on Bowden Street in South Lowell. Belarmino, who continued working in the textile industry as a loom fixer, was a self-taught trombone player. In 1940 he and fellow musicians from Graciosa revitalized the Portuguese Colonial Band. The band soon became well-known in Lowell, playing various standards, as well as compositions and orchestrations by band members. They were successful enough that they had their own building, called the Portuguese Band Club, on Charles and Chapel streets. (In 1954 this building became the Portuguese-American Center, later known as the “Blues” Club.)

Joining the Colonial Band in 1948 was Belarmino’s 15-year-old son, John, who had learned to play the trumpet. John Leite also played in the Lowell High School Band and after graduation he joined the U.S. Army, serving in post-war Germany. Learning the bass trombone, Leite played in the famous Seventh Army Symphony, founded in Stuttgart, Germany, in 1952 by composer and conductor Samuel H. Adler. It was here that Leite met and played with David Amram, a French Horn player. They became lifelong friends with Amram gaining a national reputation as a composer, jazz musician, and friend of Jack Kerouac, as well as other cultural and literary figures of the “Beat Generation.”

After completing his military service John Leite returned to Lowell and matriculated at Lowell Normal School (a state teachers’ college). Upon graduation he obtained a job teaching music in a public school in Milton, Massachusetts. Leite married Melba L. Macleod, also a graduate in music from Lowell Normal School. Around 1960, he became a full-time musician playing in various bands across the country, although much of his playing and conducting was in New England. A member of the American Federation of Musicians, AFL-CIO since 1955, Leite became Secretary-Treasurer of the Lowell local and after its merger with other locals in the Merrimack Valley in 1995, he was elected president of AFM Local 300. Leite continues to perform and teach music, along with his wife, at his home studio in Lowell.

Through marriage, the Louriero and Leite families are connected. Although at least one Portuguese family with the name Loureiro lived in Lowell in the early 1900s, Antonio Augusta Silva Loureiro (1892-1959) was born in Portugal and married Rosa de Freitas de Melo (b.1890) in or around the city of Porto. They had a son, Fernando de Freitas Loureiro (1914-1971), born in Figueira da Foz, south of Porto, followed some years later by a daughter Rachel (b.1935).

In 1935 Antonio and his wife immigrated to the United States and settled in Lowell. Fernando Loureiro moved to Brazil, but immigrated to the United States in 1943 and resided with his parents in the Back Central neighborhood. His father, a stone cutter at Fletcher’s Quarry in nearby Westford, Massachusetts, obtained a job for his son at this same quarry. In 1944 Fernando Loureiro wed Adalice “Alice” Teodomira da Cunha Leite, who was the aunt of John Leite, and had been living in Lowell since 1921, while working as a weaver in various textile mills. They had a son, Antonio, “Tony,” and for many years they resided with Fernando’s parents in a home on Chapel Street in Back Central. Fernando worked as a carpenter and in 1960 purchased a home on nearby Cady Street. By 1960 he left the carpentry trade and became president of the Portuguese American Center. Their son Tony attended Lowell public schools, graduated from Lowell High School, got a job as an iron worker and became active in the International Association of Ironworkers Local 7, AFL-CIO.

Tony Loureiro married Linda Sousa, a granddaughter of John F. Sousa, who was from the Azores and immigrated to the United States in 1879, settling in Lowell two years later. He became an important figure in the city’s Portuguese community and played a key role in the founding of St. Anthony’s parish in 1901. Among the children of Tony and Linda Sousa, was

Lori, who was born in 1973, attended Lowell’s public schools, and graduated from Lowell High School. Lori Loureiro received an athletic scholarship at Georgetown University and after graduation she worked for Congressman Marty Meehan, rising to the position of Chief of Staff. In 2016 she ran as a Democrat for U.S. Congress in Massachusetts’ 3rd Congressional District (formerly held by Meehan) and won by more than 60 percent of the vote. Reelected in 2018, Lori Trahan (her married name) is the first Portuguese-American female member of Congress.