Regional Oral History Office University of California The Bancroft Library Berkeley, California
Felicie and John Marshall
Interviews conducted by Don Warrin in 2011
Copyright © 2011 by The Regents of the University of California Since 1954 the Regional Oral History Office has been interviewing leading participants in or well-placed witnesses to major events in the development of Northern California, the West, and the nation. Oral History is a method of collecting historical information through tape-recorded interviews between a narrator with firsthand knowledge of historically significant events and a well-informed interviewer, with the goal of preserving substantive additions to the historical record. The tape recording is transcribed, lightly edited for continuity and clarity, and reviewed by the interviewee. The corrected manuscript is bound with photographs and illustrative materials and placed in The Bancroft Library at the University of California, Berkeley, and in other research collections for scholarly use. Because it is primary material, oral history is not intended to present the final, verified, or complete narrative of events. It is a spoken account, offered by the interviewee in response to questioning, and as such it is reflective, partisan, deeply involved, and irreplaceable.
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All uses of this manuscript are covered by a legal agreement between The Regents of the University of California and Felicie and John Marshall dated July 6, 2011. The manuscript is thereby made available for research purposes. All literary rights in the manuscript, including the right to publish, are reserved to The Bancroft Library of the University of California, Berkeley. No part of the manuscript may be quoted for publication without the written permission of the Director of The Bancroft Library of the University of California, Berkeley.
Requests for permission to quote for publication should be addressed to the Regional Oral History Office, The Bancroft Library, Mail Code 6000, University of California, Berkeley, 94720-6000, and should include identification of the specific passages to be quoted, anticipated use of the passages, and identification of the user.
It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows:
Felicie and John Marshall, conducted by Don Warrin in 2011, Regional Oral History Office, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, 2011.
Felicie and daughter Christine on the last run of the Richmond-San Rafael ferry in 1956
Captain John Q. Bettencourt, 1968
Capt. Bettencourt and wife Felicidade aboard the San Francisco Bay auto ferry Encinal, 1920s 1
Interview #1 June 20, 2011 Begin Audio File 1 marshall_felicie_01_06-20-11.mp3
01-00:00:02 F. Marshall: I’ll just leave this like this. You actually will be kind of skimming this first page, asking here and there different questions from this outline, right?
01-00:00:18 Warrin: Yes. This is June 20, 2011. We’re in the Bancroft Library. This is Don Warrin for the Portuguese project. Today we are interviewing Felicie Marie Marshall. Welcome. Could you give me your full name?
01-00:01:12 F. Marshall: My full name is Felicie—actually, Felicidade—Marie Marshall.
01-00:01:24 Warrin: Where were you born?
01-00:01:26 F. Marshall: Alameda, California.
01-00:01:29 Warrin: Could you talk a little bit about your parents?
01-00:01:33 F. Marshall: My parents were born in the Azores, the island of Graciosa. My mother’s name was Felicidade Cunha Bettencourt, born 1885. My father is John Quadros Bettencourt, born 1874, also on the island of Graciosa, in the Azores.
01-00:02:04 Warrin: What about your grandparents? Do you have any information on your grandparents?
01-00:02:08 F. Marshall: All the information on my grandparents was on my mother’s side. My grandmother was also named Felicidade Cunha Felix. I only knew her by a few little photos, and she would write and send me some little doll clothes, and that’s all I knew of my mother’s mother, my grandmother. My father’s parents were already deceased.
01-00:02:37 Warrin: Did you have any brothers and sisters?
01-00:02:38 F. Marshall: No, I was the only child.
01-00:02:44 Warrin: Obviously, your parents immigrated, but before that, did any other generations in your family come here? 2
01-00:02:55 F. Marshall: On my father’s side, my auntie, Lucy Baptista, was already here in the United States. That was my father’s sister. They were here, I think, when my father first came to the United States. This was before he married my mother. He was out here on the Bay, studying to become captain on the ferryboats on the Bay. The only ones I know of were my auntie on my father’s side.
01-00:03:30 Warrin: Do you know what brought her here?
01-00:03:33 F. Marshall: Her husband also was employed, I believe, on the ferryboats on the Bay. This was, I think, before my father’s time. That’s why they were out here, because of my uncle’s occupation.
01-00:03:55 Warrin: So there was some communication between your aunt and your father, perhaps, that was an encouragement for him to come over after she and her husband became settled here, do you think?
01-00:04:08 F. Marshall: I believe so. My auntie belonged to all these Portuguese fraternal organizations. When my father went back to the Azores to marry my mother, and they came to the United States, then the families got together and my auntie helped my mother get into the Portuguese fraternals, so there was quite a bond between my father’s sister and my mother when they came to the United States.
01-00:04:39 Warrin: What year did your father arrive here first, do you know?
01-00:04:44 F. Marshall: In the early 1900s. Actually, he came out here as a young boy. He was sailing on a whaling ship, I understand. He came out here and he was on the coast of Massachusetts, I believe. He was out here quite early in his years.
01-00:05:25 Warrin: He probably got here in the nineties, I would imagine.
01-00:05:28 F. Marshall: He came out here in the late 1800s.
01-00:05:31 J. Marshall: I think he was about sixteen or seventeen, according to what we were talking about, you know, at the time.
01-00:05:38 Warrin: And if he was born in ’74, that would be 1890, ’91, something like that. 3
01-00:05:45 Warrin: He came out here. He started on a whaling ship when he was fourteen, and then he lived here in the United States for a while and started to take studies to become captain on the Bay. He loved the ocean.
01-00:06:02 J. Marshall: He became a citizen here before he went back to the Azores and married my mother.
01-00:06:06 F. Marshall: Right.
01-00:06:09 Warrin: What year did he go back?
01-00:06:11 F. Marshall: They married in 1924. This was when he went back to get my mother. They got married. She actually became an American citizen automatically because my father was already an American citizen. They married there in the church, and then they married here in the United Sates civilly. That made her American citizen.
01-00:06:32 Warrin: So he was about forty years old by that time.
01-00:06:43 F. Marshall: She was twenty-four years old, and he was already thirty-four. He was about eleven years older than my mother.
01-00:06:51 Warrin: How did they meet?
01-00:06:54 F. Marshall: Through the families. In fact, my mother, I think, was godmother to one of his siblings on my father’s side, and they met through the families. That’s how their friendship started.
01-00:07:08 Warrin: Did they know each other both back there?
01-00:07:12 F. Marshall: Yes. They were both born on the same island of Graciosa.
01-00:07:16 Warrin: And they knew each other before he left?
01-00:07:19 F. Marshall: Yes, yes. They were younger. He came out here to procure his occupation. He wanted to be captain on the ferryboats, so he had to come out here to study and pass his test through the Maritime Commission here in San Francisco. 4
01-00:07:41 Warrin: But he had already had a long history in the maritime industry?
01-00:07:47 F. Marshall: Right, before he went back. He was already a deckhand when he went back to get her. He was out here for a while, quite a few years, then he went back to marry my mother, and then they came out to Oakland in the Bay Area and he continued his duties as deck hand on the auto ferries.
01-00:08:14 Warrin: Just going down my list here. So your father left originally because he was on an American whaling vessel.
01-00:08:23 F. Marshall: Right. He loved the sea, so as a youngster—he was about fourteen—he chose to sail on a whaling ship around the Azores and other worldly ports near the United State borders.
01-00:08:37 Warrin: You don’t have any idea what ship he was on or anything like that?
01-00:08:41 F. Marshall: Oh, no. He never discussed too much with me. All I actually knew was that he was a ferryboat captain on the Bay, and a few things that happened in his daily runs. He didn’t say too much of his past life as a youngster. He may have discussed it with other families, but not too much with his young daughter. I wish I would have remembered, because I remember many things of many years gone by.
01-00:09:18 Warrin: We always wish later on that we had asked those questions or had been more interested in telling us about these great experiences.
01-00:09:27 F. Marshall: Right, I wish I’d had known, because all I have is what he was when I knew him, when I was older. I kind of remember conversations with other families about, “Oh, when I was a youngster, I went on a whaling ship. I liked the ocean, so I wanted to become captain out here in the Bay.” That was his goal.
01-00:09:55 Warrin: When your parents were here, how closely did they remain in contact and identify with Graciosa? Not with being Portuguese or Azorian, but being from Graciosa? Were a lot of their friends from Graciosa?
01-00:10:18 F. Marshall: On my father’s side, the parents had already deceased, and he had a brother. I think the brother had passed on, too. There was not much said on my father’s side because, like I say, when I was born, the family had deceased. My mother kept contact with her nieces and her mother in Graciosa. They would write letters. My father never took time out from his profession here as captain to 5
take Mother and I on a trip back to Portugal so I could meet my grandmother. I would have loved to have met my mother’s mother, but we never made the trip. I made the trip with my mother and my youngest daughter. This was in the late fifties, early sixties. In fact, we just went to Terceira Island. We didn’t go to Graciosa. I wish we had. My mother was very involved with her niece, and we spent about two or three weeks in Terceira Island, and then we went to São Miguel, where I have many cousins.
01-00:11:31 Warrin: In Terceira, you mean?
01-00:11:32 F. Marshall: In Terceira, yep. No, not Graciosa. Terceira.
01-00:11:35 Warrin: Why didn’t your mother want to go to Graciosa?
01-00:11:39 F. Marshall: Good question. I never questioned her, and actually I was so involved with my cousins there and my auntie. Then after I said, “Why didn’t Mother suggest, let’s go so you could see where I was born, and maybe the old house where she was born.” I would have loved to have seen that, but that never happened. We had a very nice visit with my mother’s niece. The children were small then, her children. That was a very interesting trip. I would fly more. I don’t like airplanes. If there was a train, I would be on that train really quick to go back.
01-00:12:29 J. Marshall: What about the families, you know, that they brought back?
01-00:12:33 F. Marshall: That’s another thing. My mother and father sponsored, actually, two or three families to come from the Azores here, because they had to have a sponsor to come to the United States. We had some good friends. In fact, the son plays the Portuguese guitar. In fact, when I did some singing at the theater a few months ago at Christmastime, he played the Portuguese guitar for me. His parents were sponsored by my mother and father years ago to come to the United States. Then also Stella Rodrigues and her husband, neighbors of my husband years ago, they were sponsored by my parents so they could come to the United States. You have to have a sponsor in order to come here.
01-00:13:18 Warrin: Did your father go back again after bringing your mother here? Did they go back?
01-00:13:27 F. Marshall: No, no. He never went back to the Azores because he was trying to complete his role to become captain, so all that time— 6
01-00:13:40 J. Marshall: He didn’t have any family left there, either.
01-00:13:41 F. Marshall: No, his family was gone. He meant taking Mother, before I was born, taking her back to her family. No, he went back and brought her, and then they stayed permanently here and he pursued his profession.
01-00:14:04 Warrin: It appears, then, that your father and mother had friends from different islands. It wasn’t necessarily—
01-00:14:16 F. Marshall: Graciosa was where they were born, but her nieces and her family, they settled in São Miguel Island—well, Terceira and then São Miguel. That’s where they are now. They’re in São Miguel. My mother’s niece’s children live in São Miguel Island. I get in contact with her now and then. Not too much, because they’re traveling. They have a daughter, and she’s a teacher in Lisbon. I call her occasionally, maybe once or twice a year, and we exchange Christmas cards and things like that. That’s the extent. There’s no family on my father’s side, just on my mother’s side.
01-00:15:09 Warrin: And even on your mother’s side, that’s essentially in São Miguel?
01-00:15:13 F. Marshall: São Miguel. Right, São Miguel. Now, Terceira, she doesn’t tell me too much what’s going on. They had a jewelry business on the Angra do Heroísmo, which is on the island of Terceira. That was my auntie’s business, Maria Teresa Bettencourt and John Bettencourt. They’ve passed on, but they had a jewelry business there, and that’s where my mother and I and my youngest daughter stayed when we went to the Azores. They were established there many years in the jewelry business. They had a very nice jewelry store in Angra.
01-00:15:58 Warrin: When your parents arrived here, you don’t really know what it was like for your father, but what was it like for your mother when she first got here?
01-00:16:13 F. Marshall: She talked about some things, but you know why, she would be very tearful if she started to tell me things about leaving her homeland and her mother and her little family back there. It was quite an adjustment when she came here, especially in getting along with my father’s sister. I know there was a little conflict there because my father’s sister had been here many years, and my mother—they used to call her a greenhorn. I know my mother, she would cry. Instead of making it easy for her because she was newly arrived here from Portugal Azores and then tried to get used to the American ways, but they finally became good friends, but it was very difficult. Many times, my mother would be, as I remember, crying. Then my father’s sister introduced her to the 7
fraternals, the Portuguese societies. Like myself, we belong to several— SPRSI, a Portuguese fraternal, and the United Protective Service Council of Portugal. They’re now all combined, and they’re PFSA, Portuguese Fraternal Societies of America. My mother and my auntie, through her, belonged to all these Portuguese fraternals, so it became easier for my mother. She became president of one of her councils. But it was difficult in the beginning for my poor mother, because a young girl coming out here and not knowing anybody, and then my father was out there on his profession. I know she spent many a tearful night. This was before, I think, I was born. By then, she was quite customed to the ways of living in America and away from her family.
01-00:18:11 Warrin: Perhaps the fact that your aunt and your father spoke English by that time, and your mother probably spoke very little, she was, from their point of view, a real greenhorn.
01-00:18:26 F. Marshall: A real greenhorn! Mother used to cry, “They called me greenhorn!” I know.
01-00:18:38 Warrin: But she did, sort of revitalized her to meet with compatriots, other people from the Azores, with UPPEC, I imagine you’re referring to.
01-00:18:50 F. Marshall: United Protective Portuguese Society of California, and then SPRSI. Those two. Because my mother and my auntie were quite involved in that. There, my mother met a lot of ladies that come from the old country, in the Azores and Portugal, and they came here. That was very good in those days for the Azorean and Portuguese women to come here to America and have their own little groups. They felt more at home because they were bringing the customs from the old country here, and it made my mother feel more at home, meeting all these nice ladies. She met a lot of nice ladies from the Azores that they even grew up with back there, and to meet them here. It became easier and easier. Then my mother, speaking of mother, she belonged to—this is a very good point in her life—International Institute of California. It was located here on Lee Street, in downtown Oakland. She participated in a lot of festivals. They used to have heritage days and world days there at the Oakland Auditorium, and mother would take her guitar. She played a beautiful, twelve- string Portuguese guitar that my father had given her as an engagement present. This was in 1924. It was made in Lisbon. In fact, back in the Azores, she taught a group of twelve girls how to play the Portuguese guitar. So when she came here, she got into this International Institute, and they would put on festivals in the Oakland Auditorium. We would wear our Portuguese costumes. I didn’t bring a picture today, but we have pictures of my mother with the guitar and myself and these other Portuguese ladies. We would perform. She did some good work from her heritage and her Portuguese background, and put it to use here. Beautiful guitar. 8
01-00:21:03 Warrin: So this is where you’ve picked up this talent, from your mother?
01-00:21:06 F. Marshall: I think so. I think so. I learned a lot of Portuguese songs from my mother. My mother also taught dancing. She had a group. They performed the quadrilles This was back in ’45, maybe ’50. She had a group of Portuguese people she knew, and they put on some shows at the Oakland Auditorium.
01-00:21:30 J. Marshall: One of the ladies in the group was the first president of the UPPEC. Mrs. Finn.
01-00:21:36 F. Marshall: Oh, Mrs. Finn. Yes, I remember her. Many moons ago, she came to our house. She was the originator of the UPPEC, Maria Soares Finn. The first lady that had the first gathering here at St. Joseph’s Church, down there on Clay Street in Oakland. That’s where they met and started the UPPEC, which became a very big organization. She used to come to our house. My mother and her were great friends. Another lady, Mrs. Ascenção Carvalho. She was a famous lady in the Portuguese—she was quite a talker. Big, tall lady. She would speak very well about Portugal. When we would have gatherings, these ladies would get together and discuss Portuguese heritage to keep that Portuguese alive here in the Bay Area. And that’s when we started getting all these consuls together and organizations. But now it’s all into one. We’ve merged.
01-00:22:45 Warrin: That’s very recent.
01-00:22:46 F. Marshall: Very recent. We’ve had a convention now. It will be every two years.
01-00:22:51 Warrin: Where did your parents live when they first came?
01-00:22:55 F. Marshall: My first home was on Fourth Avenue in Oakland. My father bought this flat. We were, I think, upstairs, and we rented the bottom out. It’s still there, in very good shape. Fourth Avenue in Oakland. Then, after that, my father sold the flat and he bought a home on Foothill Boulevard and Fairfax Avenue. We lived there many years. Then he decided to move on again. He took that house, because it was a very nice house, and I still remember going up Foothill Boulevard to our new area out on Bancroft and 65th Avenue, which was right across from the Frick Junior High on Bancroft Avenue. The street changed from Bancroft, and then it was Beck. No, Bancroft was the last name. First it was Beck, then Bancroft. Then, where he moved the house from, he built a building, and he had built a store there. It became a five-and-dime store. He leased it out, this five-and-ten cent store. They had a lot of those back then. I remember working there when I was a youngster. It was 9
interesting. Then my father raised our home up and built a beautiful rumpus room underneath. We had music down there and all kinds of nice things.
01-00:24:27 Warrin: This was still Oakland? This wasn’t San Leandro?
01-00:24:30 F. Marshall: No, we never lived in San Leandro.
01-00:24:35 Warrin: So your mother, over a period of time, learned English?
01-00:24:39 F. Marshall: Oh, yes, she became quite fluent in English. Oh, yes. As for myself, my first language was Portuguese, because 95, or maybe 90 percent of the time, they would speak in Portuguese. They would talk English, too, but mainly it was Portuguese. When you’re a youngster and you pick that up. E nunca esqueci a minha língua─era a primeira língua, foi português. [And I never forgot my language─it was my first language, Portuguese] Then when I went to school, I remember I had to learn English because I was with the English children there. It was a little difficult, but hey, no problema. Não há problema agora.[There’s no problem now] I’m so glad that I learned the Portuguese fluently, because I just retired two years ago from a MediCal disability office through State of California. I worked for the Department of Disability—in downtown Oakland. I’m certified—I still am—through Sacramento as a Portuguese interpreter. I go out on occasion whenever someone needs me. I can interpret in the doctor’s offices or hospitals with the Portuguese and Brazilian patients. I enjoy doing that because I’m using my Portuguese language.
01-00:26:05 Warrin: Getting back to your parents a little bit, they, and you, of course, maintained your Catholicism. Could you talk a little bit about the church?
01-00:26:21 F. Marshall: Oh, yes. I was born Catholic. My parents took me to Catholic churches. I started out in a public school, but I ended up at the grade school St. Bernard’s in Oakland, and then I graduated from St. Elizabeth’s High School. My parents would attend mass. In fact, we would go to, I think, mostly St. Anthony’s. That was near my auntie’s house. This was on Seventeenth Avenue in Oakland. Then we would go to St. Cyril’s Church, too. So they went to different churches, but they’re all Catholic churches. I was raised as a Catholic.
01-00:27:06 Warrin: And festas, of course?
01-00:27:07 F. Marshall: Oh, muitas festas, yes. In fact, when I was seventeen, I was queen of the Holy Ghost, and that was down there on Seventy-Third Avenue. I was in the festas. 10
We would go to the sopas. We still do. In fact, there’s one coming up at Newark. That’s the good festa, Newark Pavilion, and I think that’s the end of July. We’d go to the festas, and then Dia de Portugal. We just came back from Kelly Park.
01-00:27:43 Warrin: My wife and I were there.
01-00:27:44 F. Marshall: That’s right. In fact, I’m the pianist right now for Brotherhood of St. Anthony. We attend the conventions, the last three years. I’m past supreme president of the UPPEC, 2001-2002. We enjoy that, traveling all of California and meeting all the nice people and all the Portugal councils from way up Arcadia down to San Diego and in between. Very nice. Very interesting.
01-00:28:24 Warrin: You’ve been very active in the community in many ways, and officially in terms of being the head of the—was that the UPPEC?
01-00:28:37 F. Marshall: The UPPEC, yes. In fact, my mother put me in when I was a youngster, very young. Then I belong to the SPRSI also, just as a member.
01-00:28:52 J. Marshall: They didn’t want you there.
01-00:28:53 F. Marshall: Oh, well, can I tell you a little story?
01-00:28:56 Warrin: Of course. You can tell me as many as you want.
01-00:28:58 F. Marshall: When I was a little one—little, little, little one—I used to go with my mother to the meetings, because my father was on the ferryboats and he couldn’t watch me, and I would go with my mother. One day, the president, she was from the old, old school, very rigorous and very determined, she would say, “I will speak now in Portuguese.” Oh, senhora Bettencourt, a gente não quer pequeninas aqui nos ‘meetings’. A Sra. tem de deixar a sua pequena em casa. A gente não quer crianças aqui. [Oh, Mrs. Bettencourt, we don’t want little ones here at the meetings.] And my mother looked at her. She started to cry. Ah, senhora, eu não posso deixar a minha pequenina em casa. O seu pai─o meu marido─está trabalhando e eu não vou deixar a minha pequenina em casa sozinha. [Oh, madam, I can’t leave my little one at home. Her father─my husband─is working and I am not going to leave my child at home alone.] Little did they know that that little girl that was not allowed in the meeting with her mother would someday be the president of this whole society. I am so proud to say that now. I can still remember, she pounded on the podium. The dust was flying. Then my father would say, “Why do you go to those 11
meetings? If those women make you cry don’t go anymore.” [laughs] She kept on going because that was good for her.
01-00:30:22 Warrin: Why wouldn’t they want a little girl there?
01-00:30:25 F. Marshall: I was so quiet, and my mother, if I said a little word, she would pinch me. [inaudible] I don’t remember saying much. Maybe she thought I would hear something that I would tell somebody, or that I would start making trouble and wanting to go to the restroom or whatever. I have no idea. But I know I was a good girl, because I was under the threat.
01-00:30:53 Warrin: Evidently you were intimidated.
01-00:30:54 F. Marshall: I was intimidated. My mother was so upset. That was a good story, though.
01-00:31:03 Warrin: How much education did your parents have?
01-00:31:07 F. Marshall: My mother finished—as I understand, she finished her schooling. I think she went to the top grade. I don’t know if it’s the same here, twelfth grade, or maybe it’s less there. My father, I think he didn’t complete because he took off to the sea, took off on a whaling ship. I don’t know how many grades he attended in school. I’m sure he did. Mother did pretty positive. She completed her schooling.
01-00:31:40 Warrin: There weren’t that many years. I think there were maybe four, maybe six.
01-00:31:46 F. Marshall: Four or six, yeah. I don’t know.
01-00:31:48 Warrin: And particularly on the smaller islands, it was hard. Four years were required and that’s all.
01-00:31:57 F. Marshall: Four years, okay. I know she completed her four years.
01-00:32:07 Warrin: I think we’ll leave the ferryboats out for right now. We’ll talk about some of this stuff that we’ve been talking about. How was your father involved in the Portuguese community? Not professionally, but you know. 12
01-00:32:24 F. Marshall: He would attend the meetings with my mother, but he was not too much into the societies. He belonged to the UPPEC, I think after they started letting men join that. The SPRSI, no, because they wouldn’t allow men in the SPRSI.
01-00:32:49 Warrin: There was the UPEC, for instance, or the IDES.
01-00:32:54 F. Marshall: No, Father was never into those societies. All I can remember, because, like I said, they never discussed a lot of things with me and I didn’t know too much, but he would go with Mother to the conventions and to the meetings and the banquet. We used to have them there at the Hotel Oakland and Hotel Leamington in downtown Oakland, where they’d have the conventions and the banquet. He would go with her. I think he was a member. I’m pretty sure. But in those days, they didn’t allow men, in some of the women organizations, to join.
01-00:33:30 Warrin: Or they didn’t allow women in—
01-00:33:33 F. Marshall: In the men’s. That’s the only ones that I remember him attending.
01-00:33:39 Warrin: Did you live in an area which was predominantly Portuguese?
01-00:33:45 F. Marshall: We were out in East Oakland. It was very nice in those years. We were near Havenscourt Boulevard, which at that time was one of the nicest streets here in the Oakland area. But it was not predominantly a Portuguese area. The Portuguese were more in San Leandro and Hayward and further south. In our area, it was not a predominantly Portuguese community.
01-00:34:16 Warrin: Fruitvale had quite a few Portuguese. You weren’t actually in the Fruitvale area.
01-00:34:26 F. Marshall: No, we were right across from Foothill Boulevard and Bancroft. East Oakland, across from Frick Junior High. That was up from Seminary, East Oakland.
01-00:34:45 J. Marshall: You had more of a mixture there.
01-00:34:48 F. Marshall: I think so. It was predominantly Caucasian at that time. 13
01-00:34:58 Warrin: You mentioned your first language was Portuguese. How did you learn English?
01-00:35:05 F. Marshall: When I went to start to go to school. Actually, I think my father and mother— they must have taught me something in English, because my dad spoke English perfectly. He had to. I remember learning more as I went. I think they put me in kindergarten and then first grade. I had to learn English. It’s hard to remember exactly when, but after the first grade, I really got into my English.
01-00:35:34 Warrin: That was the days before bilingual education. You simply were thrown into the class and you had to learn.
01-00:35:42 F. Marshall: And just learn. Here’s a book. Read. Learn.
01-00:35:49 Warrin: At home, how much of your environment was Portuguese, like your food and—
01-00:35:54 F. Marshall: Quite a bit. Mother cooked. She didn’t cook a lot of Portuguese, but she made, which I still make for my husband today, sopa de couves. [kale soup] I don’t use linguiça, but I use meat and garlic and wine and collard greens. Sometimes I put some kale, cabbage. onion. That’s where I learned to make this soup. I would watch her. She made a lot of biscoitos. That’s the Portuguese cookies. She’d roll out the dough and then make the little twists and the little cookies. My father would love those with coffee. She kept a big canister full of those. I remember mostly the soup and the biscoitos. She would make American food, spaghetti and such, roasts and chicken. But not linguiça, no. We never were into that, the really authentic Portuguese linguiça and morcela [sausages]. Bacalhau [salt cod], I think she would cook it now and then. She’d make fish head soup, which I really enjoyed. She’d get a nice cabeça de peixe. I remember I used to like to eat the eyes, really. You put it in your mouth and then you get the little hard ball. That was it. Throw that out. I can still see it. She’d put ketchup in there. The broth was kind of reddish. She’d put potatoes in there. Sopa de peixe. That’s what she made, good soup. Sopa de cabeça de peixe.
01-00:37:36 Warrin: I wonder why she didn’t serve morcela and linguiça?
01-00:37:42 F. Marshall: No. She wasn’t much into that, into the morcela and linguiça. She made, I think, sweet bread. Her friend, Mrs. Rogers—that’s the one I was trying to think—she spoke at many organizations. She was a head lady. We used to go to her seminars. 14
01-00:37:56 Warrin: I knew her.
01-00:37:57 F. Marshall: Mrs. Rogers. Oh, you knew her, too? Okay. We used to go to her house and she’d make the filhós. Oh my God. This thick. She would let them rise and put the canela [cinnamon] and the açucar [sugar] on there. Ah, Mrs. Bettencourt, vais comer a minha filhós.[fried pastry] Oh my gosh. That was a big day. That woman made the best filhós around. Her husband was a chiropractor, too. He had passed on. Mrs. Ascenção Carvalho Rogers. There you go. Quite a spokeswoman at the time.
01-00:38:29 Warrin: She was. She used to talk at the conventions and things.
01-00:38:34 F. Marshall: Exactly. She was a good friend of my mother. She belonged to that, I think, International Institute, too. She would go with my mother to the festas in the auditorium.
01-00:38:49 Warrin: Do you remember any folk medicine things that—
01-00:38:56 F. Marshall: Yeah, I read that, and I said, What is that? What is folk medicine?
01-00:39:00 Warrin: Sometimes you have certain things which the doctor doesn’t give you, but you know that if you have this or that, that it makes you better in certain situations.
01-00:39:16 F. Marshall: No, not that I know of. No. You mean that they would use?
01-00:39:20 Warrin: Yeah, or use remedies from the old country.
01-00:39:25 F. Marshall: Wait a minute. I’m thinking now. Now I know. When I used to get sick, my mother used to make uma gemada [a drink]. She’d beat up an egg. She’d put port wine in there. Bebe, que isto é bom [drink, because this is good]. I think I didn’t feel well or I had a cold or something. That was one thing. Uma gemada with the port wine and the beat-up egg and a little sugar, to give strength.
01-00:39:50 Warrin: And you would drink that?
01-00:39:52 F. Marshall: And then drink it. Then she would make sopa de hortelã [mint soup] for the stomach. She’d take mint, fresh mint. She’d boil that. And I think she’d put in an egg. Oh, I don’t know─egg or no egg. Sopa de vinagre [vinegar soup], a 15
little piece of bread, and pour the boiling water, and then put a little flavor or something. That was good for the stomach. The mint was the main ingredient to settle the stomach. I remember those two when I was a youngster. She says, “This is good for if you don’t feel well.” Then a lot of alho, a lot of garlic, when I was sick. She cooked with a lot of garlic, of course, in the soup. I think she did something else with the garlic to help me with whatever I had, but I can’t think right now. The wine and the garlic and the mint were the main ingredients to help you get strong and to get over your illnesses. I’m glad we went over that, because I remember that.
01-00:41:04 Warrin: Superstitions of any kind?
01-00:41:10 F. Marshall: Oh, não faças isso. Podes cair [Oh, don’t do that. You could fall] A ladder or something. Não vais debaixo disso [Don’t go under that]. I think there were a few superstitious things, like don’t walk under a ladder. There might be others I can’t think of right now.
01-00:41:29 Warrin: Nothing that particularly—
01-00:41:31 F. Marshall: No. Probably at the time, yeah, but I can’t think of any of those.
01-00:41:38 Warrin: You went to elementary school part of it and then Catholic schools?
01-00:41:44 F. Marshall: I started out right there, where it was Horace Mann Elementary School. That was my first school. That was near home, near Fairfax and Trask. When we moved up to Bancroft, then I attended St. Bernard’s School. That was my little junior high or elementary high level grades there at St. Bernard’s. Then from there, I went to St. Elizabeth’s until I graduated from high school there.
01-00:42:19 Warrin: Then did you go on to college?
01-00:42:25 F. Marshall: The only college I had was San Francisco State. I won a vocal contest. I think I spent five, six months at San Francisco State, studying how to write music. There’s a word for that—music theory. That sort of helped me, but my goal was to perform, not to teach. My parents, they wanted me to go to college and be a teacher and teach piano, like my piano teacher. No. I want to go out and sing and dance and just do it. Perform.
01-00:43:04 Warrin: Did you do that, then? Did you make a living at it? 16
01-00:43:09 F. Marshall: No. Everything has been volunteer all these years. I may have had a couple of weddings or something where maybe I was being compensated for that. When I started in high school, I did musical plays. John Falls had this group that we sang at Wood Minister. We did a lot of operettas there, and then we did Gilbert and Sullivan operettas. I always sang in church. I started at St. Elizabeth’s choir, St. Elizabeth’s Church. Went there many years. In fact, my mother was singing alto and I was doing my soprano singing there. Going back a little ways, when I was twelve, my singing teacher suggested that I take my Il Bacio—I learned an aria, an Italian called Il Bacio—to go to San Francisco to meet Mr. Kurt Adler, who was the director of the opera at the time in San Francisco. I did, with my little hat and my gloves. I have a little picture somewhere at home. I auditioned for him. I was eleven, twelve. He said, “Come back when you’re sixteen. I think you would be good in the opera here.” Well, my parents, they weren’t thinking that way. There was no encouragement there for me to go back. I went on to light opera, which is really what I liked to do, and I went on from there. We did Cabaret in Alameda. We’re still singing at Douglas Morrison Theater. I’m still at it. That keeps you young. Like they say, age is just a number.
01-00:44:50 J. Marshall: Eighteen years at the Douglas.
01-00:44:52 F. Marshall: Yes, we’ve been there eighteen years. I’m working on a musical now. I keep it up. I’m doing St. Jarlath’s Church now. I’ve sung in many parishes in the Bay Area: St. Margaret Mary’s, St. Elizabeth’s, I think St. Bernard’s, too, many years ago, and Corpus Christi on Piedmont Avenue. I was there two or three years. John was singing there, too.
01-00:45:20 Warrin: What do you sing in the churches?
01-00:45:23 F. Marshall: What did I sing?
01-00:45:23 Warrin: What do you tend to sing in the churches?
01-00:45:26 F. Marshall: I’ve done some solo work, but mostly we do the Latin masses. Now St. Jarlath’s, it’s mostly hymns. Our director, organist, is not into the nice Petre Latin masses. We did beautiful masses at St. Elizabeth’s. Ralph Laris was our director. He had a beautiful tenor voice, but he got all this lovely music, Latin music, that we would perform in the church. In those days, everything was Latin, but now everything is simplified. I don’t know if it’s in our church. A lot of the churches, they try to just do hymns and then do the other Latin things that have to go with the ritual of the mass. Like I say, I keep up my music. I also sang San Francisco Children’s Opera. Amadeus Mozart. I had a 17
little part in that, in the chorus. Then we did Fiddler on the Roof in Alameda. I was the mother of the tailor.
01-00:46:34 J. Marshall: Singin’ in the Rain. I built a rain machine. We had serious rain on stage.
01-00:46:39 Warrin: Oh, really? Wonderful.
01-00:46:40 F. Marshall: We did Anything Goes. I was the diction teacher, Ms. Dinsmore. I would teach Bonnie—she was the star—“This is the way we pronounce this word, Bonnie, and you have to do it like this.” And so I applied that to my singing. I make sure I enunciate.
01-00:47:06 J. Marshall: Our director, he really likes you, because your diction is so good.
01-00:47:10 F. Marshall: He told me once, in front of everybody, and usually he criticized, but one time, he said, “If you can sing and pronounce like Felicie, I would be so happy with all of you.” That was a couple of years ago. The way I enunciate—well, that’s the way to do it. That’s the way to do it.
01-00:47:30 Warrin: Perhaps being bilingual helps also. You’re more aware of language and what that is. How it functions…. So you got married.
01-00:47:47 F. Marshall: Yeah. I was married once before, and then there was quite a few years I was divorced. Then John and I met in 1974 or ’75 through his neighbor, a Portuguese lady, Stella Rodrigues. Her husband was also on the ferryboats. The old man. She was married to an older man. He was another captain or deckhand or something on the ferryboat. Then she called me one time. We were very good friends. My mother sponsored her husband and her to come over here, in fact. Then she called me one day and she said, “I want you to meet someone nice. I think he’s divorced. I think he wants to sell the house.” She made an appointment and I came over, and that’s how we met, through friends.
01-00:48:41 Warrin: Do you have children from either marriage?
01-00:48:44 F. Marshall: No, we have no children, but I had three children, a son and two daughters. [background conversation]
01-00:49:27 Warrin: We should be back in business here. 18
01-00:49:33 F. Marshall: Interesting, the conversation. To share something like this with someone like you, it’s very interesting, because who else is going to sit that we know? They’re all jealous. They don’t want to hear what you’ve done or your parents. To talk to someone that appreciates and is listening, it’s interesting for future generations. The main thing is my father and all that, but background of the family is very interesting.
01-00:50:11 Warrin: Have your children maintained the Portuguese identity in some ways?
01-00:50:17 F. Marshall: They understand, but speaking not much—because they would stay with the grandfather now and then—my father—but I think he spoke to them a lot in English. I think when my parents were around my children, they would converse more in the English language. The youngest, Linda, and I think Christine, they kind of learned a little Portuguese because my mother would be talking in Portuguese and English. She was kind of bilingual. They understand, but they don’t speak.
01-00:50:59 Warrin: Have they participated in the festas or the societies?
01-00:51:04 F. Marshall: When they were younger. In fact, my oldest girl, when we had that Portuguese days with Mrs. Rogers and my mother and other ladies at the auditorium, my oldest daughter would go with us. She was a little one. She participated in the Portuguese heritage days in Oakland, and that’s about it. My son, I don’t know if he went with us or not. They’re not into—like I was. I was really involved in the Portuguese background community and everything, but they were not that much.
01-00:51:49 J. Marshall: Probably if they’d had married Portuguese, they might have been—
01-00:51:53 F. Marshall: Yeah, right.
01-00:51:58 Warrin: When you were growing up, did you have people from different ethnicities that were your friends? Were there a lot of other Portuguese kids or simply Americans or Hispanic or—
01-00:52:19 F. Marshall: My mother and father, I remember they would have a lot of friends over, mostly Portuguese. They would gather. Mother would play. We’d have social evenings with music. They didn’t have a lot of friends, but we would gather around and play music and play cards or whatever they would do in an evening. You mean coming to their home, right? 19
01-00:52:47 Warrin: Or simply on the playground or wherever. Going to their house, going to other people’s homes. I was just wondering what your social life was like.
01-00:52:55 F. Marshall: Our social life consisted of going to the Portuguese conventions, my family and I, and attending the Holy Ghost festas in different towns. I was Queen of the Holy Ghost festa in Oakland as a teenager. They used to travel a lot to Watsonville. In Watsonville we visited the John Mellos and their family. Their son was Senator Henry Mello, in Sacramento, he was one of the senators. He’s retired now. Henry Mello. I don’t know if you remember Henry Mello.
01-00:53:11 Warrin: Henry Mello, yes.
01-00:53:12 F. Marshall: Right. My mother and father were good friends of their mother and father, and we used to travel to Watsonville every summer. Go down and bring boxes of peras e maçãs [pears and apples]. My mother would can—you know how they do it in those days. They’d can. But we would stay with the Mellos, John Mello, on Green Valley Road. That’s where their house was. I was good friends of Elsie. That was their youngest daughter. My family would travel there. That’s the only family I know in the Valley. They met people maybe down in the Valley. After I got into the society, my mother and I knew more people, Portuguese ladies that belonged to the lodges. But as far as families, they had a few friends. Mrs. Rogers. And then the Carvalheiros. They are Helder’s mother and father. They would visit with them quite a bit. The fellow that my parents were sponsors of, his mother and father. The one that plays the Portuguese guitar, that played for me not too long ago. They didn’t have a lot of friends, but a few. My father, with his profession, he would be working day shifts, morning shifts, night shifts. They didn’t have too much time to visit.
01-00:54:34 Warrin: Weekends.
01-00:54:34 F. Marshall: Weekends. Not much time to socialize. That’s why my mother belonged to the societies, and then she would go to her meetings and take me with her.
01-00:54:46 Warrin: It wasn’t as bad as being on a whaling ship, but—
01-00:54:48 F. Marshall: Oh, no. Papa had his life. He was out here for a while on his own, way before Mama came in. But he didn’t forget her. He went back to get her. They were married about fifty-two years. Then he died in 1972. He was eighty-six. Then Mama died—it’s already almost, God, nineteen years—Loma Prieta era. Nineteen ninety-two. Or ’91, because Jennifer married—the wedding was 20
Saturday, my granddaughter, and the next day they called me and said Mother passed on. So I had a happy day and then the sad right after, the next day.
01-00:55:36 Warrin: She died suddenly?
01-00:55:37 F. Marshall: Yeah. On Sunday. She was ninety-six. Kidney failure. A natural—
01-00:55:43 Warrin: Good old age at that point.
01-00:55:45 F. Marshall: Yeah. Can I tell you something? Do we have time?
01-00:55:48 Warrin: Of course. We have enough time.
01-00:55:50 F. Marshall: This was just a little story about her. She never wanted to leave the house. We had her at our house for many years, but John and I were both working full time. She was going into kidney failure pretty bad. I’d go see her for a while, and then she’d be calling, calling. We could never rest properly. So I had to put her in—not a rest home, but a nursing home. She told me before, “Don’t you ever put me in a nursing home.” But it had to be. A couple of times, we’d go visit her. One time, I went out to visit her in the nursing home. In fact, she was walking by the front door. I was walking in. She was walking with her nurse. Then she looked at me and she said, “This is my angel. You don’t come out here. You put me in this place. I didn’t want to be here.” But she had to be there.“This is my angel” and then she kept walking back to her room. One time, she had called the house, and John answered the phone. “I want to speak to Mrs. Marshall.” Not “my daughter.” The poor, sweet dear didn’t want to be there, but she couldn’t understand I couldn’t take care of her. She needed twenty-four hours care. Poor thing. But she was feisty. Strong Portuguese blood. I think it was all that port wine in the gemada dos ovos [egg drink]. That’s what kept her going. Aguardente [a whisky drink]
01-00:57:30 J. Marshall: We took her to the doctor. They wanted her to start using a cane. She was about ninety or something. She told him, “You use the cane yourself.” She says, “People will think I’m old.”
01-00:57:44 F. Marshall: Stubborn. Teimosa─muito teimosa. [stubborn─very stubborn]. That’s what kept her going.
01-00:57:49 Warrin: You hear a lot of stories like that. I think we’re going to have to stop here and take a break. 21
01-00:57:56 F. Marshall: That’s good. We covered quite a bit. Did I do okay? I didn’t even look at my notes, because like you say, you’ll be asking the questions, so I think the answers come better than looking here. I was just following the outline here, but it was getting specific.
01-00:58:13 Warrin: I was glad when you put your notebook down and just started talking.
01-00:58:16 F. Marshall: I didn’t look at it. Did I look at it? No.
01-00:58:18 Warrin: No. As I said, we’re going to have a conversation.
01-00:58:23 F. Marshall: Right. But as far as dates and things, I wrote some dates down here.
01-00:58:30 Warrin: In the second half here, when we talk again, we’ll talk about your father and things like this.
01-00:58:38 F. Marshall: Okay, well.
[End Audio File 1]
Begin Audio File 2 marshall_felicie_02_06-20-11.mp3
02-00:00:21 Warrin: Here we are back from our break. I wanted to move on to the ferryboats and your father’s role. I wanted to mention a few things about the ferryboats. Evidently, ferries in San Francisco on the Bay go back to 1850, when service began between Oakland and San Francisco, and in 1868 between Sausalito and San Francisco. From 1869, when, I believe, the Intercontinental Railroad was open, from then on, there were large ferries carrying freight trains and passenger railroad cars. In 1909, it was the beginning of the auto ferries. Because, obviously, the age of the automobile, we started really needing bridges. In 1935, the Bay Bridge opened. Nineteen thirty-seven, the Golden Gate Bridge. Here is direct competition with the ferries. Then those ferries start to diminish. In 1956, the Richmond–San Rafael Bridge opened, and that was the end of the traditional ferry service at that point. But then in the 1970s, we start to get a revival of ferry routes, particularly from Marin County, now the catamarans, and service from Vallejo.
Going back to these early years, this is a quote from a book by George Harlan, published in 1967. The book is entitled San Francisco Bay Ferryboats. He makes a particular reference to the Portuguese. He says, “In the early days of San Francisco, one would not have to go far, either on the Peninsula itself or into the bordering counties of the Bay, before encountering dairy ranches, 22
beef cattle ranches, sheep ranches, and all the other activities of rural life in a sparsely populated area.”
And I would think this applies especially to Marin County, southern Marin County, and the dairies.
[Harlan quote continued] “It was not uncommon for a cattleman to deliver his stock to the San Francisco market by driving them to the nearest ferry terminal, after having made previous arrangements with the ferry company to accommodate the cargo. A certain portion of the main or lower deck of the boat would be roped off for the livestock. One might assume that it was a great hardship for the ferry deckhands suddenly to be required to punch cows. However, most of the local dairymen came from Portugal or the Portuguese- owned Azores Islands, and the Portuguese who did not choose the life of ranch and farm quite frequently became ferry mariners, in the maritime tradition of their native land. Handling cattle was second nature to deckhands, whose last names were Silva, De Borba, Vieira, Peixoto, and Teixeira.”
It’s an interesting passage from this book, and he was certainly aware of the role of the Portuguese. Several of them did move up, all the way up to be captains. Your father obviously was one, but there were others. I have an article about Joseph Rodrigues. I don’t know whether you knew him or anything.
02-00:04:48 F. Marshall: We knew Horace Rodrigues, their son. My family knew that family well. My father and mother knew this captain and his wife. Also, Silveira, but he was a deckhand. I think it was Joaquim Silveira. In fact, Inez Gomes Silveira was the sister of one of the Portuguese deckhands on the ferryboats in the early years.
02-00:05:33 Warrin: There’s also another book. I think it’s called Of Paddlewheels and Ferries— something like this. It shows some pictures of an engineer in an engine room by the name of Silveira also. As far as your father, I was reading the article on him out of the Jornal Português in October of 1956. As you mentioned, he was born on Graciosa. It says that he began his career in California on sailing vessels between San Francisco and Canada, so he evidently segued from whaling to sailing on the ocean. This is what the article in the Jornal says. They must have talked to him about it, I would imagine.
02-00:06:37 F. Marshall: Maybe when he was deckhand and he was learning, before he got into the San Francisco Bay. That I wasn’t quite aware of.
02-00:06:46 J. Marshall: Were they hauling—what do you call it? Produce or whatever they were hauling. 23
02-00:07:01 Warrin: Very likely, it was lumber. He’s talking about a sailing vessel. It may have had auxiliary power, too, but there were large sailing vessels that carried lumber from either way up in northern California or, evidently, Vancouver.
02-00:07:26 F. Marshall: Arcata and Eureka. That’s where the Great Redwood Highway is, up that way. That’s where all the lumber was.
02-00:07:34 J. Marshall: You know up there—what’s the name of that lumber town? Scotia. This is what’s funny. I was surprised when I found this out. All the workers that were in there that started the lumber mill and everything were from Nova Scotia. They were Scotch. They named the town Scotia after them.
02-00:08:08 Warrin: It also said that your father received his captain’s license in 1918. That was quite early.
02-00:08:18 F. Marshall: I wasn’t sure exactly what year he became captain, but I know he started as a deckhand. He went up the line until he took his test and got his captain’s license. So it says 1918?
02-00:08:31 J. Marshall: He was on the Bay a lot of years.
02-00:08:33 Warrin: Yes, a lot of years. Before that, obviously as a mate or deckhand.
02-00:08:42 F. Marshall: I would say maybe forty years all together. Forty. Because ’56—that’s thirty- five years. Add another ten. Thirty-five, forty, forty-five years.
02-00:08:55 Warrin: It actually says he retired from service. He took either the last voyage or the second to last voyage of the ferryboats, of the traditional ferry lines, when he was on the Richmond–San Rafael line, after forty-five years in maritime service.
02-00:09:16 F. Marshall: I was right. I just guessed it. Forty-five all together.
02-00:09:21 Warrin: Then he had the great story about President Wilson was being driven. He was visiting San Francisco, and of course you came across on a train across the country, but then you had to go on the ferry from Oakland. The chauffeur tried to drive on before it was time. John stood up and said, “Stop.” So the chauffeur stopped, and then when it was time to board and safe to board, he waved him on. He had to drop a line there and waved him on. He said that when the president passed, he kind of gave him a high sign and a smile. 24
02-00:10:14 F. Marshall: Oh, good. I don’t have that. Will I get a copy? I think there’s a clipping there on that.
02-00:10:20 Warrin: That’s in the Jornal.
02-00:10:22 F. Marshall: I don’t have that at all.
02-00:10:25 Warrin: You do have it. It was the one that was—
02-00:10:27 F. Marshall: Yeah, you gave me the one—
02-00:10:28 Warrin: That was hard to read. Very hard to read. I misplaced one piece of paper here. It’s got to be here someplace. Maybe you can talk, while I’m looking for that, a little bit about what you remember of your dad as a ferryboat captain.
02-00:10:59 F. Marshall: There’s another story of a president. One day, I think it was 1940, my dad came home and he said to me and my mom, “Guess who was on my boat today─President Roosevelt. I even showed him the pilot house.”
I remember many times we went over with some friends of the family. I would love going aboard the ships. They were so beautiful inside, all made of mahogany wood. I think my father even took me up to the pilot house. We had a tour of the whole ship, which included the boiler room. Very fascinating. I enjoyed riding the ferries as a youngster and as a young woman. A lot of times, we would be going when my father was working on the ship he was on. As a youngster, going over to the World’s Fair. [At Treasure Island in San Francisco Bay, 1939-40] We went possibly by ferry. They would drop us off there. I enjoyed many trips with my mother and friends of the family on my father’s ships and other auto ferries on the Bay. It was very memorable history, because those were the good old days on the Bay. There’s still very nice days on the Bay, but those were my childhood and young woman memories of a very interesting life that my father had. He was a pretty strong man. I think that good ocean air, salt ocean air, kept him going for many years.
02-00:12:42 Warrin: Evidently, commuting on a ferry was an experience so different from either taking BART or driving. The passage didn’t take that long, but you could eat a meal, you could sit down and play cards with your buddies, you could sit and chat. You knew people from the commute. You did this every day, twice.
02-00:13:09 J. Marshall: You had enough time for a meal. Thirty-five minutes or forty minutes. 25
02-00:13:15 F. Marshall: What was interesting and profitable and good for you was you could drive off of that ferryboat and get into San Francisco and go on your way. Now it’s so different. You have to walk off, take a BART, take a train, wait for this. In those days, you were in your car, ready to go, and you proceeded to where you were going in the city without any hassle waiting for a streetcar or whatever. To go where you wanted to go.
02-00:13:44 Warrin: But there also were a lot of ferryboats that just took people.
02-00:13:48 F. Marshall: Right. Passengers.
02-00:13:50 Warrin: Passengers. But then there was a streetcar waiting for you right there at the pier, and it would take you to where you were going. Particularly people commuting to work in San Francisco.
02-00:14:04 F. Marshall: I don’t know whether my father—he was strictly, I think, on the auto ferries. I don’t think he was piloting the ones that you get off and then there’s a streetcar waiting for you.
02-00:14:17 J. Marshall: The Berkeley was a passenger ferry.
02-00:14:21 F. Marshall: That’s the one that’s in San Diego now. It’s a museum. The Berkeley.
02-00:14:24 Warrin: That’s one of the ones that he was captain of?
02-00:14:29 F. Marshall: Yes, he was.
02-00:14:30 J. Marshall: I don’t think he was on the Berkeley. It was strictly a passenger ferry.
02-00:14:33 F. Marshall: I don’t know, dear. He changed every week. I remember he was on this one and he was on—all the names—Redwood City, Eureka. He would change.
02-00:14:43 J. Marshall: He was never on the Eureka. There was only one guy in charge of the Eureka.
02-00:14:51 Warrin: The Encinal. You have a picture of the Encinal. The San Rafael. 26
02-00:14:56 F. Marshall: Santa Rosa. He was on the Santa Rosa, too. There was quite a few, because look how many years he was piloting those ferryboats. He could be on quite a few.
02-00:15:05 J. Marshall: Santa Rosa. What’s the one that he was on on the last run there?
02-00:15:18 F. Marshall: It would be on the article on 1956.
02-00:15:21 J. Marshall: No, the one that we were talking about before.
02-00:15:25 F. Marshall: Eureka?
02-00:15:27 J. Marshall: No.
02-00:15:32 Warrin: It wasn’t the Encinal?
02-00:15:35 J. Marshall: There were three ships that were built for the Richmond–San Rafael run. They’d alternate between the three ships, I guess.
02-00:15:47 Warrin: Supposedly, you could get your shoes shined. There were vendors selling candy, selling cigars. There were newsstands.
02-00:15:58 J. Marshall: I used to go with my father and my grandfather. Go ride the ferries.
02-00:16:01 F. Marshall: Yes, the ferries. You were probably on the ones that my dad was probably. At sixteen years of age my husband wrote an article for the Portuguese Journal on my father as a captain on the auto ferries on San Francisco Bay.
02-00:16:09 Warrin: At one time, evidently, there were over fifty ferries operating simultaneously on the Bay. It was kind of dangerous with the fog, and there was no radar or anything. You had a compass. From what I read, it was your ear that you paid attention to more than anything else, particularly in the fog. You would hear ferryboats.
02-00:16:38 F. Marshall: I remember one incident years ago when we were on the ferryboat when my dad was piloting. As he was going into the slip in San Francisco, he hit, and he kept bouncing from one side to the other. It took him a while to get it to go 27
straight in without hitting the posts on the pier. That one incident, it just took a little longer, because he had hit something, the side of the pier there.
02-00:17:12 Warrin: It was difficult to slow down because they went very fast.
02-00:17:17 F. Marshall: Maybe to turn off the engine.
02-00:17:18 Warrin: Suddenly stop.
02-00:17:20 F. Marshall: You had to do it ahead of time so you wouldn’t have the collision going into the slip.
02-00:17:25 J. Marshall: They’d usually have to reverse the motors.
02-00:17:28 Warrin: Right, and sometimes that was a problem, particularly on the steam ferries. He probably never commanded a steam ferry.
02-00:17:36 F. Marshall: No, not the steam one.
02-00:17:38 Warrin: By the 1920s, diesels were coming in. He probably was just a captain on the diesel. They had had, earlier, wooden hulls, which were copper sheathed. By the time he was captain, it was probably diesels with a steel hull. People talked about the seagulls, which would come, and evidently people would feed the seagulls.
02-00:18:07 F. Marshall: As you’re speaking, I can still see them sitting on the slips on the top of the wooden pilings along the slip. The seagulls, whoo, coming down and landing as we were coming in. The passengers, the crew may be throwing food to the seagulls.
02-00:18:28 Warrin: Evidently, on holidays, they would decorate the ferryboats also. Do you recall that at all?
02-00:18:35 F. Marshall: I don’t recall that.
02-00:18:38 Warrin: And ferryboats would be used for excursions, too. They would go into Paradise Cove or someplace and sort of rent it out for the day and take a group of people and have a picnic someplace. 28
02-00:18:54 F. Marshall: I kind of regret, too, you see. My mother didn’t drive, and father was working. I regret the fact that we didn’t have any family or friends to take Mother and I aboard the ferryboat that Father was piloting that day. We were confined to home. He had different shifts. My family was just my auntie, my father’s sister. They had two sons. The one in the Navy was my cousin (my favorite) and the other one was in the Army, Tommy. So our immediate family wasn’t there to take us and enjoy the ferryboat rides when Dad was onboard.
02-00:19:35 Warrin: How come? You never did go onboard—
02-00:19:39 F. Marshall: We did. Maybe some friends of Mr. Silva, I think, took us—the husband, as I recall. The one that stood out was that last run from the Richmond–San Rafael Bridge, but I don’t remember. Mother didn’t drive. We had no way to get there. Father had a revolving schedule. He would be on early in the morning, late in the day, from maybe nighttime until early morning. It was a very varied schedule. We didn’t have the transportation to go there. We were home. I regret that.
02-00:20:22 Warrin: Do you recall that last ride and what it was like?
02-00:20:25 F. Marshall: I sort of recall the last ride. In fact, I have a picture here that I showed you, with my oldest daughter on the ferryboat.
02-00:20:33 J. Marshall: It’s in here.
02-00:20:35 Warrin: Yeah, I saw the picture. We’ll put that up on the site.
02-00:20:40 J. Marshall: Look at this. Turn the lights off. There’s no sound. It’s music.
02-00:20:49 F. Marshall: Now, what are you showing on there?
02-00:20:51 J. Marshall: That’s you and your daughter. This is the spot here where your mother is walking in or something. It’s got your father and his deckhand. They’re walking with your daughter.
02-00:21:07 Warrin: Do you remember visiting him up in his cabin or anything?
02-00:21:10 F. Marshall: I think so. I think I mentioned that in our first interview. I recall maybe that he had even taken us—maybe it was that last run—up to the pilot house and 29
showed us around. I remember seeing the engine room. The big motor. How do you call it? I don’t know. The big engine. It was very hot down below. As it was, I think, going. Not when it stopped. I remember. I can still see the big room in the center where everybody would sit. I think they had a little coffee room area there. The polish—they kept that seating area very clean and shiny, that beautiful mahogany wood.
02-00:22:04 Warrin: It must have been beautiful. So well-made, so different from what you would see today.
02-00:22:10 F. Marshall: The Red and White Fleet.
02-00:22:13 J. Marshall: They were very elegant.
02-00:22:15 F. Marshall: Oh, very elegant. They had the materials then to build those ships in very good material and sturdiness, as compared to today.
02-00:22:26 J. Marshall: The old ones with wood hulls weren’t that good, really. If they had gotten in a wreck, they would have sunk.
02-00:22:33 F. Marshall: I don’t remember any.
02-00:22:38 J. Marshall: The old original ones, I guess, were steam. Back in the day, they had dangers of fire, too.
02-00:22:45 Warrin: They did, but of course the diesels could blow up, too.
02-00:22:51 F. Marshall: That was in the late 1800s, right? The diesel?
02-00:22:54 Warrin: No, diesel is coming in in the 1920s.
02-00:22:59 F. Marshall: I’m thinking of the steam ones, the old ones, the 1800s.
02-00:23:01 Warrin: Steamers, yeah. They could blow up, too. They were all hazardous and dangerous.
02-00:23:11 F. Marshall: Hazardous material and structure. 30
02-00:23:19 Warrin: Do you remember anything else about the ferry and your dad?
02-00:23:27 F. Marshall: Like I say, I wish my mother and I had had more family, which we didn’t have much family. Just my father’s auntie and cousins. Had ways to take more rides, but like I say, with my father’s schedule, it was variable. I know he wouldn’t know until a day or so before when he was going to be on the ferryboats. I kind of regret not being able to ride more often. What I remember was the last run. That was pretty vivid. It’s still pretty vivid in my mind, because that was quite a few years ago. Being that we didn’t ride as often, now I’m saying I would have loved to have ridden more on the ferryboats when my dad was captain than what we did. Mother and I—she didn’t drive, so we couldn’t go, and according to schedule, it was impossible. That was it. I remember loving the sea air aboard the ferry and enjoying the San Francisco Bay scenery as we cruised by. Those were the good old days with my dad.
02-00:24:34 Warrin: But you rode the ferryboats other times?
02-00:24:37 F. Marshall: Yes, other times. But the one that really stands out is the last run. I think before then, we must have gone—maybe some friends. The one that used to live in Hayward and we went out to see. Mrs. Silva. They passed on quite a few years ago. The husband, when he was alive, I think he came and got my mother and I, and we went on the ferryboat. It’s not that vivid in my mind as the times that I boarded the ferryboat when—
02-00:25:13 J. Marshall: It was daytime when he had his last run.
02-00:25:19 F. Marshall: It was daytime.
02-00:25:21 J. Marshall: Another pilot had the night shift. At midnight—
02-00:25:25 Warrin: That was the end.
02-00:25:26 F. Marshall: That was the article that we found in the library. It was Captain Horaty or something. That was the captain that was talking about the last run on that day. Father was during the day.
02-00:25:37 Warrin: So he was the second to the last run of—
02-00:25:40 F. Marshall: I don’t know how many runs they had. Father was during the day, because I know— 31
02-00:25:46 Warrin: It was the last day, anyway.
02-00:25:47 F. Marshall: Yes, yes, yes, the last day. That’s when he retired. He retired then.
02-00:25:57 Warrin: What did he do after he retired?
02-00:26:03 F. Marshall: Well, he just got accustomed to being at home with mother and I. He was good at carpentry and working out in the garden and planting couve, kale, and cebolas [onions] and taking care of the trees. We had a nice lemon tree and a white fig tree in the backyard. He enjoyed doing his carpentry and maybe helping Mother can the apples and pears when we’d take our little valley trips to Watsonville. He would love to be helping her doing the canning. I know when I was a child, I was not allowed in the kitchen. The door had to be closed. No, don’t come in here. The room was full of steam when they were filling the fruit jars with the fruit. It had to be airtight, and you couldn’t get any air in there. Sai daqui p’ra for a, não podes vir p’ra aqui agora [go out, you can’t come in here now]. He did very well. He adjusted very well to his home life.
02-00:27:32 Warrin: Did he make a good living as far as what he made on the ferryboats?
02-00:27:41 F. Marshall: He must have gotten a pension. I’m not sure. He never discussed that with me. I guess my mother knew. They didn’t say much to me about how he made his living. He had rentals. We had that store that he leased out to this five-and- dime store. He had some money from the rental of that. They had Social Security in those days, too.
02-00:28:14 J. Marshall: He was able to buy places.
02-00:28:17 F. Marshall: I guess he did well. I never knew much about the financial end of what Father had or what he acquired during his retirement, but I’m sure he had a good income for all the years he was captain, and maybe he got a good pension.
02-00:28:36 Warrin: When he was working for Southern Pacific, I would imagine they had a good pension system.
02-00:28:40 F. Marshall: Southern Pacific, right, right. Mother never worked. She was a homemaker.
02-00:28:45 J. Marshall: My grandfather worked for Southern Pacific, but when he retired, he had nothing. They didn’t have a pension yet. Her father was in— 32
02-00:28:56 Warrin: Later on.
02-00:28:57 F. Marshall: Yes. Then he had the rentals at the flat on Fourth Avenue, and also the store in East Oakland.
02-00:29:09 Warrin: Typically Portuguese—he saved a lot of money and invested.
02-00:29:13 F. Marshall: Right, right. We know a lot of friends that come from the old country. We have a couple that we know that belong to—what’s her name? Gorgulho. I don’t know if you know them. They live down in Carmel Valley. I will tell the story. They invited us to their home. It’s in a gated area in Carmel Valley. We saw the area. We go through this gate. Oh, beautiful homes. We were looking for the address. We looked up on the hill and we saw this beautiful—I said, “Look at that one. That’s a gorgeous”—it was like, whatever. We knew that was a billionaire that lived there. It ended up, that’s where these friends lived, in the top of the hill. You walk in, marble floors. She has this beautiful room as you go in. It’s like a closet, but it’s like a huge living room. You step down into the living room. It’s all marble floors. Then you look out in the kitchen area, patio area. They have deer. It’s like wildlife back there. The patio had water fountains. Just one of these beautiful homes that you see or you just look at in pictures.
02-00:30:27 J. Marshall: He was a janitor in the Monterey schools. Saved every nickel.
02-00:30:35 F. Marshall: John always says he must have been in some other business.
02-00:30:36 J. Marshall: They saved money and bought the property and rented it out. They ended up with this fabulous—
02-00:30:43 F. Marshall: Also, look at Carvalheiro. The parents of the fellow who plays the guitar. That’s the ones we sponsored. They brought property. They’re living in Tracy. They have rentals. Fascinating how they come over here with ten dollars and make a million dollars out of that. They did something right. [laughs]
02-00:31:06 J. Marshall: They didn’t waste money.
02-00:31:08 Warrin: Right, and they pinched every penny, too. 33
02-00:31:11 F. Marshall: I kind of remember that we can’t buy too much when Daddy was out doing his job. Well, that’s the time of the Depression. Everything was cheap. Five cents for a loaf of bread and ten cents for a quart of milk.
02-00:31:31 J. Marshall: Property was cheap.
02-00:31:33 F. Marshall: Right, but you had to be careful how you spent those nickels and dimes.
02-00:31:37 J. Marshall: One person working could afford to buy a house, a car.
02-00:31:44 F. Marshall: Now, it’s so much different. All the mothers in those days were homemakers. The fathers were out working—but they were able to, like John said, buy a house, get a car, and be able to do all that on their salary.
02-00:32:00 Warrin: But that’s been a long time over, unfortunately.
02-00:32:06 F. Marshall: The good old days.
02-00:32:08 Warrin: Just getting back to the ferryboats, evidently there were at least several captains of ferryboats who were Portuguese.
02-00:32:18 F. Marshall: Quite a few that my father knew. There was one, Captain Rodrigues, Horace Rodrigues. They were good friends of my mother and father. In fact, they had several sons and they were trying to make an arrangement between their son and myself, but there was no interest there. Then there was a Captain Silveira. No, he never became captain. He was a deckhand. There was Captain Stevenson. Sorenson and Stevenson. They were not Portuguese, but he had a lot of Swedish friends.
02-00:33:02 Warrin: The Swedish were evidently very heavy [participants] also, and traditionally also in offshore ocean maritime industry here in California. A lot of Portuguese early on, and a lot of Scandinavians.
02-00:33:25 F. Marshall: He spoke a lot of Captain Stevenson and Captain Sorenson. Those are Swedish Danish names. He loved Irish music. My dad didn’t really act too much Portuguese. He was more Gaelic. He loved Irish. He loved me to sit down at the piano and play that, “I’ll Take You Home Again, Kathleen,” and then, “When Irish Eyes are Smiling.” He loved me to play Irish music. My father, like I say, he didn’t even look Portuguese. Bettencourt, I think, is a 34
French name. He was blue eyes and light brown hair. He didn’t look Português, but he was. I think he was a mixture of French.
02-00:34:17 Warrin: I suppose that, first of all, being on a whale ship where there were many nationalities, you learned English very quickly. Then, being on a ferryboat, you may have some Portuguese working with you, but there’s all sorts of other people, and so he got a very cosmopolitan interest in his social life and his interests like music and so forth.
02-00:34:55 F. Marshall: My father did a little performing, too, when my mother had those shows. He would do jokes. I remember he had a little derby hat. He would say funny things, Portuguese jokes, about—I can’t remember now, but he was funny. Then he’d say, “Did I ever tell you the one about such-and-such?” He’d crack a joke and then he’d start laughing and rubbing his head. “Ha, ha, ha.” Then he’d get everybody laughing, whether they wanted to or not. He loved telling—“Did I ever tell you when Christ walked on the water?” I forget that one. “When Christ walked out on the water. They got out to the ocean”—I remember that. Then he says—took everybody on—“Oh, come out. I want you to see the waters where Christ walked.” This was all in English. Everybody got in this boat. “Come on, I’ll take you out to see the waters where Christ walked.” So they got in the boat. Then we’d get out there. “This is where Christ walked.” You were looking at the water now. Oh, fine, fine. The joke was, “If you want to go back, it’s going to cost you so much to go back.” Everybody got all upset, but he says, “Hey, you come out here to see the waters where Christ walked.” It wasn’t a great joke, but he made it so you couldn’t help but laugh. A lot of jokes.
02-00:36:27 Warrin: Sounds like quite a character.
02-00:36:29 F. Marshall: He loved to. Then he rubbed his head. Well, he had lost some of his hair. He loved to tell stories. He would say, “Now, did I ever tell you the one about”— I’m trying to remember some more. That one just came to mind. It was a lot of good jokes. He used to keep people in stitches. Oh, Mr. Bettencourt, you’re funny.
02-00:36:57 Warrin: Anything else comes to mind? Because I think we have to wrap up here.
02-00:37:00 F. Marshall: What can you ask me? I can think of things if I have a feed.
02-00:37:05 Warrin: I really don’t have anything more to ask. 35
02-00:37:10 F. Marshall: All I can say is I had a pretty good, happy childhood life. I’m glad that my parents, both my mother and father, contributed to the history of our beautiful San Francisco Bay, and then my mother with her talents and music that she brought from the Azores Island could come here and present it here in the Bay Area and represent Portugal with her music and her Portuguese guitar-playing, and my father with being captain on the ferryboats and helping the communities go from one point to the other. And coming from the Azores, both of them, with their background and their talents, to come here and present it to the Bay area. I’m very proud to say that that makes me proud to be of Portuguese descent and that I can speak well Portuguese. And that keeps me thinking of my family always, because I have the talent in music and in speech of my heritage. I’m proud to be of Portuguese descent but an American citizen.
02-00:38:26 J. Marshall: I’ve got something to add. That guitar was from 1924. [points] We are still using it in recording.
02-00:38:35 F. Marshall: On my CD. My father had presented the guitar to my mother as an engagement gift. It was made in Lisbon in 1924.
02-00:38:38 Warrin: What is your next project?
02-00:38:40 F. Marshall: My next project?
02-00:38:41 Warrin: Music-wise.
02-00:38:43 F. Marshall: We’re working on this next show that we’re going to present the end of July. July 22, 23, and 24 at the Douglas Morrison Theater in Hayward. I hope to be singing a Brazilian song, as our theme is “Bach to Bebop,” and anything in between. One of the songs is going to be “Girl From Ipanema,” so I thought, oh. He said, “We need a little samba music in there.” I got an idea I wanted to do “Cidade Maravilhosa” in Brazilian. I’m going to audition next week.
02-00:39:25 J. Marshall: We start out 400 years back and then work our way up.
02-00:39:31 F. Marshall: Amen.
02-00:39:32 Warrin: Sounds great. Well, I think we’ve got to end it here. Thank you for— 36
02-00:39:36 F. Marshall: Oh, you’re quite welcome. I enjoyed this immensely. Eu gostei muito de estar aqui com o Sr. Don e foi muito bom para mim para falar da minha família e faz uma pessoa muito contente [I have greatly enjoyed being here with Mr. Don, and it has been very good for me to talk of my family; and it makes one very happy]. And proud to speak of your family and the roots that you have. You’re proud. You keep that until the days end for all of us. I’ve enjoyed this immensely. Obrigada [thank you].
02-00:40:13 Warrin: Por nada [you’re welcome]. It’s been a pleasure.
[End of Interview]