Biographical Note:
Francis J. “Jack” Picanso was born in Lowell, Massachusetts, in 1936; son of Rita R. (Stillings) and Anthony Picanso, who were also born in Lowell; the fraternal grandfather, Manuel C. Picanso (1868-1937) immigrated from the Azores (most likely the island of Graciosa), settling in Lowell in 1887; Manuel Picanso was one of the founders of Lowell’s first Portuguese Catholic church (on Gorham and Congress streets) and subsequently helped found Saint Anthony Catholic Church on Central Street; he worked in the Appleton Cotton Mills as weaver and later in the skilled position of loom fixer; Manuel Picanso also purchased a house—most Portuguese immigrants at this time rented in tenements—near Lincoln Square in Lowell in a part of the city where few Portuguese lived; Jack Picanso attended parochial schools in Lowell, graduating from Keith Academy in 1953; he then matriculated at Boston College, graduating with a bachelor of arts in Greek; Picanso returned to Lowell, taught at Keith Academy, followed by two public schools in Lowell, the Varnum elementary and the Daley middle schools; after teaching math at the Daley, Picanso was appointed assistant to the principal at the Daley and also served as president of the employee’s bargaining unit of Lowell’s school administrators.
Scope and Contents:
Interview conducted by local historian Mehmed Ali; focuses on the Picanso family history, notably Manuel C. Picanso, a prominent member of Lowell’s Portuguese community in the late 19th century; also includes information on the small businesses operated by Picanso relatives, as well as marriage and family life with non-Portuguese spouses in pre-WWII and post-war Lowell; part of the interview also focuses on parochial school education in 1940s in Lowell, and Jack Picanso’s career as a teacher and administrator in Lowell’s public schools, beginning in the late 1950s.
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Born in Lowell, Massachusetts in 1950; daughter of Ruth E. (Cassidy) and Charles R. Santos Jr. (1923-1990); both born in Lowell. Ruth (Cassidy) Santos (b. 1923) was from an Irish-American Catholic family. Charles R. Santos Sr. (1901-1964) was born to a Portuguese immigrant family on Charles Street in Lowell. His father (Nickles great- grandfather) Alberto(Albert) Santos, born in the Azores (likely on the island of Graciosa), married Aldina Silva. Charles Sr. attended Lowell public schools but left upon completing elementary school. He married Mary Farley of Lowell(1903-1939)who was of Irish-Catholic heritage; worked a few years in a small foundry in the Ayer’s City section of Lowell, and purchased a house near the foundry on 32 Marriner Street. After employment as meat dept. manager at Saunders market on Gorham St. in Lowell, he began a successful family-run wholesale meat company, Charles Santos & Sons Inc. The first of seven children (two girls and five boys), Charles Jr. was educated in Lowell public schools. He graduated from Lowell High School in 1940, after which he worked briefly as a welder at the Charlestown (Massachusetts) Navy Yard. During WW II he left to servein the U.S. Marine Corps in the South Pacific. After sustaining combat injuries related to his participation in the liberation of Guam, he returned to Lowell, graduated from Northeastern University, and worked as manager/president in the family meat business. At this time(1950’s), Santos became involved in local Democratic politics. working as campaign treasurer for the campaign of Attorney James L. O’Dea for District Attorney of Middlesex County and then for John F. Kennedy’s Senatorial and Presidential campaigns. From 1962-1967 he was employed with General Services Administration as a liaison officer for the federal government. He was appointed U.S. Postmaster of Lowell in 1967, serving in this position for 12 years before promotion in 1979 to District/Mgr., Middlesex- Essex, Mass. He concluded his career with promotions to District Manager/Postmaster of Honolulu and the Pacific Region (1981), and then to District Manager of the Boston District (New England States) in 1983, before retirement in 1986.
Scope and Contents:
Interview conducted by local historian Mehmed Ali focuses almost exclusively on family history, primarily on the Santos (paternal) branch, with some reference to the Cassidy (maternal) family. It includes the experiences of marriage across ethnic lines, education, and occupational roles of family members in Lowell. It also includes information regarding the operation of business in a local family company, as well as that of local and state politics in the 1950’s and 1960’s, including the John F. Kennedy Senatorial and Presidential campaigns.
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Born in the city of Horta on the Azorean island of Faial in 1930; Luis Gomes received his education in Horta’s schools and attended Escola Do Magistério to become a school teacher; at the age of eight he started playing the mandolin, at nine the violin, and at 10 the cornet, by age 14 he was making musical arrangements, scoring music from films at the local cinema for bands in the area to play; at the age of 16 he was invited to lead one of those bands; upon completing his schooling in Horta, Mr. Gomes taught school for three years on the island of S o Miguel before becoming a public servant for the police department and moving to Lisbon, Portugal, where in his spare time, he taught private school; at that time, Mr. Gomes also studied at the Conservatório Nacional de Música de Lisboa to further improve his skills as a professional musician, composer, conductor, and music arranger; he received a promotion and transfer to the Azorean island of Terceira to serve as a police office manager and in his free time he led two philharmonic bands and a small jazz orchestra at the American air base on Terceira.
In the late 1960s, Mr. Gomes, his wife and two daughters immigrated to the United States to the Lowell, area; initially he worked as an upholster for his brother-in-law in Wilmington, Massachusetts, and at night attended Boston State College, now part of UMass Boston, where he obtained his Bachelor of Science Degree in Education; he subsequently helped start the bilingual program in Lowell’s public schools and taught in several of the city’s schools; at Lowell High School he taught Portuguese as a second language and, while, working as a teacher, Mr. Gomes founded two bands, his general business orchestra and the well-known Banda do Espírito Santo de Lowell, where he conducted, arranged, and composed music; he led this band until 2000 when he also retired from Lowell High School.
Mr. Gomes was regularly sought out by other Portuguese band leaders, throughout New England, to write and arrange music for their bands; he also performed a significant amount of volunteer work to help the Portuguese community and this ranged from taking new immigrants to hospitals and translating for them, to driving to families’ homes to discuss and encourage their children to go college; he currently volunteers as a director at the Lowell Portuguese Senior Center. In 2008, Mr. Gomes was awarded the Commonwealth of Massachusetts Portuguese Heritage Award by State Senator Steven C. Panagiotakos, for his “exemplary talent and civic commitment to the Portuguese American community.”
Scope and Contents:
Interview conducted by local historian Mehmed Ali; focuses on Mr. Gomes’ family background, his education and career, including his teaching in Lowell’s public schools and an early bilingual program in the city’s school system; much of the interview also covers Mr. Gomes’ training and career as a musician, composer, conductor, and arranger of Portuguese music in the Azorean islands, Portugal, and New England, as well as the influences that shaped Mr. Gomes’ interpretation of traditional Portuguese music.
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Born in Lowell, Massachusetts in 1942; daughter of Mary (Avila) and Manuel Silva (1895-1976); Manuel Silva (1895-1976) was born on the Azorean island of Graciosa and immigrated to the U.S. with his parents (Mary Bella (Cunha) and Andrew M. Silva) in 1906; Mary (Avila) Silva (1906-1975) was born in Lowell, but her parents were also from Graciosa; Beatrice (Silva) Hogan grew up in Lowell’s major Portuguese neighborhood, “Back Central,” and attended the city’s public schools, graduating from Lowell High School; she married Francis W. Hogan, of Irish and Portuguese ancestry, with the Portuguese side of the family also having the sir name Silva; following high school graduation she worked in a clerical job before having children and then returned to the workplace, managing the women’s department in a Sears department store.
Scope and Contents:
Interview conducted by local historian Mehmed Ali; much of the focus is on family history of the Silva (Portuguese) and Hogan (Irish) families in Lowell, as well as growing up in the 1940s-1960s in Lowell’s “Back Central” neighborhood, the Portuguese businesses and culture in this locale, and in the occupations of the Silva family; there is also some information on the city’s ethnic diversity in various neighborhoods and in the public schools, and cultural differences within the Portuguese community, namely in relation to Madeirans and Azoreans. [For more on Beatrice (Silva) Hogan and these topics, see “Oral History Interview with Beatrice “Bea” E. (Silva) Hogan, September 10, 2016.”]
]]>Biographical Note:
Born in Lowell, Massachusetts in 1942; daughter of Mary (Avila) and Manuel Silva (1895-1976); Manuel Silva (1895-1976) was born on the Azorean island of Graciosa and immigrated to the U.S. with his parents (Mary Bella (Cunha) and Andrew M. Silva) in 1906; Mary (Avila) Silva (1906-1975) was born in Lowell, but her parents were also from Graciosa; Beatrice (Silva) Hogan grew up in Lowell’s major Portuguese neighborhood, “Back Central,” and attended the city’s public schools, graduating from Lowell High School; she married Francis W. Hogan, of Irish and Portuguese ancestry, with the Portuguese side of the family also having the sir name Silva; following high school graduation she worked in a clerical job before having children and then returned to the workplace, managing the women’s department in a Sears department store.
Scope and Contents:
This is the second of a two-part interview conducted by local historian Mehmed Ali; much of the focus is on Lowell’s “Back Central” neighborhood in the 1940s-1960s, its businesses, culture, and prominent Portuguese families, as well as religious practices in the parish of St. Anthony Catholic Church, and the related religious societies; the city’s ethnic diversity in the post-World War II period; and cultural differences within the Portuguese community, namely in relation to Madeirans and Azoreans; and marriage across ethnic lines. [For more from Beatrice (Silva) Hogan on other topics related to Lowell’s Portuguese community, see “Oral History Interview with Beatrice “Bea” E. (Silva) Hogan, August 6, 2016.”]
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Born on the Azorean island of Terceira, in the village of Biscoitos, in 1950; Dimas Espinola immigrated with his family to the United States in the late 1960s, settling in Lowell’s “Back Central” (predominately Portuguese) neighborhood; his father, formerly a furniture maker in Biscoitos, obtained a job as a loom fixer in the Wannalancit Mills; his mother worked in a shoe factory; Mr. Espinola received his formal education in schools on Terceira and, upon arriving in Lowell, he secured a work permit and, at nearly 17 years of age, he was employed in a manufacturing job in the Paris shoe factory on Bridge Street; at the same time Mr. Dimas, a communicant at St. Anthony’s Church, began working closely with the pastor, Rev. John F. deSilva; among his activities was translating English for Portuguese members of the community, which included various issues affecting the neighborhood, including a state-proposed extension of the Lowell Connector highway that threatened many homes and businesses in the “Back Central” neighborhood; in addition to his community activism and work with the church, Mr. Dimas also became involved with the Portuguese-American Center (and its soccer team), as well as the Holy Ghost Society; he remained in the shoe industry for many years, becoming a foreman and factory manager.
Scope and Contents:
Interview conducted by consulting historian Gray Fitzsimons; a large part of this interview focuses on the organized opposition (and Mr. Espinola’s role in this opposition) to the Lowell Connector highway extension in the early 1970s and the threat of demolition of a large section of the “Back Central” neighborhood; it also contains some information on the family background of Mr. Dimas, the family’s immigrating from the Terceira to the United States, the working lives of the Espinola family in Lowell’s shoe factories in the 1970s and 1980s, as well as observations on the various businesses and cultures that would have been gravely impaired had the highway extension been constructed.
]]>Biographical Note:
Born on the Azorean island of São Miguel in 1953; Ms. Iria’s mother was a homemaker; her father worked as a chauffeur; similar to many children of this period, Ms. Iria attended public school through the fourth grade; eventually she married and had two children while living on São Miguel; in 1980 she, her husband, and two children immigrated to the United States, settling initially in New Bedford, Massachusetts; at the suggestion of her husband’s brother, who lived in Lowell and worked in a higher-paying electronics job, she and her family moved there; for a short time Ms. Iria commuted to Lawrence, Massachusetts, for a job in a shoe factory; however, upon obtaining a job in the Prince Pasta factory, which was located in South Lowell and had nearly 400 workers, the majority being Portuguese; she began working as a machine operator close to her home in the city’s “Back Central” neighborhood; owned by the Pellegrino family, Prince Pasta had a company union; in 1995 a group of Prince Pasta workers, including Ms. Iria, campaigned to affiliate with United Electrical Workers Machine of Workers of America (UE) and, in an intensely fought union election, the workers voted in favor of the UE; Iria was then elected chief steward; two years later the Pellegrino’s sold the company to the Ohio-based Borden Corporation; soon thereafter Borden cut a number of employee benefits and instituted a 12-hour work day; despite union concessions Borden suddenly closed the Lowell factory; Ms. Iria joined with other workers, as well as city and elected officials in an attempt to save the plant, but to no avail; she subsequently worked as an organizer for the UE, before returning to a job as a machine operator at a beverage company; she remains involved in community work.
Scope and Contents:
Interview conducted by local historian Mehmed Ali; included is information on Ms. Iria’s family on São Miguel, prior to her immigration to the United States; much of the interview covers her working career in factories, initially in New Bedford and Lawrence, and then Lowell; she discusses in some detail her experiences at the Prince Pasta factory, the nature of the work and the division of jobs by gender and nationality, the change from a family-owned business to a corporate-controlled manufacturing facility, as well as the change from a company union to one affiliated with the United Electrical Workers Machine of America; her role as a union organizer and shop steward is discussed, as well as her attempts, along with coworkers, to keep the plant open following the Borden Corporation’s sudden decision to shut it down; she also discusses the tensions within her family stemming from the demanding roles as mother, wife, homemaker, worker, and union activist.]]>Biographical Note:
Born in the village of Fontes on the Azorean island of Graciosa in 1926; daughter of Antonio A. and Conceicao A. (da Cunha) Labao; her parents had immigrated to the United States in the early 1900s; her mother settled in Lawrence, Massachusetts, living with relatives from Graciosa and working in a textile mill; her father, who had immigrated from Graciosa to California, was a railroad worker, shoveling coal on a steam locomotive; they met and married in Lawrence; had two daughters, Noemia (who died in infancy) and Deidamia (born in 1910); in 1912 they returned to Graciosa to the village of Fontes and had nine more children (eight daughters and one son); the children, including Ilda Sousa grew to adulthood on Graciosa, but between 1950 and the mid-1960s a number of them immigrated to the United States and settled in Lowell; as a young girl Ilda da Cunha left school to serve as a domestic worker for a wealthier family in Fontes; there she met Aristides A. Sousa, who was born on Graciosa in 1918 and worked as a handyman; they married in 1950 and had one daughter, Marisa D.; in 1966 they immigrated to the United States, settled in Lowell in the “Back Central” neighborhood, and became communicants of Saint Anthony Catholic Church; Ms. Sousa obtained a job in a shoe factory (Grace Shoe), while her husband was employed as a machine operator for a pasta maker (Prince Pasta); she and her husband (who died in 2004, at the age of 85) were members of and active in the Holy Ghost Society and the Holy Trinity Society.
Scope and Contents:
Interview conducted by local historian Mehmed Ali; much of the interview focuses on the lives of the parents of Ilda Sousa, their immigration to the U.S. in the early 1900s and the experiences of Ms. Sousa’s mother in New York City and Lawrence, Massachusetts, as well as their lives on Graciosa, after their return to the island in 1912; through the translation of her daughter Ms. Sousa then describes her life growing up on Graciosa, her marriage there, and her immigration to the U.S. in 1966; included are descriptions of her work place in a Lowell shoe factory; her activities with the Holy Ghost Society, and her experiences in Lowell’s “Back Central” neighborhood.]]>A copy of all items can be found at the Center for Lowell History in Lowell, MA.
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