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Madeira - History

These islands, according to several writers, were first discovered in 1344, by an Englishman of the name of Ovington. Madeira, which lies about 360 miles distant from the coast of Africa, was discovered by a Portuguese voyager in 1419, and called by him Madeira, or the Wood, on account of the number and magnitude of its large trees, which have since almost disappeared.

The Portuguese first took possession of them in 1431, when they found them uninhabited and covered with wood; which being cut down and burned, the soil was rendered abundantly fertile, and has continued so ever since. Attached to the crown of Portugal, it followed the fortunes of that country, been settled by Portuguese, and received their language, laws, and institutions. The political osition of Madeira is an improvement on the colonial system. The island is not reckoned a colony, but an integral province of Portugal.

Madeira was discovered by the Portuguese traveller known as Zargo, in an expedition organised by Prince Henry the Navigator, in the year 1418.

The story of the pre-discovery by an Englishman, Machim, rests on too credible foundation to be discarded lightly; but Zargo's discovery was practical and effective. He first fell in with Porto Santo, the northern island, and came a year later to Madeira itself.

The islands were rapidly colonized, and too rapidly cleared. The vine and sugar cane were introduced, and the colony soon became of first importance to the Portuguese in the most brilliant period of their history.

Columbus, who studied navigation at Porto Santo, and married the daughter of Perestrello, the Governor, dreamed of new worlds in that seclusion, and visited the island group again on his way westward.

The islands belonged to Spain in 1580. Portugal again asserted her independence in 1640. Captain Cook visited Madeira in 1768. The place was occupied by the British in 1801, and again in 1807, until the conclusion of the Continental war in 1814. Napoleon was brought to Madeira on his way to St. Helena, the following year, and the island shared in the civil wars of the Don Miguel period, until the accession of Donna Maria.

The inhabitants of this place were the descendants of English and French Roman Catholics, and native Portuguese. The clergy were exceedingly rich ; and the essentials of religion were very little observed.

As far back as the late 1700s, whaling ships from New Bedford, Massachusetts, visited Madeira for supplies and to hire skilled crews for long whaling voyages. Whale ships returning to New Bedford brought the Madeiran sailors with them, and many settled in the area. Today, New Bedford has the largest population of people with Madeiran ancestry in the United States.

Because of this connection to Madeira, New Bedford is home to the largest Portuguese feast in the world. The Feast of the Blessed Sacrament is an annual four-day event that begins with the Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament, a medieval rite of devotion, followed by a parade that lasts two and a half hours. Traditional Portuguese food is served and music is performed.

One of the most unusual Portuguese immigration stories involves a group of religious exiles from Madeira (Portuguese islands in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Morocco) who settled in Illinois in the 1850s. In 1838, a Scottish physician and Protestant minister on his way to China stopped on one of the islands to recover from a sudden illness. Upon recuperating, he stayed, converting hundreds of islanders to Protestantism. Having become alienated from the vast majority of the Catholics in the islands, these dedicated converts (numbering about 1,000) moved to the British island of Trinidad off the northern coast of South America in 1846. After three years in this new location, the exiles found that they were unable to adjust to the tropical climate and the plantation working conditions.

When the plight of these Protestant exiles received wide publicity in the United States, people in the vicinity of Springfield, Illinois, encouraged and assisted them in relocating to their midwestern, prairie community. The first of these immigrants arrived in 1849 and by 1855 the group was well established in the area.

Though long and widely celebrated for its climate, its scenery, and its wine, as a health station this resort was brought within general reach by the fast and comfortable steamers of the Cape lines.