Growing up in Fall River: An Interview with Thomas Silvia

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Written by / Last updated on August 6, 2024

Fall River, Massachusetts, has long been known as one of the most Portuguese towns in America. In this interview, we sit down with Tom, a lifelong Fall River resident with deep roots in the city’s Portuguese community. Born to second-generation immigrants, Tom shares his firsthand experiences of growing up in a family that held tight to their Azorean heritage while making a new life in America.

From stories about his grandmother’s cooking to memories of life in the city’s tenements, Tom paints a vivid picture of Fall River’s Portuguese-American culture. His anecdotes, both humorous and touching, offer a glimpse into the challenges faced by immigrant families and the rich traditions they brought with them. Through Tom’s eyes, we see how Fall River’s Portuguese community has shaped the city’s character over the generations, creating a unique blend of old-world customs and American life.

James: Can you tell us a bit about your background and connection to Fall River?

Tom: Certainly. I was born and raised in Fall River. My paternal grandmother, Virginia Aguiar, arrived from Feteiras in São Miguel back in 1916, and my grandfather Antone Tavares Silvia came from Sao Paulo in 1914. You could say it was a mixed marriage [laughs] as they spoke different dialects of Portuguese. That actually messed me up a bit when I worked on a project for my company in Brazil later in life.

James: Can you tell us more about your grandparents and their influence on you?

Tom: Unfortunately, my grandfather died when I was very young, but my grandmother, who we called Vavo, lived for many decades. She’s long deceased now, but her colorful stories of her village keep her alive in me and make me smile. I fortunately paid attention when Vavo cooked our ethnic dishes. Even now, living in Florida, I can still get linguica, which is a staple of Portuguese cuisine. She even prevented me from marrying my second cousin.

James: I want to hear more about that.

Tom: As was the custom back then and it was common in Fall River back in the mid 1960s. It had to do more with marrying to get that person entry and citizenship at a time when getting in was difficult. My Vavo’s family sent images of the girl along to her over the following years with the girl’s dimensions and words indicating that she was of healthy stock, intelligent, and could produce healthy babies. No one had ever told me or my parents that his arrangement for me to marry her was created right after my birth in 1949. When finally revealed to us, we were shocked. My Vavo’s family back in Sao Miguel were pissed, and never spoke to her again.

A neighbor who was my age did follow through and married his second cousin and brought her over. He was a bit mentally challenged, and his parents, who supported the old way, knew too that this would help him get a wife. The girl came over, they married. She was bright, beautiful and dumped him not long after marrying… as many did.

James: What was Fall River like back then?

Tom: My brother and I grew up in a 3 room cold water tenement in the slums. Fall River is populated primarily with what were company owned structures, tenements, built in the late 1800s / early 1900s to house textile factory workers that were predominantly Portuguese immigrants. The secondary group were of French Canadian descent. This housing was close to the mills. We were very poor, as were many, but the strong positive cultural values and emphasis on education ultimately got my brother and I out of that.

There was an ongoing hatred between the Portuguese and the French Canadian residents. It was very common for only one side of a family, or no family at all, to show up for a wedding if someone identified as Portuguese was marrying someone who was French Canadian or of that descent.

Names like Souza, Santos, Cabral, Aguiar, Perreira, Cardoza, Barboza, Mello, and of course Silvia were the most common last names in the city population of 100,000.

A street corner in Fall River featuring a red brick building with large advertisements on its facade and rooftop. Several cars are parked alongside, and trees are visible in the background. The sky is overcast, and traffic lights hang above the intersection.
Fall River today

James: I imagine you ate a lot of Portuguese food growing up?

Tom: Kale soup, bacalao, chourico sandwiches, linguica pizza, malasadas and other Portuguese mainstays were earlier to find than fast food joints. I learned to cook a lot of it and serve it to my wife to this day.

My Vavo, who lived downstairs, was a great cook, and I enjoyed everything she made. She would bombard me with food and serve up more, crying if I did not gorge myself. One day she made this great stew. I asked her in my mixed up Azorean and Brazilian Portuguese “O que e isso?” She answered “Snacka.” I did not know what that was and her English was mostly a mish-mosh that ended up Portuguese. So, that night, I asked my father. He said “Did you really eat that? :He said that she was trying to say SNAKE. Seems a neighbor used to catch them in the field and they would cook and eat them, but it was not healthy.

Vavo also made her own moonshine that no one would consume…..except me. She would cackle when she shared a glass with me on a Saturday morning as we watched things like Tarzan starring Johnny Weissmuller or some Japanese Godzilla movie. I was young and it was wrong. We laughed. Such wonderful memories.

James: Different times, definitely.

Tom: In so many ways! In addition to the Holy Ghost feast our Portuguese church had annual events celebrating St Anthony or one of the other saints. Various activities were held at them. One very odd one involved the making of sweet bread. If there was an illness or physical injury in the family over the course of the year, the mother would bake a sweet bread in the shape of the body part affected. All of the breads were then auctioned off with money going to the church. As a kid I got off on trying to guess all the body parts from the collection of breads.

James: It sounds like your Azorean heritage had a big impact on your life?

Tom: When my father and his brother were born, my Vavo placed a small piece of an elk/deer antler on a chain around their necks. This was the tradition. It was to protect them from the devil. Originally meant to just act in that way before they were later baptized, they continued to wear it throughout their lives. I cared for my father when he was dying and that was the first time I ever noticed it. I asked. Not believing it, I researched the story. True. Things drilled into my head like never drinking milk with fish, walking out of the same door you came in, and making sure a man was the first to enter your door in the new year all stuck with me. To this day, at 75, I will not drink milk with fish.

James: What else has stuck with you?

Tom: There was a young girl in her village of Feterias in Sao Miguel. The girl started to experience a growing pain in her stomach and was constantly ill. The villagers all pointed to her in shame as they felt the young unmarried girl was pregnant with bouts of morning sickness. They felt she was of ill repute and scorned her. She tried to convince all that she was a good girl and had never done anything bad, but no one listened or believed her. They continued to reject her and exclude her from activities. Even the church turned her away. Friends refused to associate with her further.

One day when she was experiencing sadness and pain, her mother prepared a dish of warm milk and placed it on the table in front of her. All of a sudden the girl gagged and up out her throat leaped a large frog. Seems she had a habit of drinking water from the local stream, and they guessed that somehow she must have swallowed a tadpole that lodged itself into her stomach and grew to a frog. The smell of the steaming milk brought him up.

When the village heard the news they apologized for not believing her, making wrongful assumptions, condemning her, and for treating her as they did.

Vavo said that they learned a valuable lesson not to judge or condemn based on preconceived beliefs or gossip. To me the lesson learned was not to drink from a stream as I did not want to have that happen to me and have people think I was pregnant. (I was a 7 year old boy).

James: Have you had a chance to visit Portugal?

Tom: In November my wife and I will be spending time in Barcelona. Instead of flying home, we elected to take a cruise back that stops in Lisbon and Sao Miguel. I cannot replicate what my grandmother experienced as a young girl traveling alone across that ocean, without knowing a word of English, unable to read or write, and moving to a new country. She traveled in steerage, coming over on the Cretic in the spring of 1916. It was a slow, grueling voyage, with less than comfortable accommodations and ship without stabilizers, or conveniences of today, She must have been scared. Traveling in the rougher winter seas, I will at least feel what it is like transiting that ocean and get a small taste of what it may be like.

It has been over 100 years since my grandparents left their homes, and a lot has changed. Based on what I experience on the two stops on the ship and on my health, I may return. I traveled a lot internationally in my senior financial position for a major multinational out of Northern Europe but never Portugal. I promised Vavo, though, that someday I would visit her island, and that is long overdue. At seventy-five I will be fulfilling that promise.

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