Family History of Antone Gomes and Rose Medeiros Family

The Antone Gomes family nickname was Barba loira which I was told means red beard but is translated blond beard. I know very little about Antone, my grandfather and have always called him my mystery grandfather. I know he was born 1879 and died 1937 in Santa Clara before I was born. I only discovered his parents names from his sister Ida's baptismal certificate. The fact that I have two grandfather's with the name Gomes and two greatgrandmother's with the names of Julia of Jesus can be confusing. So little was written down and so little was passed on that it has been a long winding road for me to discover where they came from and why they risked everything to come from the Madeira Islands and the Azores to the Hawaiian Islands in the 1870's. Francisco Gomes and Julia de Jesus were married in the Madeira Islands and had 3 children. Julia later died in Maui and Francisco remarried Gloria (the ugly stepmother which they called Medrastra, sic) Julia and Francisco's children were: Mary Gomes (Pestania), Adelaida(Ida) Pacheco Tavares baptised 4/24/1887 at St Anthony's in Wailuku, and Antone Gomes (My Grandfather) Antone Gomes was born 1879 and died 1937 (found on tombstone)and is buried at the Santa Clara Mission Cemetary. He came from Funchal, in the Madeira islands at the age of about 2 or around 1881. He married Rose de Jesus Medeiros(my grandmother) They had 6 living children: Frank10-7-07, Eva 2-10-09, Cecelia 4-1-14, Rose 3-5-19, Steven 12-26-21?, and Marie Theresa(1933 October 26) 5 of their children died of something they called dysentary Joseph was born after Frank and before Eva, David, Julia (pretty and 9 months old), Catherine, and Baby Gomes who was born dead and buried in the Santa Clara Mission Cemetary around 1923-24 Rose Medeiros Gomes (My grandmother) was born 1888 and died 1958 and is buried in the Santa Clara Mission Cemetary. Most of my information and all her stories came from her. She is the only grandmother I know and she passed on the Portuguese traditions and customs. She had the sweetest smile and the kindest loving expression of anyone I have ever known. Everyone said she was a saint and we all loved her. Her mother and father were Jose Medeiros (Galhofa ) and Julia de Jesus Bulhao my grandmother saved their pictures in a black wooden trunk that she said they brought on the ship in 1884. The pictures were big round oval charcoal pictures that my cousin Mary Ann has. We all have reproductions of those pictures. Jose and Julia came from San Miguel in the Azores Islands. Joseph settled in Hana and had a corn field. He was called Galhofa which we thought meant clown but later heard meant a happy person. My grandmother said he bragged that he was on the second ship that came from the Azores. Frank married Angela (Angie) and had one son Richard. Eva married Thomas Gomes(nickname Cibola and no relation to her) and had five children: Gilbert, Vernon, Donna,(thats me) Cleta, Thomas Cecilia married Juvenal Silva and had four children: Lorelie, Ronald, Russell and Robert Rose married Louis Carvalho and had four children: Mary Ann, Louise, Susan and Louis Rose remarried Louis Rodriguez and had two more children: Paul and John Steven married Mildren Bauptiste and had four living children Steven, Dennis(His twin died)Ronald and Jeffrey. Theresa had two children: Paul and Cindy(Cynthia?) Another Gomes family(My father's Gomes Cibola side) was in the "big island", of Hawaii, around the same time the Medeiros family was coming to the beautiful island of Maui. Most of what I write is hearsay from the many stories my wonderful grandmother, Rose Medeiros Gomes, told me as a young girl. However, she told me that her father used to brag that he was on the second ship to come from Portugal to the island of Maui from Sao Miguel in the Azores. After researching ships records, I have discovered that it was named the S.S. Hankow and arrived in Honolulu on June 13th, 1884. The Panama Canal was not built, and my grandmother told stories about how her mother said, as they passed through the Straits of Magellan at the tip of South America, there was a terrible storm and she prayed to Mary and all the saints to keep them safe. My grandmother said that her parents had always longed to return to Sao Miguel, but the trip was so horrendous and so many died on the voyage and they were so poor when they got there, that they stayed and farmed and worked in the sugarcane fields. My grandmother said she was born on New Years day at Midnight, in 1887, as the whistles were blowing from the sugarcane mill nearby. Her father's name was Jose Medeiros Golofha and her mother's name was Julia of Jesus Bulhao Medeiros. I know that their children's names because they were my grandmother's brothers and sisters. Her oldest brother was Manuel. He died in his 30's of pneumonia. He had 3 children Frank, Lucy, and Rose. Besides Manuel there was another brother named Jose, that we lost complete track of in the family. There was also Flora, Lydia, Virginia, Mary, and my grandmother, Rose. When Mary got married to a Sylvester, she moved to the island of Oahu with her husband. She had three children, Manual, Johnny, and Julia Sylvester. My grandmother married Antone(Antonio) gomes. She had 12 children. Six of them died under the age of two. She told me how sad she was and how helpless she felt. She was always so clean and boiled and disinfected everything and still they died. She had been a midwife and helped many women with their children, but she couldn't help prevent her children from dying as infants. When I was nine years old my mother and I went to a very poor cemetery with no lawns, just dirt, and I saw the six little wooden crosses. It made me feel so sad. My mother explained the reason the babies had died was because my grandmother had been a diabetic and didn't know it. (in those days, in Camp B, in Punene, they had no doctors, just midwives.) Finally, my grandfather, who was called Antone not Antonio, saved enough money for a passage to California. He made a good living breaking horses to pull loads of sugarcane for the factories. My mother tells the story of how he would swim with the natives. She remembers him diving to the bottom of the ocean and coming up with two lobsters, one in each hand. I call him my mystery grandfather, because I know the least about him. He died at the age of 58 in Santa Clara, California before I was born. The family had to travel to Oahu first, to set sail for California. My grandmother planned to visit her sister Mary Sylvester. That was the year 1918 and the big flue epidemic that killed many people hit at that time, killing many people, including my grandmother's sister Mary Sylvester and her husband. My grandfather put his children, including Mary's three children, Manuel, Johnny and Julia, on his stepmother, Gloria's, farm in the country where they would be safe from the flu, while they stayed and cared for Mary and her husband who died. They spent their passage money to California for their funerals, and had enough to get back to Maui where my grandfather was assured of work. They stayed there for six more years saving their money for passage to California. When my mother was 15, and very beautiful I think, she finally came to California. The whole family traveled on the U.S.S. Taft in 1924. John and Julia Sylvester came with my grandparents, but Manuel stayed and married. He had a large family of his own and many of them are still in Oahu. Johnny had a daughter Darlene, that we lost all contact with in later years, and Julia, married Abe De Lima, my father's nephew. So, as far as I can gather, these are the names from my mother's side of her family.

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