Hi Katharine, I don't know who you are, but I want to thank you for putting
the review of my book South of the Cannons on Azores Googlegroup. I really
appreciate it and hope that some of the people on the group will find some
connections to their families. The genealogy includes families from Santa
Maria, St. Michael, Graciosa, Pico and Flores. These are the islands that my
ancestors are from. Thank you Henrietta
-----Original Message-----
From: Katharine
Sent: Saturday, March 17, 2012 12:46 PM
To: Azores Genealogy
Subject: [AZORES-Genealogy] Re: Book announcement: "South of the Cannons:
Portuguese Families of Stonington, Connecticut"
Another review of the same book, but with further background (I have
no connection to it that I know of whatsoever, just find it
interesting):
Book: South of the Cannons: Portuguese Families of Stonington,
Connecticut – Review
http://portuguese-american-journal.com/book-south-of-the-cannons-portuguese-families-of-stonington-connecticut-%E2%80%93-review
By Carolina Matos, Editor
♦ Genealogist Henrietta Mello Mayer, 82, has spent most of her adult
life researching Portuguese genealogy in the Borough of Stonington,
specifically the community of South of the Cannons.
Her new book, "South of the Cannons: Portuguese Families of
Stonington, Connecticut," published by the Stonington Historical
Society, is a revised and expanded edition of her 1978 work, "Silva
Descendants: Portuguese Genealogy," published by the University of
Wisconsin.
This updated edition is a comprehensive chronological record tracing
back, across the Atlantic to the 17th century, the origins and the
history of about 200 Stonington families whose ancestors came from the
Azores islands in the 1840s.
The new book offers additional genealogical research and material
documenting the Portuguese presence in the Borough of Stonington. It
includes previously unpublished family and census records; research on
the compiler’s Azorean ancestors; and many photographs, some never
published before.
According to Mayer, the phrase “South of the Cannons” designated
Stonington’s most concentrated Portuguese neighborhood. The
designation appeared after two cannons used in the War of 1812 were
permanently placed in a little square, subsequently called “Cannon
Square,” in 1876.
Of Azorean descent herself, Mayer was born on Omega Street, the
southern portion of Stonington Borough, the community she grew up in
and writes about when it was still largely a Portuguese neighborhood.
Of this community made up of families almost all from the Azores
Islands, she recalls:
“The Yankees to the north might once have regarded the area south of
cannons as exotic or even a little unfriendly, but for those who lived
there and their descendants, ‘South of the Cannons’ has always denoted
a warm, tightly knit community, a token of good, if hardscrabble, old
days.”
Those were the days when the lure to cross the sea was powerful and
whaling ships passing through the Azorean islands of Pico and Faial
trapped many young men with false promises of good wages.
Disillusioned, Azorean whalers often jumped ship to find better paying
shore work at various ports of call in America.
Many of them eventually settled in the whaling communities of New
England where they later were joined by their young brides from the
islands. They started families, forming tight-knit Azorean
communities. This new stream of immigrants brought with them the
Azorean traditions of farming, feasts and family to communities such
as South of the Cannons, the culmination of Mayer’s work.
Mayer retrieved much of her data primarily from the town halls of
Stonington and New London and from the New Bedford Public Library. She
also researched the Stonington Mirror, Stonington’s newspaper in the
late 1800s.
Data includes a chronology of Portuguese people living in Stonington
from 1870 to 1948; Early Portuguese marriages, births and baptismal in
Stonington and New London; Portuguese men serving on ships out of
Stonington and New London; and Portuguese households in Stonington and
New London from census records of 1850 to 1930.
The records also include chronologies of births, deaths, marriages,
and other registers of the various Portuguese individuals living in
these areas at the time.
Copies of the book are available through the Stonington Historical
Society. The book costs $25 and proceeds benefit the historical
society.
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they arrive.
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your Google account and visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/Azores. Click in the
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