Editor’s Note: This is part one of a two-part series regarding the history of the Antone “Tony” Luiz Silva and Joao “John” Luiz Silva families and their descendents.

Among the many early Portuguese families of the Pocket area were the Antone “Tony” Luiz Silva and Joao “John” Luiz Silva families.

Both Tony and John, who were brothers, immigrated to the United States from Topo, Sao Jorge Island in the Azores Islands of Portugal. The brothers’ original surname was Avila, but they acquired the surname, Silva, after arriving in the U.S.

Tony was the first to arrive
The first of these immigrants was Tony, who arrived in America at the age of 17, and joined his brother, Joseph, who was herding sheep in Inyo County, around Lone Pine and Bishop.

In that county, Tony worked for two separate wages. One of these wages was $1 per day and for another employer, he was paid with food. However, Tony was not content working for food and after three days, using his broken English, he asked to be paid $3. The employer responded by giving Tony three kicks in his rear and ordering him off his property.

After leaving Inyo County, Tony, who was known to sign his name, “A.L. Silva,” because of his illiteracy in English, went to Sacramento County and became employed at the Elk Grove Winery in Elk Grove.

He then went to the Grant area in today’s Carmichael area and worked on a hay bailing press and farmed hay and grain.

Tony and Mary meet
While in the Grant area, Tony met his future wife, Maria “Mary” Nevis, who was born in the Azorean island of Terceira on Aug. 5, 1881. Mary had then-recently immigrated to the Pocket with her cousin, Vera Bettencourt, and lived with one of the two Costa families of that area.

Tony and Mary were married – most likely at the St. Joseph Church in Freeport/today’s Clarksburg – in April 1899.

In about 1902, Tony and Mary moved to the Freeport area, where Tony farmed and had a small dairy, adjacent to where John also farmed and operated a dairy.

Together Tony and Mary had seven children, Mary, Joseph L., Olive, Rose, Hazel, Anthony and the first-born Rose, who died in infancy. As a father, Tony acquired the nickname, “Lavafraldas,” which indicated the “washing of diapers.”

One day, one of Tony’s friends was driving by his home and observed Tony hanging up his children’s diapers on the outside line next to his house. The friend rolled down the window of his vehicle and shouted, ‘Oh, Antone Lavafraldas.’ This name became Tony’s nickname and remained with him for the rest of his life.

Tony and Mary settle down in Pocket
Sometime after the 1904 Edwards Break, which flooded the Sacramento side of the Sacramento River, mostly south of Sutterville Road, Tony purchased 102 acres of swamp land in the Pocket.

Before Tony could even begin to farm this land, the property had to be drained of its river water seepage and cleared of tules and brush.

It was also on this property that, in 1909, Tony had a 10-room Victorian constructed for him by Manuel Valine, a contractor who was known as “Calisto.” As a protection against flooding, Calisto built the home on a knoll.

In order to continue his work as a dairyman, Tony established a dairy on his Pocket property. The property also included a large orchard and a family vegetable plot.

In about the early 1920s, Japanese families began residing in the Pocket area and, in many cases, leased land from Portuguese farmers. It was during this early period that Tony leased his Pocket property to Saichi Hironaka, who was an American citizen. Hironaka then subleased the property in three parts to the Tanaka, Ishimoto and Shirai families.

In 1934, Tony acquired an additional 100 acres from Joe Rico.

Tony passed away on Jan. 30, 1945 and his entire property remained with his family in the ownership of his widow.

What became of the property
From the early 1960s through the mid-1980s, Tony’s former property was sold at different times in individual sections for the residential redevelopment of the Pocket.

Twelve acres of Tony’s former Pocket property was donated in 1960 to the Roman Catholic Diocese of Sacramento for the construction of a new church and parochial school. These 12 acres were exchanged for a 5-acre site on Florin Road, where the church was built and named St. Anthony Church in memory of Tony.

John immigrates to America
Tony’s previously mentioned brother, John, who was born on Jan. 10, 1879, immigrated to America in 1896. He arrived in New Bedford, Mass., where two of his sisters resided and then lived with them there for some time before joining Tony in California.

John was later hired to work at the Sacramento Brick Co. on Riverside Road (now Riverside Boulevard). He maintained this employment for several years.

On Dec. 17, 1904, John married a 20-year-old, Faial, Azores Islands-born woman named Inacia “Nancy” Silva at the Cathedral of the Blessed Sacrament. For their honeymoon, the couple traveled on a riverboat to San Francisco.

After returning to the Sacramento area, John and Nancy settled on rented property that was owned by the Glide family on Babel Slough in Yolo County. On this property, John operated a dairy with his brother, Tony.

The brothers grew alfalfa for feeding their cows and potato and beans to feed their families, which included John and Inacia’s eight children who were born on this property. Altogether, John and Inacia’s family included nine children: Mary, John L., Jr., Madeline, Tony, Anna, Joaquim (“King”), Manuel, Dolores and Emily.

In 1916, John purchased about 100 acres in the Pocket area from Frank Rico. Included with this purchase were two houses, three barns and a large orchard, which was located between the houses. Orange trees were among the trees of this orchard.

Also within John’s Pocket property were various crops, including alfalfa, beans, potatoes, tomatoes, sugar beets, spinach and milo.

John farmed his property into the 1950s, at which time he retired and his sons continued the operation of the farm.

Just prior to John’s death on July 7, 1970, part of his acreage was sold to developers.
Nancy died on Dec. 3, 1976, and the remaining part of the property was sold by her family in 1979.

The Riverside-Pocket area undoubtedly has much history, but it is certainly not everyone who knows that the area has a direct connection to some of the capital city’s most renowned architectural structures.

Buildings such as the Memorial Auditorium, the Elks Building at 11th and J streets, the Cathedral of the Blessed Sacrament, a portion of the state Capitol and various structures in Old Sacramento, for instance, have a commonality that link them together for an obvious local trivia question.

These local landmarks were all constructed with bricks that were made at the Sacramento Brick Co., which opened on Riverside Road (today’s Riverside Boulevard) in 1881.

Additionally, the company, which was originally owned by Thomas Dwyer, also supplied bricks for reconstructing part of San Francisco following the great 1906 earthquake and fire.

By this time in the company’s history, the brickyard was already quite notable, as is evident by a reference in the 1890 History of Sacramento County, which reads: “(The brickyard has) in operation four Quaker brick machines with a capacity of (manufacturing) 140,000 (bricks) daily.”

During summer months, the brick-making plant utilized clay-like soil for its production that was dug from the “clay pit” in the area of today’s Lake Greenhaven, near John F. Kennedy High School.

The bricks were created according to an on-demand contract basis, yet the demand was high enough to provide enough employment that such a large amount of clay – as it will be referred to for the remainder of this article – was eventually dug from the area that the “clay pit” reached the level of the water table, thus forming the beginnings of today’s Lake Greenhaven.

 

Brick by brick

The preliminary process of creating the bricks began in the winter, as the clay was dredged and placed on the south bank of the pit for the purpose of having it dry until summer.

Once dry, the clay was loaded into the plant’s ore car-sized locomotives and delivered to the brickyard, which was located about a half-mile away, across Riverside Road. The plant, which was situated on about 250 acres, extended southward from the levee area to near modern-day Gloria Drive.

Overall, about eight cars were used for this process in a rotating sequence along the tracks, which were moved according to the locations of each dredging project.

Once at the brickyard, the clay was loaded onto a large conveyer belt and transported to a hopper before being transferred into what was known as the “pug mill.”

It was at this mill that the clay was mixed with a precise amount of water, so that the bricks would not be too soft or too dry.

Following this process, the clay was molded into the form of bricks through machinery, which included moving belts and metal cutting wires, which cut the clay into the required size of the bricks.

After being stacked on pallets for the curing process, the bricks were then transferred to kilns for the firing process.

During the plant’s earlier years, 20-foot-wide by 40-foot-long, outdoor kilns, which were made of brick, utilized coal – a heating source that was later replaced by crude oil and for a period of time, gas.

Originally, bricks created at the brickyard were transported by horse-drawn wagons to local construction sites.

 

Building blocks

Pocket historian Dolores (Silva) Greenslate said that she recalls seeing a brick delivery wagon with a team of horses led by brickyard worker, Joe Prady pass by her childhood home on Riverside Road on various occasions during the late 1920s.

Eventually, the brick delivery wagons were altogether replaced by brick delivery trucks.

In addition to seeing the brick delivery wagons, Greenslate, as well as other children residing in the area at the time, was continuously entertained by the sight of the brickyard’s locomotives crossing Riverside Road.

“It looked as though it was a toy train, which we longed to ride,” Greenslate recalled.

Being that the area was a Portuguese settlement, Greenslate said that the brickyard provided a lot of employment for the local Portuguese people.

Among the Portuguese men who were employed at the brickyard were the locomotive and dragline operator John Azevedo, Joe Lewis, Manuel Enos, Jesse Alves, and Tony, Eddy and William Neves.

Greenslate added that Antone Perry, the son of her great-grandfather, 1850s Pocket pioneer Antonio Pereira Rodrigues, worked at the brickyard for many years.

Antone Perry, whose sons, Alfred and Bill Perry, also worked at the plant, was employed as a brick setter and was known among his co-workers as “Squirrel,” due to his ability to work in small, narrow tunnels, where he stacked bricks to be fired.

Although the Perrys resided within a close vicinity of the brickyard, many others lived in houses located on the brickyard’s grounds.

Four-room, two-story, wood-frame houses, which included upstairs living quarters and kitchen and eating areas, were rented on the grounds for $7 per month.

These homes were not the only houses located on the property, as the site also included the large house of the brickyard’s supervisor, a boarding house for single men and about 20 single-room cabin-like structures.

 

“Thing of the past”

Although the brickyard is certainly a thing of the past, having been closed on Jan. 3, 1971 due to development in the area, its history remains strong through a variety of elements such as many structures built with Sacramento Brick Co.-manufactured bricks, Lake Greenhaven and even Brickyard Drive, a Riverside-Pocket area street named in tribute to this famous, local landmark.

 

E-mail Lance Armstrong at lance@valcomnews.com.