Book Reviews

Antonio de Mattos in 1856, soon after his arrival in central Illinois.

Portuguese on the prairie

Antonio de Mattos and the Protestant Portuguese Community in Antebellum Illinois

By David J. Langum, Sr.
2006, Morgan County Historical
Society, Jacksonville, Illinois
Cloth, 141 pages.
ISHS Members, $20, non-members
$25 plus applicable Illinois sales tax.

As a lifelong resident of Springfield I had heard occasional references to the Portuguese presence in central Illinois but had little idea of the size of their immigration or their history and impact on the communities where they settled. David J. Langum's book, Antonio de Mattos and the Protestant Portuguese Community in Antebellum Illinois, brings their story to light.

The immigrants came from Madeira, an island 500 miles southwest of Lisbon and 400 miles west of Morocco. Madeira had been under Portuguese control since its discovery in 1419 and, like Portugal, the state religion was Roman Catholicism. But during the 1830s Protestantism had been making inroads, principally due to the zeal of Scottish physician Robert Kalley. In 1845 a Portuguese Presbyterian Church was organized and among the deacons who were ordained was Antonio de Mattos, the central figure in this book.

Mattos had been born in Madeira's capital, Funchal, in 1822 to a family of considerable wealth and was given an excellent private education. In 1846 he went to Scotland for four years of theological study and it was during these years of his absence that the Protestant movement on Madeira endured severe harassment. A series of attacks by rioting Catholic mobs were accompanied by beatings and there was torture and even one or two murders. Soldiers helped the mobs loot houses after hundreds of Presbyterians fled to the caves and ravines in the nearby hills. As a result, the bulk of the Portuguese Protestants left the island in a wave of immigration.

The Madeiran Protestants originally went to the West Indies island of Trinidad, but the oppressive climate and labor conditions forced them to look to America. A host of volunteer efforts and financial support helped pave the way and by 1849 they began arriving in Springfield, Jacksonville, and Waverly. They petitioned the Free Church of Scotland to send Antonio de Mattos, a fellow Madeiran, to be their pastor and he arrived the following year.

He immediately reorganized the Free Portuguese Presbyterian Church and originally ministered to the new immigrants in all three of the communities. Membership grew and the Portuguese became a large and integral part of the populace. In Jacksonville a section of the city became known as "Madeira" and to the near northeast, outside of the city, a large area became known as "Portuguese Hill," a name that still appears on the DeLorme Atlas and Gazetteer maps of Illinois.

But the immigrants were not without doctrinal disagreements and many of the disputes that plagued other Protestant churches also became schismatic among them. These included areas such as predestination, free will and the nature of God's atonement. The most serious of the differences centered on re-baptism. Did the Portuguese baptized in Madeira by Catholic priests need to be baptized again by Presbyterian ministers to gain entrance to heaven? The argument was especially bitter between de Mattos and Robert Kalley, the same man who had led the original movement back home and had come to central Illinois. At one contentious meeting on the subject, a constable had to be called to restore order.

Antonio de Mattos left in 1870, returned to his birthplace to preach, and eventually ended up working as a translator for the American consul in Lisbon. With time the Portuguese in central Illinois, like other immigrant groups, became assimilated into the local communities.

Langum's account is based on extensive research and his book is an interesting read and a valuable contribution to the history of central Illinois.

—Stuart Fliege

Stuart Fliege of Springfield is chair of the ISHS Historical Markers Committee and the author of Tales and Trails of Illinois (University of Illinois Press, 2004).

Illinois Heritage 29