Foreword

The following is a historical background of the island of Faial taken from the Bradt Travel Guide "Azores, " a book that Jay found at a yard sale.

"Discovered by the Portuguese in the early half of the 15th century, Flemish settlers came to Faial in 1468 and just 20 years later their numbers had grown to 1500. Horta became a busy seaport, then the only safe anchorage in the Azores. Portugal's population in the middle 1400's was only 1.5 million, so Prince Henry encouraged immigration from Flanders and for a time the Azores were known as the Flemish Islands because so many settled there."

In the middle 1900's, I met a man who had a cousin who had married a man from Flanders named "Maciel"! When he heard my name he thought I was a native of Flanders, he couldn't tell me much more. The couple had moved to the midwest and he didn't know exactly where.

Other nations of Europe were contacted by the Portuguese royal family to send their people to the Azores on the promise of land if they would become Portuguese citizens. Somewhere in some notes I found that one of my mother's grandfathers was a Swede! But no further information [was available] ... except that it makes our [more distant] background somewhat complex.

After Margaret [Brown Maciel] died, Jay brought me a box from the Mauran Avenue house that contained some notes written in Portuguese written by my father.

He started by writing that his father (my grandfather) was born on July 8, 1861 to Jose Silveira Maciel and Maria Dutra Maciel and named Jose. He became a well known mason and at the time my father wrote there were still buildings remaining that were built by him. I was told that Jose (my grandfather) visited the U.S. on a couple of occasions- once when he was a baby- of which I have no recollection. Also that while he was here in the U.S. on one occasion, that he supervised and worked on the stone wall that is around the Rumford Congregational Church and Cemetery.

In 1887, my grandfather Jose, had married Maria de Silveira Furtado, the daughter of Jose Silveira Furtado, a native of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, who had returned to Faial with his parents. They had 10 children: Antonio (my father) was born June 5, 1888; Arlindo (Harold), August 22, 1891; Jose, July 19, 1893; Francisco, February 20, 1895; Joao (John) died in infancy; Maria, February 19, 1897; Francisca, September 9, 1900; Joao (John), November 9, 1902 (?); and two girls, Ana and Estacio who died in infancy.

Antonio (my father) the oldest child emigrated to the U.S. from the port of Horta on June 6, 1902 on the steamer "Dona Maria", reaching New York on June 17, and East Providence, June 18, staying at the home of Louisa Maciel Cordeiro (?) living at 34 Orchard Street until July 1st when he moved to the home of Estacio Andrade (?) in Seekonk and began working at the farm of David A. Peck. At the end of 1905, he returned to East Providence and for some time worked at W.W. Co. (Woolworth's?) and from 1906 to 11912 for Henry J. Spooner on the East Side of Providence [not East Providence.] In the summer of 1912 he returned on a visit to Faial and after returning to the U.S. was employed by Adam's Express Co. (forerunner of the Railway Express.) From 1915 to 1917 he was employed by the D.W. Flint [Fleet?] Ford Co. in Pawtucket. In 1917 with his brother Francisco (Frank) they founded the Maciel Bros. Market at 62 Purchase Street at the Corner of Orchard Street in East Providence.

On January 16, 1913, he married Maria Jose Costa, born July 2, 1889 in Pedro Miguel, Faial, daughter of Antonio and Paulina Costa. She was one of 13 children, the eldest girl (she had older brothers) and she came to the U.S. at the age of 12. I know little of her early life, except that she had worked in an East Providence mill until she became a maid in the home of a Providence East Side lawyer.

Earlier I mentioned that my father had told me that he had worked as a chauffeur for Henry Spooner, a lawyer who lived in the East Side. (Could Spooner have been the lawyer for whom my mother worked, and how they met?)