Portuguese American women]]>Instrumentation and orchestration (Band)]]>Lowell (Mass.)]]>Portuguese American women]]>Instrumentation and orchestration (Band)]]>Lowell (Mass.)]]>Portuguese American women]]>Instrumentation and orchestration (Band)]]>Lowell (Mass.)]]>Instrumentation and orchestration (Band)]]>Lowell (Mass.)]]>Instrumentation and orchestration (Band)]]>Lowell (Mass.)]]>Portuguese American women]]>Mills and mill-work]]>Children of immigrants]]>Education]]>Cooking]]>Boardinghouses]]> Biographical Note: Wilhemina's parents both immigrated to the United States from the island of Graciosa in the Azores. They got married shortly after arriving and Wilhemina was born on May 30, 1914. Her sister was named Mary Foley. Their parents worked in Boott Mills in Lowell until their father found work in Machester, N.H., where they lived for many years.
Scope and Contents: Interview conducted by Carole MacDougal Perkins, a grad student in the Department of Psychology at UMass Lowell; tells how Wilhemina's parents immigrated to U.S.; their strict portuguese customs; work in the mills; how Wilhemina parented her children differently; relationship between ethnic groups.]]>Perkins, Carole MacDougal]]>here.]]>]]>English]]>Lowell (Mass.)]]>Graciosa (Azores)]]>Festivals]]>Fasts and Feasts]]>Parades]]>Cows]]>Livestock]]>Marching bands]]>Music]]>Music--Portuguese influences]]>Leal, Januario]]>Please press play below to view the video:
]]>Lowell (Mass.)]]>Azorean Americans]]>Children of immigrants]]>Music]]>Instrumentation and orchestration (Band)]]>Immigrant families]]>Engineering]]>Civic leaders]]>Community organization]]>Oral History Interview with Richard F. DeFreitas, February 27, 2016 Biographical Note: Born in Lowell, Massachusetts, in 1939; son of Josephine (Cotta) and Joaquim DeFreitas; Richard F. DeFreitas’s mother (1911-1994) was born Lowell her parents, Josephine (Almeida) and Francisco C. Cotta were from Terceira and were among the first communicants of Saint Anthony Catholic Church; his father (1908-1994) was born in Madeira and, at the age of eleven, immigrated to the U.S. with his parents (Ludevina and Francisco DeFreitas); the DeFreitas family settled in Manchester, New Hampshire; Joaquim and Josephine married in 1936, and settled in Lowell on the fringe of the “Back Central” neighborhood; they were communicants of Saint Anthony’s, and became active in the Holy Ghost Society; Josephine worked as a knitter in the New Knit Company’s factory in Lowell; Joaquim became a master mechanic at the Brox Construction Company in Dracut, Massachusetts; as a young boy, Richard F. DeFreitas attended the city’s public schools and learned to play the clarinet (his father played guitar and, with a number of Portuguese men, formed a band that played in local clubs); by age twelve he played in the Portuguese Colonial Band; in the 1950s, the family moved to Chelmsford, Massachusetts, on a former poultry farm near the Chelmsford-Lowell line; by his teens at Chelmsford High School, DeFreitas was an accomplished clarinetist musician; graduated from Lowell Technological Institute with a degree in engineering; while playing in various bands in the area, Mr. DeFreitas worked in engineering for the Raytheon Corporation, followed by Ditran, Division of Clifton-Litton Industries, producers of analog-to-digital conversion electronic equipment for the computer industry; after working at two other electronic manufacturing firms in the area, he accepted an engineering job in California he worked for electronic computer-related manufacturing firm; Mr. DeFreitas returned to Chelmsford and worked for Hybrid Systems Corporation before founding his own company DeltaLab Research, Inc. While at Hybrid and DeltaLab, Mr. DeFreitas received several patents for analog-digital conversion and audio products used in sound and musical recordings.
Scope and Contents: Interview conducted by local historian Mehmed Ali; in addition to personal family history, this interview includes information on Lowell’s Portuguese community in the 1940s and 1950s, activities at the Holy Ghost Society and Saint Anthony Catholic Church, as well as the activities of and persons associated with the Portuguese Colonial Band; there is also information on working at various factories in 1940s and 1950s Lowell and the move of the DeFreitas family to the suburbs of Chelmsford in the 1950s; much of the interview focuses on music and musicianship within the area’s Portuguese community, and the various clubs where Mr. DeFreitas and other musicians played; it concludes with some information on the area’s growing electronic and computer industries, including a company founded by Mr. DeFreitas in the late 1970s.]]>Ali, Mehmed]]>English]]>Lowell (Mass.)]]>Azorean Americans]]>Children of immigrants]]>Mills and mill-work]]>Ethnic neighborhoods]]>Music]]>Fathers and sons]]>Civic leaders]]>Portuguese language]]>Cultural assimilation]]> Biographical Note: Born in Manchester, New Hampshire, in 1933; parents from Graciosa, Azores, immigrated to the U.S. ca. 1926; both parents worked in textile mills in Manchester and Lowell; father a loom fixer, mother a spinner; they settled permanently in Lowell ca. 1936; members of St. Anthony Catholic Church, they had three daughters and one son, John J. who was educated in Lowell’s public schools; his father was a trombonist who played in and managed Lowell’s Portuguese Colonial Band; Mr. Leite joined the band as boy, playing the trumpet and later the trombone; after serving in the U.S. Army in post-war Europe, he returned home and matriculated at Lowell State Teachers’ College; after graduating from the college he taught in the area’s public schools, performed as a professional trombonist in well-known local bands, and formed his own band; beginning in the 1970s Mr. Leite became secretary/treasurer of the Lowell local of the American Federation of Musicians (AFM), AFL-CIO, and after its merger with other locals in 1995, he was elected president of AFM Local 300.
Scope and Contents: Interview conducted by local historian Mehmed Ali covers John Leite’s family background, growing up in Lowell’s Portuguese neighborhood “Back Central” in the 1930s and 1940s, activities at St. Anthony Catholic Church, Portuguese music and musicians in Lowell, and Lowell’s changing musical culture. There is a great deal of material on the personalities and musical playing styles of a number of prominent Portuguese musicians in Lowell from the 1950s into the 1990s. [For more on John J. Leite and his role in the American Federation of Musicians, Local 300, see “Oral History with John Leite, 1999,” interview by Gray Fitzsimons, Historian, Lowell National Historical Park]]]>Ali, Mehmed]]>English]]>Graciosa (Azores)]]>Lowell (Mass.)]]>Manchester (N.H.)]]>