Back Central 1940-1950

This drop in the city’s Portuguese population mirrored a decline in all of Lowell’s immigrant communities in the post-World War II period. As shown in Table 7, all of the city’s immigrant populations were falling in number. But in Lowell, the Portuguese were experiencing the largest percentage decline in population.

The rise and decline of Lowell’s Portuguese population, within this First Great Wave of Immigrants to the United States, is clearly evident in the 70 years from 1880 to 1950. As shown in Table 8, between 1900 and 1920, with the inclusion of the offspring of Portuguese immigrants, the population increased by more than five times. While the number of residents in the city began to fall in the 1920s, by 1930 there were more Portuguese in Lowell born in the United States (with more than 95 percent of these offspring born in Massachusetts), than those born overseas. And this second generation was increasingly assuming leadership roles in the city’s various Portuguese religious, social, and cultural organizations most of which were in the Back Central neighborhood.

There are a number of examples of second-generation Portuguese who became leaders within the Portuguese community. One is Back Central’s Frank (Francisco) Leandro, born in 1921 in Paterson, New Jersey, where his father worked as weaver in a silk mill. With roots in Graciosa, the Leandro family settled in Lowell and in the 1930s young Frank attended the city’s public schools. He eventually married and after a short stint as a textile worker while living with his wife in a tenement on Cherry Street, Leandro saved enough money to open a fish market on Central Street. He operated this business for nearly 25 years, before passing it on to a son. Apart from his running his market, Leandro was active in the Portuguese American Civic League and in the 1950s he was elected president of Lowell’s Holy Ghost Society. He remained involved in various initiatives of the Holy Ghost Society, as well with the Civic League and the Portuguese American Center until his death in 1976. 

Another well-known Portuguese American, Deolinda (Machado) Mello, was born in Lowell in 1917. Her parents immigrated from Graciosa around 1904, married in Lowell three years later, and had four children. Joao Machado, Deolindia’s father, held the highly skilled position of loom fixer in the Lowell Silk Mill and, while the two oldest children began working in factories in their late teens, Deolinda, the second youngest, completed high school and then entered Lowell Teachers’ College. In 1939 she and Margaret Sousa, both graduates of the Teacher’s College, were selected as state delegates representing the Portuguese American Civic League. In addition, that same year, Dr. Martin J. Lydon, president of the Lowell Textile Institute, appointed Deolinda Machado as a board director of the International Institute of Lowell, a social and immigrant aid organization for which Lydon also served as president. Although she married and had a son, Deolinda Mello remained active in local civic affairs and social aid programs. She became executive director of the International Institute of Lowell in 1958, remaining there until her retirement in 1980. 

Although some members of this younger generation like Frank Leandro and Deolinda Mello resided in Lowell for most of their lives, many others followed a general trend in the post-World War II years and moved to surrounding suburban communities or left the area altogether. As shown in Table 8, by 1930 this second generation outnumbered first generation immigrants, 1,387 to 1,074. But just 20 years later there was an estimated 25 percent fewer second-generation Portuguese living in Lowell. Within the Greater Lowell Area, Dracut and Chelmsford received the largest number of Portuguese leaving the city, followed by Tewksbury and Billerica. This Portuguese out-migration from Lowell was not unique; many Lowellians were leaving the city for the suburbs to such an extent that by 1950 the city’s population dropped to 97,249, the first time since the 1900 federal census that the city numbered fewer than 100,000. The one constant, however, within Back Central was membership at St. Anthony’s Church. Many of the Portuguese-Americans who settled in the suburbs continued to attend the church and support the parish.