The Chimney Fell off the House, and Mama Died. 1906.

As Rosa lay dying she could see Julia, eight, peering through the crack in the doorway.[1]  Her youngest, Rosie, three, was too little to understand, but Julia knew.[2] 

They called the boys in from the barn, Louie, twenty-one, her first-born, and the three boys in the middle, Joe, fourteen, Candido, twelve, and John, ten.[3]  They would have been helping their father feed and milk the cows.  But they needed to come in now and be with their mother.  They would probably not see her alive again.

Rosa (Azevedo) Luis and her children, ca. 1895.  Left to right: Mary, Marion, Louie (on horseback), Rosa holding Candido (known as Lew), Joe, and Lilly.  Detail; full photo below.

Rosa was too ill for housework, and the older girls were already managing on their own: Mary, twenty, Marion, eighteen, and Lilly, fifteen.[4]  They could cook and bake, take care of the garden and the chickens, prepare meals for the family, and see that Julia and the younger boys got to school, that Rosie was cared for.  At forty-seven, Rosa could no longer be the wife and mother. 

With Candido, her husband, she had shared so much, their language and culture, the children, the moving from ranch to ranch, improving their herd of cows, saving for their own land.  Now they rented a farm in the country between Petaluma and Tomales about sixty miles north of San Francisco.  They brought with them their language, Portuguese, and the customs and occupations from home, the Azores Islands.  They had been sweethearts in Fajã dos Vimes, the village in Ribeira Seca on the island of São Jorge where they were both born.  Candido left first for the U.S. as a teenager, and Rosa joined him in California seven years later when she was twenty-five.[5]  They married the following year, and then Louie and the other children came.[6]  Now Candido would be alone with their nine children.

For a time during her illness Rosa had lived with her sister in the town of Novato, about twenty-five miles from the ranch toward San Francisco.  From there she could take the train to San Francisco for treatments.[7]  Marianna could speak a little English, so she could tell Rosa in Portuguese what the doctor said: breast cancer.  But Rosa knew already. 

The most common treatment for breast cancer since the 1880s, called a radical mastectomy, removed her breast, the lymph nodes under her arm, and her chest wall muscle, too.  Perhaps Rosa underwent the very new radiotherapy that had been tried on cancers for just a few years.[8]  Her treatments kept her from her family and the ranch, and then she went home, but she was not cured.  She understood.  Her own mother had died at age forty-three when Rosa was twelve.[9]

 

Rosa (Azevedo) Luis, 1880s-1890s; copy print from the Alice Streeter Kellar photograph collection, in possession of the author.  The whereabouts of the original are unknown.

Rosa lay in bed at dawn.  Suddenly she felt a terrible shaking.  The whole house shook, its wood frame twisting and creaking.  The ground moved the house on its foundation, up and down, side-to-side, jolting furniture and Rosa in her bed.  John and Candido, in their bed upstairs, slid against the wall, then the floor pitched, sending the bed to the window.  Through the window they could see the row of cypress trees lie down flat, and then jump straight up in the air.[10]  On and on the shaking went, rattling cupboards and doors, crashing plates, cups, and saucers into the sink and onto the floor.  The mortar in the chimney cracked, the bricks loosened, and the chimney fell off the house.[11]  Was it the end of the world?  Was this what it was like to die, to approach the Last Judgment?[12]

As the shocks subsided, they moved Rosa outside where she would be safe from falling debris, and Candido took the surrey to Petaluma, fifteen miles away, for Dr. Peoples.[13] He came two days after the earthquake, but could not cure Rosa.  The next day she was gone.[14]  The priest from the Church of the Assumption in Tomales probably presided over her funeral mass.

The boys had to put extra seats on the wagon so the whole family could go to the burial together. When they arrived at the Tomales Cemetery they found all the tombstones toppled over, shaken from their pedestals and broken.[15]  Even those monuments, meant to make permanent the memory of loved ones, were vulnerable to the earthquake.  Forever that violent shaking of the earth was associated in the minds of Rosa’s children with the loss of their mother.  The trees went to the ground and came back up again, the chimney fell off the house, and their mother was gone. Julia would go out of the room looking for her mother, and not find her.  Rosie didn’t remember her at all.[16]

Cypress trees at the Carmody Road ranch in Marin Co., just over the border from Petaluma, Sonoma County, where Rosa died.  Photo by the author, 2002.

Genealogical Summary

Rosa Azevedo was born 27 April 1857 in Ribeira Seca parish, São Jorge, Azores, to António Machado Azevedo and Maria Silveira do Coração de Jesus.[17]

As Rosa Faustina she was married Sunday, 21 October 1883 in San Rafael, Marin County, California, to Candido Machado Luis.  She was twenty-six; he was twenty-seven.[18]

Cândido Machado Luís was born 16 July 1856, also in Ribeira Seca parish, to António Machado Luís Mancebo and Marianna Rosa da Silveira.[19]  He died 9 January 1933 in Petaluma, Sonoma County, California.[20]

Rosa died 21 April 1906 in Tomales, Marin County, California.  Her name was recorded at death as Rosa Nones [probably Nunes, surname of Rosa’s paternal grandmother] Luis.[21]

Jewell Station Ranch, Marin County, ca. 1895. Left to right: Rosa's brother John and Mary (Espirito Gomes) Azevedo, Mary, Marion, Louie, Rosa (holding Candido), Joe, Lilly, and Candido Luis (on horseback).  In 1990 the photograph belonged to Millie (Azevedo) Ventura, descendant of John and Mary Azevedo.  Its whereabouts at present are unknown. 

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[1] Floyd Streeter (Sacramento, Calif.), telephone interview with niece Judy Kellar Fox, 24 December 1997; notes privately held by interviewer (2013).  For Julia’s age, see Church of the Assumption of Mary  (Tomales, California), “Baptismal Register,” 3: 95, no. 3, Julia Lewis baptism (1900); parish office, Tomales.

[2] For Rosie’s age, see Church of the Assumption, “Baptismal Register,” 4: 39, no. 7, Mary Rose Lewis, conditional certificate of baptism (1921); parish office, Tomales.

[3] Alice Streeter Kellar (Santa Rosa, California), interview by Judy Kellar Fox, 24 December 1997.  For the boys’ ages, see Mission San Rafael Arcangel Catholic Church (San Rafael, California), Baptisms 1884-1901, p. 115, Aloysium Machado baptism (1884), and p. 109, Joseph Luis (1891); Mission San Rafael parish archives; FHL microfilm 909,236, items 3 and 4, respectively.  Also, Marin County, Delayed Certificate of Birth no. 098589 (1957), Kandido Rufus Lewis; County Recorder, San Rafael; FHL microfilm 1,295,780, item 5.  Also, John C. Lewis funeral notice, Sorensen Funeral Home, (Petaluma, California), April 13, 1982; and 1900 U. S. Census, Marin County, California, population schedule, Tomales, ED 63, sheets 1B-2A, dwelling 16, family 16, C. Levis household; digital image, Ancestry.com (http://search.ancestry.com : accessed 6 August 2013); from NARA microfilm publication T623, roll 93; FHL microfilm 1,240,093.

[4] For the girls’ ages, see Mission San Rafael Arcangel Catholic Church, Baptisms 1884-1901, p. 118, Maria Machado Louis (1885), and p. 129, Maria Anna Luiz (1887).  Also, Cher Nicastro (Tempe, Arizona) email to Judy Kellar Fox, 26 August 1996; and 1900 U.S. census, Marin Co., Calif., pop. sch., Tomales Twp., ED 63, sheets 1-2 (penned), dwell. 16, fam. 16, C. Levis household.

[5] 1900 U.S. census, Marin Co., Calif., pop. sch., Tomales Twp., ED 63, sheets 1-2 (penned), dwell. 16, fam. 16, C. Levis household.

[6] Marin County, California, Marriage certificates, vol. A: 581 (1883), Luis-Faustina; County Recorder, San Rafael.

[7] Lois (Mello) LaFranchi (Petaluma, Calif.), telephone interview by Judy Kellar Fox, 24 December 1997.

[8] “The Evolution of Cancer Treatment,” The Topeka Capital-Journal (http://cjonline.com/life/2010-10-23/the_evolution_of_cancer_treatment : accessed 15 July 2013).

[9] José Leite da Cunha Silveira, “Pedigree Chart of Rosa Faustino Azevedo,” p. 1; prepared for Alice (Streeter) Kellar, Santa Rosa, California, 1989; in possession of Judy Kellar Fox, 2013.

[10] Paul Lewis (Petaluma, California), telephone interview with Judy Kellar Fox, 15 July 2013; notes privately held by interviewer (2013).  Also, Lois (Mello) LaFranchi, telephone interview, 24 December 1997.

[11] Emma M. Burke, “ Comprehending the Calamity,” Overlook Magazine (2 June 1906); digital image, The Virtual Museum of the City of San Francisco (http://www.sfmuseum.net/1906/ew13.html : accessed 13 July 2013).  Also, W. E. Alexander, “W. E. Alexander Account of the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake and Fire,” (manuscript 3456, about May 1906, California Historical Society, San Francisco); The Online Archive of California (OAC) (http://www.oac.cdlib.org/view?docId=hb1f59n7q6&brand=oac4&doc.view=entire_text : accessed 13 July 2013).  Also, Alice Streeter Kellar (Santa Rosa, Calif.), telephone interview by Judy Kellar Fox, 18 January 1996.

[12] The Luis ranch lay on the San Andreas Fault, about twenty miles north of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake epicenter and in the path of the most intense shaking.  See “1906 Earthquake,” U. S. Geological Survey, USGS: Science for a Changing World (http://earthquake.usgs.gov/regional/nca/simulations/1906/ : accessed 12 July 2013).

[13] Lois (Mello) LaFranchi, telephone interview, 24 December 1997.  Also, Paul Lewis, telephone interview, 15 July 2013.

[14] Marin County, California, Duplicate Certificate of Death no. 5 (1906), Rosa Nones Luis; County Recorder, San Rafael.  Also, Lois (Mello) LaFranchi, telephone interview, 24 December 1997.

[15] Lois (Mello) LaFranchi, telephone interview, 24 December 1997.

[16] Ibid.

[17] Igreja católica, São Tiago (Ribeira Seca, Angra do Heroísmo, São Jorge, Azores, Portugal), Batismos 1854-1873, p. 51v, Rosa Machado d’Azevedo; Arquivo de Angra do Heroísmo; FHL microfilm 1,546,786, item 5.

[18] Marin County, California, Marriage certificates, vol. A: 581 (1883), Luis-Faustina; County Recorder, San Rafael.

[19] Igreja católica, São Tiago (Ribeira Seca, Angra do Heroísmo, São Jorge, Azores, Portugal), Batismos 1854-1873, p. 37, Candido Luiz; FHL microfilm 1,546,786, item 5.

[20] Sonoma County, California, Certificate of Death no. 33-006774, Candido Lewis (1933); County Recorder, Santa Rosa.

[21] Marin County, California, Duplicate Certificate of Death no. 5 (1906), Rosa Nones Luis; County Recorder, San Rafael.

© 2013 Judy Kellar Fox, 9395 SW 190^th Ave., Aloha, OR 97007-6733; foxkellarj@comcast.net