Merced County Biographies

ALFRED R. NEVES

Transcribed by Kathy Sedler

This file is part of the California Genealogy & History Archives
http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~cagha/index.htm


        The splendid new store in Atwater, the Atwater Mercantile Company, which 
has a general line of merchandise and which employs two clerks, is owned by 
Alfred Neves. How it was acquired is something worth relating. It was at Pico, 
on a distant Isle of the Azores, that the proprietor was born on October 9, 
1880, the fifth in a family of ten children. His parents were Joseph and Mary 
(Perpetua) Neves, both natives of the same place. The father died there at the 
age of fifty-four. The mother came to California and spent her declining years 
at Livingston, passing away in 1916, aged sixty-four.
        Alfred attended the common school in Pico, and learned agriculture on 
his father's farm. When his brothers, Manuel, Joseph and Antone, came to 
America, he was naturally interested in the glowing letters they wrote of the 
wonderful prospects in the Great Golden West. So when he had saved up enough 
money for traveling expenses he followed his brothers hither in 1903. He took 
the first job that offered, that as a farm hand on the Bloss Ranch, and with the 
exception of two years spent at Sugar Pine, in the Fresno hills, he has lived in 
Merced County. He raised stock and cultivated sweet potatoes near Atwater up to 
1912. That year he opened a small store 30 feet by 25 feet on the site of his 
present store at Broadway and Fourth. In 1916 he succeeded to the Pregno-Souza 
Mercantile Company on Front Street, and changed the name to the Atwater 
Mercantile Company, and carried on the business for seven years in that 
location. In the meantime he made investments and erected the present building, 
45x115 feet, in 1922, which would do credit to a city five times the size of 
Atwater, and removed his stock to the new location.  Mr. Neves received his 
United States citizenship in Judge Rector's court in Merced and, as a 
Republican, has fulfilled the duties of an American citizen. In August, 1922, he 
was elected city trustee of Atwater on the incorporation of the town.
        In February, 1912, A. R. Neves was united in marriage with Mary Leal, 
born at Angra, in the Azores, the daughter of Frank Leal, a mechanic of St. 
George. Her uncle, Antone Leal, was an early settler in California. The children 
of the union are Harry and Guida. Mr. Neves is a very enterprising business man 
and what he has achieved thus far in life has been through the exercise of his 
frugality and honest industry. He was one of the organizers of the Atwater 
Pentacost Club and is ex-secretary of the I. D. E. S., and secretary of the U. 
P. E. C. societies; and is the banker of the Atwater Camp of the Woodmen of the 
World.
 
History of Merced County, California � Los Angeles, Historic Record Co., 1925
page 805-806