Correia and Gomes and an Olympian

Before I share a little more information on Frank Correia and Manuel Gomes. I want to mention that the Trustees of Reservations will be continuing the bluebird monitoring program started at the Ames Estate many years ago by Bob Hurd and "Doc" Everett. Dr. Everett is the father of one of Easton's rare Olympians, John Everett. John was a cross country and track and field kid while at Oliver Ames, but he also was the class valedictorian and ended up at a little school called MIT that just happens to sit next to the Charles River. During his first semester he joined the crew team and less than two years later he won a gold medal at the 1974 World Rowing Championships as a member of the US eight man shell. Everett finished ninth in the US eight at the Montreal Olympics in 1976. Early in 1980  Everett's eight beat the British team. Then Jimmy Carter decided to be the first American President to touch the Afghan tar baby and cancelled our participation in the 1980 Moscow Olympics to protest the Soviet invasion. The British team Everett's had beaten won the silver medal. You do the math, Mr. Carter. John Everett is a member of the National Rowing Hall of Fame and the Oliver Ames Athletic Hall of Fame.

Over at the Ames Estate, there are many rare trees, but right now only one is labelled. It is a little crab apple planted, the plaque says, in honor of the coronation of Queen Elizabeth. If you watched the fantastic Opening Ceremony last night, you saw one of the cheekiest bits of British humor ever-the Queen escorted by James Bond parachuting into the Olympic stadium. Earning best supporting actor awards were the Queen's Corgis who looked really disappointed when they weren't allowed onto the helicopter. Corgis are my second favorite dog after Pomeranians.

OK, every Portuguese immigrant was apparently named Manuel Gomes. At least that's the way I feel after doing research yesterday. Remember we were trying to see if there was a connection between Gomes and Frank Correia who both allegedly came to America in 1911 and brought their wives over in 1914. The first stop were census records. Ancestry.com has just finished indexing the 1940 census and only Correia not Gomes appears to have still been in Easton then. The Correia's were a family of six. Frank, age 47 was a laborer in the Shovel Shop who made $540 in wages in 1939. During the week of March 24-30, 1940, he worked a 30 hour week. His wife Leolinda was a housewife. The oldest child was Ololia aged 23 (did you know that vowels are one of Portugal's leading exports?). Like all four kids she had been born in Massachusetts in her case in 1916 or 1917.  She was working around the corner from the family home on Oliver Street at Stedfast Rubber where she made $360 as a heel trimmer. Frank, Jr., two years younger, also worked at the Shovel Compan making $260 in wages. The two children worked 23 and 24 hours during that March week. Do the short hours reflect an attempt by the shovel and rubber companies to keep workers on during the Depression with reduced hours? The other two Correia children were Dorothy, age 11 and Leolinda, age 9.

The Gomes family shows up in the 1930 and 1920 censuses. Gomes was 7 years older than Correia reducing the chances that they were friends. In 1930 both Gomes and his wife Rose were working at Stedfast Rubber, and despite living in the US for at least 15 years neither was listed as speaking English. They had three children, the oldest age 10. The record confirms the 1911 and 1914 immigration dates, but notes that Gomes married Rose when he was 29. He was 44 in 1930 so that means the marriage took place after Rose arrived in America. Had they been engaged before she emigrated? The 1920 census shows that tragedy was not unknown in the Gomes family. Born in 1916, 3 and a half year old Edward Gomes died before the next census. That 1920 census moves back the immigration date for both Manuel and Rose by a year to 1910 and 1913.

Which meant that ships' manifests had to be searched. The 6-10 Manuel Gomes who emigrated from Portugal to Boston and New York between 1910 and 1915 couldn't be definitely tied to Easton's Gomes, but none of them came over on a ship with a Frank Correia. Thus, it looks like the immigration dates in the survey forms were some kind of coincidence or even a recording error although we'll probably never know for sure.