Merced County Biographies

MANUEL SOUZA

Transcribed by Kathy Sedler

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

 
        While a young lad living in the Island of St. George, in the Azores, 
Manuel Souza often heard stories of America, and California in particular, and 
he was fired with the ambition to cast in his lot and see if he could not make a 
fortune where his brothers Antone and Joseph had already made a good beginning. 
The opportunity came when he was eighteen years old and ever since that date he 
has resided in the Golden State. He was born in 1865, a son of Joseph O. and 
Anna (Brazil) Souza, who also had a daughter, Marie, besides the three sons, and 
being poor people the son had no chance to go to school. Upon arriving in 
California he stopped in Watsonville and soon found employment at ranch work 
among his countrymen who had ranches in the section and ever after he has been 
engaged in that kind of work and has made a success of it. He is a practical 
dairyman and knows how to make a dairy pay.
        Mr. Souza married Josephine Pimentel, born in Flores, in Watsonville, 
Cal., and the young couple set out together to make a home and found a fortune. 
In 1903, they moved to the West Side in Merced County and leased the Jameson 
ranch near Los Banos; two years later they moved to the McCarthy place and 
farmed there two years. The next move took them to the Simonson ranch where, 
with a partner, Mr. Souza ran three strings of dairy cows. The profits he made 
enabled him to buy eighty acres of his own in the Cottonwood district and here 
he erected a house and barns and developed the ranch to alfalfa and runs a 
dairy.
Mrs. Souza was the daughter of Joseph and Mary Pimentel and came to California 
with her brother when she was sixteen years old. The twelve children in her 
father's family are: Delphine, Mary, Joseph, Antone, Flora, Joaquin, Frank, 
Anna, Josephine, John, Amelia and Marion. Of the marriage of Mr. and Mrs. Souza 
three children were born, and the only one now living is Josephine, who married 
Frank Tosta of Patterson, in January, 1921, and is the mother of two children, 
Gerald and Aldine. Mary married Joseph Olivieira August 30, 1912, and died, aged 
twenty-one. Joseph married Mary De Gregori on November 30, 1914, and they had 
two children, Clinton and Vernon. Joseph died November 7, 1923, aged thirty-two. 
His widow lives in a house he erected on the home ranch where, during his life, 
he helped his father with the ranch work. Manuel Souza became a citizen of the 
United States at Santa Cruz, Cal., and is a Republican. He is a member of the U. 
P. E. C. and the I. D. E. S. societies.
 
History of Merced County, California � Los Angeles, Historic Record Co., 1925
page 887-888