Portuguese Immigration to Hawai'i

I am bound to them, though I cannot look into their eyes or hear their voices. I honor their history. I cherish their lives. I will tell their story. I will remember them.

About Us

Our Story

Portuguese Family History Collections of Hawaiʻi (PFHCH) is a US 501(c)3 non-profit organization committed to helping the descendants of Portuguese immigrants, who came to Hawaiʻi, connect with their culture by researching their family history, and learning about their Portuguese heritage. “A PEOPLE WITHOUT KNOWLEDGE OF THEIR PAST HISTORY, ORIGIN AND CULTURE IS LIKE A TREE WITHOUT ROOTS.” -MARCUS GARVEY

Our Mission

The mission of PFHCH is to acquire, organize, preserve, digitize, interpret and make accessible to the general public the materials of enduring historical value that document the lives of the Portuguese immigrants who migrated to Hawaiʻi and made Hawaiʻi their home. PFHCH is also providing workshops and classes and offering support to those who are researching their family history.

Our Resources

There are numerous resources, websites, archives, and databases with information to aide in family research. However, the goal of PFHCH is to combine the information from all these resources in one location.

Portuguese Immigrants. Our Portuguese Legacy Database is a combilation of Portuguese Immigrants, who migrated to Hawaiʻi, prior to 1920. This database includes names of passengers, ages, birth place or residence, name of the ship and year of arrival, Passport Number, Portuguese Citizenship Number, and Alien Passenger List Number. Also included are additional informaiton, such as, ancestors’ and dependents’ names birth/baptism date, date of marriage, date of death, etc. Media files may also be attached to the record, including photos; birth, marriage and death records; passenger list; census records and other documents of value. This information is helpful in family research and in obtaining passport and passenger list records.

If you have family history information and media files and would like to have them included in our database, please email them to us at PortugueseCollections@gmail.com.

Workshop: “Researching Your Portuguese Heritage” workshop. Please contact us to find out the schedule for our next workshop.

Newspaper Articles. Our collections include newspaper articles and newspaper clippings of obituaries. The obituaries are gathered from websites, mortuaries, cemeteries, and old newspapers. Many have been sent to us by relatives and other interested individuals.

Helpful Resources.
On this website, you will also find a list of churches, plantations and cemeteries that can help you gather more information about your ancestors to help you complete your family tree.

Our Future Goals. Our goal is to develop a searchable database that can be accessible to everyone who visits our website. Until then, we will search our database at your request and provide you with a genealogy report documenting all the information that we have in our database. We ask that you make a donation to help defray the cost of maintaining our website and operational expenses. We have no paid staff. To help us locate information for the correct immigrant, please complete the contact form with as much of the following information as possible:

Name of the ancestor (remember that names change over time)
Names of family members
Place of departure
Ship and/or date of arrival
Ages of passengers (can be approximate)
Other identifying information

We Love Stories. Please share your family history and stories with us by completing the contact form. We will be compiling the stories and creating a book to share with others.

How You Can Help. Your generosity allows us to keep this website active and updated and to achieve our goal of providing you with more resources. Please consider making a donation.

A Work in Progress. Since we are constantly adding resources and information, please check back with us often.

Portuguese Immigrants

Our ancestors bravely left their family, friends and beautiful motherland to seek a better life for themselves and their family in a foreign country.

Ships to Hawaiʻi

There were twenty-six ships that brought Portuguese immigrants to Hawaiʻi from Madeira, São Miguel and continental Portugal between 1878 and 1913.

Hawaiʻi Plantations

The massive production of sugar cane in Hawaiʻi demanded many laborers to work on the plantations. The Portuguese were recruited along with other ethnic groups.

Madeira Churches & Villages

The majority of Madeirans are Roman Catholics. Every major village in Madeira has at least one Catholic church. In order to locate baptism, marriage and death records, you will need the names of the villages your ancestors lived in at the time of the event.

São Miguel Churches & Villages

The Catholic religion remains at the heart of the Açores islands. In order to locate baptism, marriage and death records, you will need the name of the villages your ancestors lived in at the time of the event.

Hawaiʻi Churches

Since, the Portuguese were devout followers of the Catholic faith, most attended the Catholic churches in Hawaiʻi. The Archdiocese in Honolulu kept the church records, which included baptism, marriage and death records.

Hawaiʻi Obituaries

Obituaries can provide essential details about the person’s date of birth, life events, date of death and family members. The names of relatives can be added to your family tree.

Hawaiʻi Cemeteries

Grave markers and gravestones not only honor our ancestors but they also provide information that can help in your family research.

Passenger Lists

Passenger Lists were prepared before and after departure to ensure that passengers listed were placed on board at the beginning of its passage and continue to be on board when it arrives at its destination.

Donate Now

Your donation is needed and appreciated.

Leave a legacy

We Need Your Help

Board of Directors

All Members

HR & Accounts

Sales & Marketing

IT Support

Treasurer, Director

Chester M. Cabral, M.B.A.

I was born and raised in Hilo, Hawaiʻi. I grew up in the plantation community of ʻAmauulu Camp 1. The diversity of people and cultures is something I will always cherish and remember. My grandfather, my father and my uncles all grew up in ʻAmauulu and worked for the Hilo Sugar Company. After serving in the U.S. Army, I graduated with a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration and an MBA from the University of Hawaiʻi, Manoa Campus. I retired from the Federal Government working in Finance with the U.S. Small Business Administration and the USDA Rural Development as the Business Program Director. Presently, I am an active member of the Rotary Club of Hilo Bay and the Hawaiʻi Island Portuguese Chamber of Commerce. I live in Pāhoa, Hawaiʻi Island.

Founder, President, Director

Kahealani Martins Curammeng, M.A, Psy.D.

My passion for family history research started in 1984 when I was in my Master’s program at Biola University in California. It was then that I realized I knew nothing about my Portuguese ancestors, culture and heritage. I learned that my great-grandparents, João Cabral and Maria Josefa Lazaro, came to Hawai’i from the Açores in 1883 on the S. S. Bell Rock. This revelation inspired me to learn who my ancestors were, where they came from, why they came, how they came, and what they experience when they travels for days in the cargo section of the ship. My legacy is to preserve this information for my children, grandchildren, future descendants and the community. Besides building my family tree, my research focused on the immigration of the Portuguese to Hawaiʻi and on developing resources to help others with their research. I authored the book, “They Came in Ships to Terra Nova.” Also, six-volumes, titled "Always Remembered, Never Forgotten", listing over 17,000 names of Portuguese Immigrants who migrated to Hawaiʻi between 1878 and 1913. The highlight of my family research was when I traveled to São Miguel and met cousins who reflected the true generosity and kindness of the Portuguese who came to the Hawaiian Kingdom. My educational background includes an M.A. in Marriage, Family Therapy from Biola University and a Doctor of Clinical Psychology (Psy.D.) from Newport University in California. I am currently the President of Portuguese Family History Collections of Hawaiʻi (PFHCH) and live in Hilo, Hawaiʻi Island, where I was born. I am a member of the Hawaiʻi Island Portuguese Chamber of Commerce, Lyman Museum, Plantation Museum, Portuguese Genealogical & Historical Society of Hawai‘i, Portuguese Culture and Historical Center, and Honokaʻa Heritage Center.

Secretary, Director

Karl Eschbach, Ph.D.

Dr. Eschbach is a sociologist and demographer. He received a Ph.D. in sociology from Harvard University, and completed a post-doctoral fellowship in demography at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is also an adjunct professor at University of Texas Medical Branch. Dr. Eschbach lives in Honomū.

Director

Sue Ann Pacheco Chun, B.Ed., P.D.

I was born and raised in Hilo, Hawai‘i in the “village” of Kaiwiki on the slopes of Mauna Kea. I have a B.Ed. in secondary education and a P.D.in secondary history education from the University of Hawai‘i, Manoa. For 32 years I was a middle school educator on the Island of Oʻahu: teacher, accreditation coordinator, curriculum coordinator, school History Day coordinator, teacher coach/mentor, and East-West Center fellow for CTAPS. I continue to be involved in education through HSTA (retired), NEA, and the National Middle School Association. As a teacher of Hawaiian history, I was very interested in immigration to Hawaiʻi and its resulting multi-culturalism, but, unfortunately, I didn’t know much about my own Portuguese roots and culture. Were my ancestors from the Azores or from Madeira? I do know now, though, because when I retired in 2004, genealogy became a passion and I have been creating ahnentafel charts for my maternal and paternal ancestors. A family visit to the Azores in 2012 motivated me even more to continue my research which I gladly share with family. I have been blessed to have visited many international destinations where I have experienced and embraced the interconnectedness of humanity. One of my ongoing projects resulting from these travels is a blog that focuses on the influence of the Portuguese on Japanese culture. I have travelled throughout Japan looking for these connections, which resulted in the publication of “Looking for Signs of Christianity in Japan,” published in my blog in August 2020 (sueannchun.blogspot.com).

Director

Wilma Souza Boudreau, B.A.

Wilma Souza Boudreau was born and raised on Kauai in the Territory of Hawaii. A member of a large Portuguese family, her grandfather was a plantation manager under King Kalakaua and Makee ownership. As a young girl Wilma sang with a group that performed at the Hilton Hawaiian Village (then Kaiser's) as well as on ships and submarines at Pearl Harbor. Her group was vocally trained by the Von Trapp family (of the Sound of Music fame) and went on to record three albums and 2 single records which provided funds to help build three churches on Kauai. After going to California to attend college, Wilma married her husband of 57 years, Richard. Together they left for Houston, Texas for nine exciting years at NASA on the Moon Landing Project. They, along with their two children Michele and Roland, returned to Palos Verdes, California where Wilma began her 32-year Real Estate career, specializing in assisting clients from Hawaii while working as a volunteer at the Jeanne Jugan French Catholic Care Home for 19 years. Since her retirement, Wilma has used her "Social Work" degree to get involved in different non-profit organizations here in Hawaii.

Director

Jackie Pualani Johnson, B.A., M.A.

Jackie Pualani Johnson was born and raised in Hilo, Hawai’i and earned B.A. and M.A. degrees in Theatre from the University of Colorado at Boulder. She retired from the Performing Arts Department at the University of Hawai`i at Hilo in 2017, after 38 years as a drama professor. Over the course of her career, Jackie directed fully-staged musicals, classic drama, and contemporary offerings from Western and Ethnic theatre realms. She was the co-founder of the Hilo Community Players’ Shakespeare in the Park, celebrating 45 years of presentations in Kalākaua Park in 2022. For the last ten years, Jackie has scripted, staged, and performed living history. Her endeavors include an array of works about the Hawaiian Monarchy, most notably Vespers at Hānaiakamālama, about Queen Emma, and several plays about the last queen of Hawaiʻi: Lili’uokalani at Washington Place, The 100th Anniversary of Lili’uokalani Gardens, Liliʻuokalani’s Goten-e Visit, Hoʻokiaʻi: Liliʻuokalani, and He Aloha lā, He aloha, which she performed at Puʻu Hulu Hulu at the Mauna a Wākeaʻs celebration of the Queen’s birthday. Other living history work includes the scripting and directing of Anchored: Julia, Emma, and Lydia... Another Trilogy, and Final Harvest, which chronicled the closing of the sugar cane plantations. Under the auspices of the Portuguese Chamber of Commerce in an initiative to support the building of the proposed Portuguese Cultural Center, Jackie interviewed, then scripted, the living histories of several members of the Portuguese community on the Island of Hawaiʻi. The presentations featured the life stories of Norbert and Emma Serrao, Dolores Tavares, Theresa Zendejas, and Jackie’s Grandfather, Edward Soares Medeiros. The performances were brought to life by actors* from Hilo in presentations that were taken to venues across the island. Filipino living histories round out the roster of cultures brought to life by Jackie's deep interest in our island heritages. January 2023 *Eddie & Beth Andrade performed the living history of Norbert and Emma Serra Gabriella Gabriel Cabanas performed the living history of Dolores Tavares Leanne Carvalho Baskin performed the living history of Theresa Zendejas David Carvalho performed the living history of and Jackie’s Grandfather, Edward Soares Medeiros.