Manuel Lopes was

Seattle Seattle ( ) is a seaport city on the West Coast of the United States. It is the seat of King County, Washington. With a 2020 population of 737,015, it is the largest city in both the state of Washington and the Pacific Northwest regio ...

's first black resident whose identity is known, as well as its first

barber A barber is a person whose occupation is mainly to cut, dress, groom, style and shave men's and boys' hair or beards. A barber's place of work is known as a "barbershop" or a "barber's". Barbershops are also places of social interaction and publi ...

Biography

Born in the Island of Fogo in the Cape Verde Islands in roughly 1812, Lopes arrived in the United States on a

whaling Whaling is the process of hunting of whales for their usable products such as meat and blubber, which can be turned into a type of oil that became increasingly important in the Industrial Revolution. It was practiced as an organized industr ...

ship A ship is a large watercraft that travels the world's oceans and other sufficiently deep waterways, carrying cargo or passengers, or in support of specialized missions, such as defense, research, and fishing. Ships are generally distinguished ...

. According to the history of Cape Verde in "1810 whaling ships from Massachusetts and Rhode Island in the United States recruited crews from the islands of Brava and Fogo." He first settled in Maine and then in Massachusetts, in the city of

New Bedford New Bedford (Massachusett: ) is a city in Bristol County, Massachusetts. It is located on the Acushnet River in what is known as the South Coast region. Up through the 17th century, the area was the territory of the Wampanoag Native American pe ...

. He married Susannah Jones in 1841 at New Bedford, Massachusetts and they had a son William H Lopes. In 1858, he arrived in Seattle approximately seven years after the founding of Seattle. His wife died shortly after he left Massachusetts. Lopes became the city's first black resident and its first barber. Additionally, as a propertied individual, he ran a restaurant on Commercial Street (later First Ave South) in the same building where he lived and plied his barber trade. Lopes was a musician and known to signal mealtimes by marching up and down Seattle's main thoroughfare, beating out a rhythm on a snare drum. He similarly headed parades celebrating Independence Day in the US. In the early 1870s, Lopes ultimately moved to

Port Gamble, Washington Port Gamble is an unincorporated community on the northwestern shore of the Kitsap Peninsula in Kitsap County, Washington, United States. It is also a small, eponymous bay, along which the community lies, near the entrance to Hood Canal. The uninc ...

in search of work as a result of one of many economic downturns that struck Seattle. Later in life, he apparently suffered from

dropsy Edema, also spelled oedema, and also known as fluid retention, dropsy, hydropsy and swelling, is the build-up of fluid in the body's tissue. Most commonly, the legs or arms are affected. Symptoms may include skin which feels tight, the area ma ...

, for which he was admitted to Providence Hospital in 1885. Lopes died at Providence Hospital, Seattle, Washington on December 23, 1895 after a long illness.King county death registers. Microfilm. Washington State Archives, Olympia, Washington.

References

Sources

* Lindley, Robin. (2013, April 3).
Slavery? Yes, it did happen here. As did escapes.
Retrieved from ''Crosscut.'' *

Quintard Taylor __FORCETOC__ Quintard Taylor is a historian, founder of BlackPast.org, an online encyclopedia dedicated to provide public with information concerning African American history, and former professor of University of Washington. Personal life Ta ...

. ''The Forging of a Black Community: Seattle's Central District from 1870 through the Civil Rights Era.'' Seattle and London: University of Washington Press, 1994. * Paul De Barros. ''Jackson Street After Hours: The Roots of Jazz in Seattle''. Seattle: Sasquatch Books, 1993.
''Seattle Times'' article

Manuel Lopes biography

''Seattle Post Intelligencer'' article
1810s births Year of birth uncertain 1895 deaths Barbers Businesspeople from Seattle History of Washington (state) Cape Verdean emigrants to the United States 19th-century American businesspeople {{Washington-bio-stub American people of Cape Verdean descent