VILLAGE ROOTS

Creating a blog does not happen in a vacuum.  Over a decade ago, I began researching my Souza genealogy: the story that waited for me.  At around that time, I started doing the same with the project: "Searching for Isobel", seeking answers to the mystery of my maternal grandmother's life.  The latter would take me over a decade  to unravel its drama and discoveries.

Both families lived in Taunton, but only the Souzas made the Village  their forever home. From the time they arrived around 1905, they set down deep roots for their children and grandchildren.

                  This is what the Taunton Green would have looked like when they arrived.

       Note the trolley tracks, their wires crisscrossing above, the cobblestones and the magnificent

elms that so graced the city and were later destroyed from elm disease.  Also, the building opposite the court house appears to be the post office....but what is the tower?

My grandmother, Delphina Veira Souza, bore one child in Madeira (who died not long after arriving) and the other 7 on School St. in the little house where I and my family would eventually live.  Delphina  died at the age of 82  having lived at that little house for 66 years.

                     

This photo was taken around 1927: we know that as my Uncle Joe's photo was inserted (a photoshop prototype). He was away in the military far from his family when his father, my grandfather Joseph, died in a tragic drowning accident that same year.  My father, Frank, is in the second row to the right, his elbow resting on his father's chair. Front from left: my grandmother Delphina, Aunt Lavina, Uncle Eddy, Aunt Alveda, second row: my Aunt Mary, Uncle John (Bunny), my Uncle Joe and my Dad.  My grandfather would have died not long after this studio photograph was taken.

 My grandfather was 42 years old, at the prime of his life and career as a Taunton businessman and a pillar of the Village he loved.  The accident occurred at Sconset Neck in Fairhaven.  When the extensive newspaper article was finally discovered, it told of several men, along with my grandfather, off on a hot July day fishing trip.  These friends were men from the Village, men who tried to save him.  Though from the island of Madeira, he could not swim.  When you do such research you uncover these details that were somehow never discussed in the family. The

 men were from families I knew growing up.                       

My Dad would live nearly his whole life in the Village, an entrepreneur like his father. Only illness would make him leave to live elsewhere in Taunton, nearer to my sister Kathy.

This research took me into many historical details about Taunton,
 it whetted my appetite for more.

Thus, along came this blog.

                                          

 What is the history of your family in the Village?  Those families that have seen so much change, such loss.  Those families that nurtured us all.  There are still strong ties for me with other grandchildren and children of these, our grandparents..  Each time I return to Taunton, I make the pilgrimage along the paths and byways of the Village I will call me forever home.