Patrimóniu di um Kriolu : Lourenço dos Santos

This post was originally meant to be created little over a month ago but it's still topical given my previous post.

The title of this article is Cape Verdean Creole for "Heritage of a Creole" and it's directly related to today's topic. Today I'll be writing about my great great grandfather Lourenço dos Santos, aka Lawrence Santos Sr. and my ongoing journey to understand him and my family history.

Lourenço dos Santos (Lawrence Santos Sr.), ca. 1930s

There's a few things that we can attribute to Lourenço with certainty: 

- he was born on the island of Fogo in Cabo Verde

- he immigrated to the United States and married Myrtle Boston in 1923 and settled in Philadelphia

- he died at some point in the mid to late 1940s.

All other information is unconfirmed and I am actively in the process of researching. The information I provide in this post could be incorrect but it possibly aligns with my family history. 

Some of the oral history I was relayed to by relatives is that Lourenço was of Mandinka heritage through his father and of mostly mixed race/Portuguese through his mother. His oldest recorded ancestor in our oral tradition was a Mandinka woman from the Senegambia who was brought to the islands during enslavement. These details are all consistent with the general history of Cape Verde and with the modern linguistic and genetic research that ties the majority of Fogo residents to having Mandinka ancestry. As for his death, I was told that he worked as a street vendor and was hit by car one day while working. 

The search for details or records of Lourenço's citizenship in the United States has been rather difficult. I have no general estimate of when he was born from my family and he does not appear on any census form after his marriage to Myrtle, which could have multiple implications. The New Jersey marriage index states that he and Myrtle married on her 19th or 20th birthday on August 6, 1923 in Atlantic County. 

The only other document I can conclusively attach to him is when he signed my great grandfather's marriage license to his first wife Laura in 1943, at the time any . His birthplace is listed as Portugal as Cape Verde was still officially a part of the Portuguese Empire and would not achieve its independence until 1975. Interestingly enough, Myrtle is listed as deceased on this record although she did not die until 1977. I speculate that this might've been because she did not approve of the marriage and I was told that Lawrence and Laura had a somewhat tumultuous relationship. I'm also unsure of how much English Santos Sr. knew. Either way, his signature is present on the document. 

             

Lawrence Santos Sr.'s signature on Lawrence Santos Jr.'s marriage license, July 1943

This is all the conclusive information I can find on Lawrence Sr. Now I will delve into the more 

speculative files I've been investigating. 

Lourenço's immigration records are a little murky. However, I was able to find a Lourenco Santos from Fogo, Cape Verde on multiple ship manifests in the 1900s-1910s. On a 1908 ship manifest that landed in New Bedford, Massachusetts, there is a Lourenco Santos from Fogo, whose mother is named Maria Socorro dos Santos. These names also appear on a 1912 and 1917 manifest as well, implying that he made several trips to and from Fogo. His birth year on these records range from 1885 to around 1889. The specific location of origin listed in Fogo was Ribeira Gomes.

Eventually I tried to use FamilySearch to search for further information. The site contains an online index of baptismal records from Cape Verde from 1787 to 1957.  I searched for a Lourenço dos Santos in Fogo and a record with a matching name for him, his mother and specific neighborhood showed up. 

Lourenço's baptismal record, March 1886

Dated March 1886, the document is filed under the title "Lourenço, fo. (filho) natural de Maria Socorro dos Santos). The term "filho natural" (natural child) was term used to designate a child with an unmarried mother. Lourenço's father is not mentioned in the document at all. The location is listed as the neighborhood of Ribeira Gomes in the parish São Lourenço, in the municipality of São Filipe, on the island of Fogo. The baptism occurred in March of 1886 but his birthdate is given as August 9, 1885 and his birth time was at 5 A.M. The document lists his god parents and more importantly, his maternal grandparents Manoel Jaoquim dos Santos and Maria dos Reis Rodrigues. His grandmother's surnames also indicate a possible Sephardic Jewish background as the names Dos Reis and Rodrigues were commonly adopted by Conversos, Jewish converts to Catholicism, that resided in Cape Verde's early history. 

There are further documents that provide some clues that possibly align with what I know of my family history and others that conflict. This still an ongoing search as I have many Cape Verdean DNA matches but none seem to be directly related to or descended from Lourenço's family. I'll explore more of those records in a later post. As for now, I will say it's been an amazing journey reconnecting with this branch of my family and looking into the life my only known ancestor to recently immigrate and most recent ancestor to have been born in an African country.