#52Ancestors
– Week 3 Randi
Mathieu
Longevity: noun: a long individual life; great duration of individual
life
I’d like to
introduce you all to Manuel Levy. Manuel
was my husband’s Great Great Great Grandfather. Manuel was a sailor from Portugal
who immigrated to Connecticut about 1837.
According to newspaper records
Manuel lived to be 104 years old!
1
The information
gleaned from the US census does not agree with this date and a search is
underway for the original birth record.
Our lineage
comes through the Nicholas King line.
I was lucky to
find an interview with a Portuguese fisherman from Cape Cod and believe this is
what Manuel would have said, if he had the chance.
“Anybody’ll
tell you they ain’t no men can fish better than the Portuguese. We can always get jobs on the boats. I wouldn’t want to work on land all the
time. Lots of men do when they get
older, but not me. I wouldn’t never be
happy unless I had a boat under me.”2
This was a quote from Manuel Captiva a Portuguese immigrant in
1939. While he is a much more recent
immigrant than our Manuel, I believe the sentiment is there. Mary Levy his daughter married Nicholas
Bettencourt King also a fisherman. Nicholas
and Mary’s son Robert lived until the nice old age of 94. There must be something to be said for fresh
sea air!
Here’s a
picture of lv-12 which was posted to Eel Grass Shoal and would have likely been
the ship Manuel served on.
3
11 "Manuel Levy Dead at 104." New York Times 05/29/1897
Published: Page 1. Newsapapers.com. Web. 01/24/2018
22 Banks,
Ann. First-person
America. Open Road
Distribution, 2015. Amazon.com. Web. 01/24/2018
33 National
Archives
No comments:
Post a Comment