Manuel Lopes ( – December 23, 1895) was

Seattle Seattle ( ) is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Washington and in the Pacific Northwest region of North America. With a population of 780,995 in 2024, it is the 18th-most populous city in the United States. The city is the cou ...

'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 hair or beards. A barber's place of work is known as a barbershop or the barber's. Barbershops have been noted places of social interaction and public discourse ...

Biography

Born on the island of Fogo in the

Cape Verde Cape Verde or Cabo Verde, officially the Republic of Cabo Verde, is an island country and archipelagic state of West Africa in the central Atlantic Ocean, consisting of ten volcanic islands with a combined land area of about . These islands ...

Islands in roughly 1812, Lopes arrived in the United States on a

whaling Whaling is the hunting of whales for their products such as meat and blubber, which can be turned into a type of oil that was important in the Industrial Revolution. Whaling was practiced as an organized industry as early as 875 AD. By the 16t ...

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

. 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 is a city in Bristol County, Massachusetts, United States. It is located on the Acushnet River in what is known as the South Coast (Massachusetts), South Coast region. At the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, New Bedford had a ...

. 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 An independence day is an annual event memorialization, commemorating the anniversary of a nation's independence or Sovereign state, statehood, usually after ceasing to be a group or part of another nation or state, or after the end of a milit ...

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.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 (born December 11, 1948) 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 Washi ...

. ''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 American hairdressers Businesspeople from Seattle History of Washington (state) Cape Verdean emigrants to the United States 19th-century American businesspeople {{Washington-bio-stub