Portuguese-Americans in the US

 

Dighton Rock

• Early 1500s–1542: Portuguese navigators/explorers are linked (in the text) to early contact with North American shores; João Rodrigues Cabrilho is noted as the first European to reach California (1542). Miguel Corte-Real may have been in the East Coast in the early 16th C 
• 1634: First documented Portuguese resident in colonial America: Mathias de Sousa
• Peter Francisco, "giant soldier" in the continental army, said to be from the Azores

Wave 1 — 1840s: the whaling corridor into New England

• Main driver / mechanism: Whaling voyages served as a route to America; whalers frequently stopped in the Azores to recruit crew, and many crew members later settled when ships docked in New England.

        Geography: New Bedford, Massachusetts (described as the whaling center by the early              19th century), alongside older whaling areas like Nantucket and Cape Cod

Wave 2 — Late 1890s: Azorean and Madeiran community-building in industrial and coastal New England

• Where (core clusters):

• Rhode Island: Tiverton, East Providence, Valley Falls, Pawtucket

• Southeastern Massachusetts: Taunton, Brockton, Fall River, New Bedford

• Also: Lowell and Lawrence (Northern MA), Southern New Hampshire, and neighborhoods in Boston (East Boston, North End), plus Cambridge and Somerville.

Why those places: Availability of low-skill work, particularly in the textile industry, accessible to newcomers with limited English

Wave 3 — From Capelinhos (1957–58) through the Immigration Act of 1965 and after

• 1957–58: Capelinhos volcano eruption (Faial, Azores) causes major destruction and displacement.
• 1958: Azorean Refugee Act signed, granting 1,500 visas to victims; extended in 1962.
• After WWII into this period: Another migration wave noted especially to the Northeast (NJ, NY, CT, RI, MA, MD) and California, including people described as fleeing the Salazar dictatorship; growth of Portuguese clubs for cultural preservation.
• 1965: Immigration and Nationality Act allows legal residents to sponsor family members, described as dramatically increasing Portuguese immigration into the 1970s and 1980s.

Snapshot by 2000

• 2000 U.S. census (as quoted in the text): 1,176,615 Portuguese-Americans, described there as mostly of Azorean descent (the excerpt itself flags that point as needing a citation)