How Portuguese Immigrants Came to New England

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In 1915, four Madeiran men organized a feast at the Church of the Immaculate Conception in New Bedford, Mass. They did it to celebrate the safe arrival of Portuguese immigrants after a stormy journey.

The festival mimicked the traditional religious feast observed in their village on Madeira Island. It included a celebration of the Roman Catholic Mass, a grand procession, traditional food and folk dancing.

Today, the 104-year-old Feast of the Blessed Sacrament is the largest Portuguese festival in the world. It reflects both the size and the identity of the Portuguese-American population in New England.

Two great waves of Portuguese immigration gave Southeastern Massachusetts and Rhode Island the densest concentration of people with ancestry from Portugal, including the Azores and Cape Verde.

They made their mark with restaurants and bakeries, with fishing fleets, with Roman Catholic churches and with the Boston Red Sox. Dustin Pedroia, Jonny Gomes and Shane Victorino all have Portuguese ancestry. So do actor Tom Hanks, U.S. Sen. Jack Reed and Aerosmith’s Joe Perry.

Portugal also produced John Philip Sousa, who composed that most American march, Stars and Stripes Forever. And Emma Lazarus, who came from Portugal, wrote the inscription on the Statue of Liberty.

The First Portuguese Immigrants

The first Portuguese sailor, Miguel Corte-Real, may have come to Massachusetts as far back as the early 16^th century. A 40-ton boulder now in Dighton Rock State Park is inscribed with writing that Brown professor Edmund B. Delabarre believed was written by Corte-Real.

In 1912, Delabarre wrote that the inscription on the Dighton Rock said, “I, Miguel Cortereal, 1511. In this place, by the will of God, I became a chief of the Indians.” (Well, maybe.)

During the Colonial period, a small number of Portuguese immigrants came to the islands of Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket.

Jewish Portuguese immigrants came early to America to escape persecution. Wealthy merchant Aaron Lopez and his associates brought the sperm oil industry to Newport, R.I. They also built the Touro Synagogue in the 18^th century .

Until about 1870, whaling drew Portuguese sailors from the Azores and the Cape Verde Islands. Poverty and military service sent them. They signed on for low-paying, dangerous work on whale ships. Then they settled in whaling communities in New England, California and Hawaii.

Easy To Get In

Portuguese families started to come to the United States in larger numbers around 1870 just as the whaling industry began to decline. They worked in New England’s booming textile mills, in whaling and fishing. And the women worked as seamstresses in garment shops.

In the late 19th century, many Portuguese, mainly Azorean and Madeiran, settled in Providence, Bristol and Pawtucket in Rhode Island. They also settled in New Bedford, Taunton, Fall River, Gloucester and Provincetown in Massachusetts. And they moved to Hartford and New Haven in Connecticut.

“It was easy to get into this country in those early days,” wrote Portuguese immigrant Lawrence Oliver in his autobiography. “America was a free port. To get in, all you needed was a little money in your pocket, so that the authorities could be sure you wouldn’t be destitute and on relief right away.”

Opportunity

Even during the Great Depression, Portuguese immigrants found opportunity in America. As Capt. Joseph Captiva, a Provincetown fisherman, told a government interviewer in 1938,

…it’s a good place to live. Good money an’ chances for th’ young people. They say it’s bad times now, but we ain’ never seen bad times here like in ol’ country. (Read the whole interview here.)

The newcomers began to form fraternal benefit societies. They also  printed their own newspapers, such as A civilizacao luso-americano in Boston. They maintained strong ties to the Roman Catholic Church, and formed committees of festeiros to stage the religious festivals that survive today. The religious festivals subsequently helped Portuguese immigrants retain their sense of community and identity.

Throughout Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut, Portuguese-Americans hold religious festivals in the summer. They include the Feast of St. Anthony’s in Pawtucket, West Warwick and Portsmouth, R.I.

In Massachusetts, they celebrate the Festa do Divino Espirito Santo in East Taunton, The Feast of the Holy Ghost in Fall River and the Provincetown Portuguese Festival and Blessing of the Fleet.

In Connecticut, a Portuguese Day Festival is held every year in Danbury. Festa De Sao Joao is held in Waterbury. Portuguese-American residents of Stonington, Conn., also hold an annual Feast of the Holy Ghost.

Portuguese immigration peaked between 1910 and 1920, then slowed considerably. Literacy was low in Portugal, and many Portuguese immigrants couldn’t get in after the U.S. government instituted a literacy test in 1917. Then the government followed with a quota system that further reduced the numbers of Portuguese immigrants.

The 2nd Wave of Portuguese Immigrants

A series of volcanic eruptions in the Azores from 1957-58 spurred the second wave of Portuguese immigration to the United States. The Capelinhos volcano, on the coast of the Azorean island of Faial, erupted on Sept. 27, 1957. And it didn’t stop until Oct. 24, 1958.

No one was killed, but the volcanic activity covered the island with ash. It also destroyed homes and forced several thousand residents to leave. As a result, Congress in September 1958 passed the Azorean Refugee Act allowing 4,800 Azoreans to immigrate.

Then seven years later, the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 abolished the quota system, spurring a new wave of Portuguese immigration. Portuguese then began to enter the United States at the rate of 11,000 to 12,000 per year. Consequently, 44.5 percent of all Portuguese immigration to the United States took place between 1961 and 1990.

By the Numbers

People of Portuguese descent make up only four-tenths of one percent (0.4 percent) of the entire U.S. population. But in Rhode Island, they make up 9.7 percent of the population. As a result, that’s the densest concentration of Portuguese in the country.

Massachusetts has the second densest concentration of Portuguese-Americans, with 6.2 percent. Connecticut ranks fourth, with 1.3 percent, mostly concentrated in the Hartford-West Hartford-Willimantic area.

But the majority of Portuguese-Americans in New England cluster in Southeastern Massachusetts and Rhode Island.

Forty-one percent of East Providence residents claim Portuguese ancestry. So do at least one in five residents of Bristol, Warren and Tiverton.

Though Rhode Island has the densest Portuguese population, it only has the third largest. Massachusetts has more Portuguese residents with ancestry from Portugal than any other state in the country. About 320,000 now live in the Bay State, according to estimates of the 2010 Census. Fall River, Mass., has the densest concentration of Portuguese- Americans in the United States — 43.9 percent. And Portuguese Americans make up at least a third of the population of North and South Dartmouth, New Bedford, Dighton and Somerset.

California also has a large number of residents with ancestry from Portugal.

Madeira Wine

Hence the Feast of the Blessed Sacrament in early August attracts tens of thousands to New Bedford from nearby. They come for folk dancing, pop music, soccer and, most of all, traditional Madeiran food. They’ll feast on carne de espeto, bacalhau, linguica, ceviche, bifana sandwiches and milho frito. (For a description of these foods, click here.)

The beverage of choice? Madeira wine, of course.

The festival then ends with a parade. It follows a route marked by 70 arches of bayberry leaves, illuminated by twinkling lights.

The next festival will begin on Aug, 3, 2023.

You may also enjoy this story about how Portuguese farmers made Falmouth strawberries famous here. This story about Portuguese immigrants was updated in 2023.