Manuel Lopes (barber)

Manuel Lopes was Seattle's first black resident whose identity is known, as well as its first barber.

Biography

Born in the Island of Fogo in the Cape Verde Islands in roughly 1812, Lopes arrived in the United States on a whaling ship. 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. He married Susannah Jones in 1841 at New Bedford, Massachusetts and they had a son William H Lopes.[1]

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 in search of work as a result of one of many economic downturns that struck Seattle. Later in life, he apparently suffered from dropsy, 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.[2]

References
  1. 1850 Census Fairhaven, Bristol, Massachusetts; Roll: M432_308; Page: 173A; Image: 559
  2. King county death registers. Microfilm. Washington State Archives, Olympia, Washington.

Sources


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