The Long Way Home

 

The story of Jose and Juliana Martin Crizador, and their immigration from the Azores to Oakland, CA via the Sandwich Islands as indentured servants. 

Jose and Juliana Martin, circa 1899

29 Apr 1886, Jose and Juiliana Cesar Martins Crizidor departed Funchal, Madeira Island on the British steamship Amana for the Sandwich Islands.   The newlyweds were going on a honeymoon cruise to Hawaii, but not the way you think.  No, this trip came with heavy strings attached.   They had signed a years-long contract to work the cane fields on a plantation in Maui in exchange for passage to a new world and new opportunities.  

The plantation owners needed workers to harvest and process the sugar cane of Hawaii.  In the Azores, they found a steady stream of men and women looking to escape their island solitude for new opportunities.  The Portuguese knew how to harvest the cane as this was Madeira’s primary crop, and the weather was familiar as well.  So, it seemed a win-win for everyone.  

Jose and Juliana boarded the ship along with 500 fellow countrymen to set off on a great adventure to their new home half a world away.  They willingly gave up their freedom for the next several years to make this happen.  They were “indentured servants,” who were at the mercy of their plantation owners.  It was a crime if they refused to work or ran away, for which they could be imprisoned or physically punished by their masters.   

Their voyage was unusually long and difficult.  Ship’s Captain Alexander Beckett states, “The vessel experienced the roughest kind of weather, the seas running mountainous high, with gales of winds from the northwest.” 

“The amount of sickness at times has been very large especially during the long, continued wet, cold, stormy weather off Cape Horn, when for nearly two months the people were unable to come on deck.” as stated by Ship’s Surgeon J. Wardale in his official report.  

After 147 days, the Amana set anchor in the stream on the coast of Maui.  Dr. Wardale reported there were 10 births (all living), and 4 deaths (all infants) during the voyage. Two of the infant deaths were in a hopeless state from the beginning while the other two died from exposure and pneumonia during the storm.  

Little is known about Jose and Juliana’s experience during their time of servitude including the length and location of service.   Tradition has it that he became a plantation foreman, overseeing the workers who arrived under similar circumstances.  Jose and Juliana had seven children born in Hawaii between 1890 and 1905, including my great-grandmother Julia Martin Santos on November 4, 1899.  

This was a time of change in Hawaii when the monarchy was “replaced” by a council of plantation owners protected by the United States and later claimed it as a territory in 1898.  

By 1906, Jose and Juliana were ready for a new adventure and set sail for California aboard the steamship Siberia.  This ship had survived a Smallpox scare as two passengers developed Smallpox when the ship was between Japan and Hawaii before they boarded.   The ship’s surgeon is credited with good practice in preventing an outbreak during the journey between Hawaii and San Francisco.  They arrived in San Francisco, on March 30, 1906, three weeks before the earthquake and fire destroyed much of that city.  Fortunately, Jose and his family settled across the bay in Oakland.

Jose and Juliana shortened their last name to Martin and eventually ran a boarding house on 82^nd Avenue in Oakland.  One of their tenants, Manuel Santos would make an acquaintance with their daughter Julia from which a romance developed.  

Jose and Juliana did very well in the gamble they took when they signed into servitude to people they had never met; in a land they had never seen when they immigrated from the Azores to Hawaii.   They fulfilled their obligation, progressed in the sugar industry, raised a large family, and then immigrated from Hawaii to California.  Sadly, their dreams would be cut short due to bad health.  Jose died at age 49 of Tuberculosis just seven years after landing in the United States.  Julia died less than two years later, also at age 49, likely from the same disease.   They are buried under their family headstone at St. Mary’s Catholic Cemetery in Oakland.

Jose Martins Crizador (1864-1913) and Juliana Cesar Martins Crizador (1866-1915), my 2^nd Great-Grandparents, and the maternal grandparents of my grandmother May Santos Grandon.

 

Image of SS Siberia in San Francisco Bay.  San Francisco Call, March 31, 1906, p.11

Special thanks to cousins and fellow researchers Pam Winterbauer and Carol Dean for sharing their stories and research on our Martin and Santos ancestors, upon which this story is based.