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Bruce Curley4210 Candice Drive

Mt. Airy, MD 21771

We got vacation time once a year for one or two weeks. I went down to Rio. I went tothe library down there because I read someplace that that is where they had some materialon the Irish in Brazil. So I decided to check it out. I went to the library in Rio de Janeiro.Actually the library is the archive, but they call it the library. I remember doing that. Therewas a nun, (possibly Anne Marion Galllagher), they're from New York and she was doingsome research. I think she put me on to the Irish material and sure enough I called for thefile and I got it.

There was a name O'Brien. This visit occurred in the 1950s. There were otherthings besides O'Brien stuff there. The O'Brien material had been taken from Spain orPortugal when Brazil became separated from Portugal. They brought over from Portugalthe archives that had been in Portugal, that pertained to Brazil and that's how they got

there. They were originally probably in Spain or Portugal.These two countries had been united at different times and when Brazil became

separated from Portugal they brought the archives, the library archives over to Brazil.Now Rio de Janeiro was the capital at this time after Brazil and Portugal becameseparated. Before they became separated the capital was Bahia, located in the northeast ofBrazil. The Bahians were very unique people, mostly of black origin (former slaves) andsome white. They're really active people.

The Portuguese landed in Bahia north of Brazil and gradually worked their waydown until they got to Argentina. They went to Argentina at that time. When they gotdown to the bottom that's when they stopped because there was the dividing line. ThePope or somebody fixed it so they wouldn't fight over what land belonged to whom. The

Portuguese got that part of Brazil that stuck out. The Spanish got the part down at thebottom, Argentina and everything else. They also got the western part, Peru and Chile, allthat part. Anyway that's the way it was.

O'Brien found the Dutch in the Amazon and they took him back to Holland. Hemet a priest there and then he went back to Brazil. In a report he said his family ownedseveral castles. That's probably what they're talking about. He said that the O'Brien fromso and so of Thurman.

Languages that Martin spoke at one time - Latin, Portuguese, Spanish knew someGerman, a lot of French and of course English. He did not speak Gaelic. When his fatherleft Ireland, at that time it was against the law to speak Gaelic. His father left from Thurlisin Tipperary in a place called Gut na hue in the '20s. It's unknown why he left.

Why will Martin not eat English muffins? The English where not interested inIreland. They killed all the Irish they could, so why should he buy muffins that's sayEnglish, when there's all sorts of muffins. I have the choice and I make it.

I pulled the files. The cabinet was a little file of what they had in the whole libraryand I said I want this one. I got the number and I brought a whole list to her. She wentand got them all. I said, "I can't read this now. I want this sent to New York to me and Igot it.

My father lived in Maspeth, Long Island, and Queens. I couldn't possibly handlethat material where I was because of duties and no electricity - which was 0. The place

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was on the border of Mottogrosso. Mottogrosso is here and Goias is here. I was about 10miles from Mottogrosso. This material should be saved. This was history. This isimportant. I never heard of it before so I figured I'd get it.

They had Irish names and I was sure they were Irishmen and I said well get it,because I had read one time in a book that there was some Irish in other places, but thatwas 1800 in this is 1600, 200 years before. I ended up using my dissertation in CatholicUniversity, which was about the Irish in Brazil - 1862 to 64 - whenever. The dissertationwas the Irish in Brazil in the 1800s.

It was about a colonel, named Cotter, William Cotter. He was the boss because hewas from Ireland, but he was a Protestant from Ireland, from County Cork. He broughtover these ex-Irish soldiers that had been in the wars, the Napoleonic wars in Portugal.The English recruited Irish men as much as they could and they used to them in their battleagainst the French. One of the battles was the Peninsula Wars -Iberian Peninsula. Cotterwent there and got hurt there, lost his leg or something. He finally got killed there.

But before he got killed he also was wounded. He brought over the Irish to Brazilbefore he went over there again. He went back there and also brought German soldiers.

The English were in Brazil because they had relations with Brazil. They wanted

to make sure that Brazil was pro English. So when Brazil had a problem and neededsoldiers to protect the emperor, Don Pedro, they said we'll help you. They got theIrishmen and Germans and they came down there. The English were using Brazil to makefriends with these guys so they could have their commerce. They weren't interested inBrazil as Brazilian, but they saw Brazil as a great market in the future.

The Portuguese in the old days kept the English out. Now Brazil is separatedfrom Portugal because they had a revolution and Don Pedro needed some help therebecause the Brazilians didn't want him in there. In order to keep them at bay the Englishprovided some soldiers to help Don Pedro. Irish and German soldiers, also maybe someother people. That's the way the English were.

They had a fight in Rio around 1826. That's possible and that's when they have the

revolt and when they had that revolt the Germans and Irish protected the castles.Wherever the king was he needed protection. They used foreign troops. They wouldn'tuse Brazilian troops because they were against him; they wanted to get rid of him. Hewas under siege because he was connected to Portugal. His father had been king inPortugal and so they gave him Brazil to keep it in the family. When the Brazilians wantedto get rid of him he couldn't depend upon the Portuguese so he brought in these foreigntroops.

The Irish troops never went back to Ireland. Some went to the north of Brazil,Bahia. I went up there and I found out where they used to live and the type of houses.They were strong and they used stone for a lot of the houses. Some of the Irish died there.I went to the records in Bahia. I checked the hospital records and you could see Irishnames and where they died. Not many intermarried but some probably did. You spottedthe names. I never could follow all the things.

I met a man from Bahia who was investigating that stuff and he wrote a little bookabout the foreigners who went to Bahia. When he found out that I was interested in theIrish there right away he contacted me and showed me what he had. I think I have a copyof his little booklet. To them, that was news. That was important to find out who wasinterested in Brazil because the Irish thought no one was interested in them. They talkabout the French and other people.

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O'Brien came from someplace in Thurman and they had three castles. He wasarrested and sent out of the country. He went to Holland and ended up on the ship thatwent to Brazil. That's why he went there. He had good contact with the Indians. HisGaelic made it easier to understand the Indians. He was strong and he was powerful andthey respected him. He spoke Gaelic and Gaelic had some link to the Indian language. Iread about some Irishmen who were involved with the Panama Canal and they wereemployed by an English company. The Indians made contact with the Irish.

The biggest snake I ever saw was a shookaree. It's at least 10 feet long and itcould swallow up a person if he were dead.

I was called Frei Cormaki.The Indians in the picture came from Mottogrosso and they visited Brazil. They

visited San Miguel because it's only about 10 miles from the border in the Aragwia River.They were from Mottogrosso and I think they came because they heard about Brazilia.They figured they were going to go and see it. This was before Brazilia was built, but theywere in the process of building it.

The picture is an onca, that is Jaguar. I didn't kill him. When someone is not yourtrue friend, he's a friend, but you have to be careful of the guy. He's not your true friend,

right? What do you call him? They call him "Amigo de onca", friend of the Tiger. Becauseyou see, instead of being your friend he helps the onca. He's not going to help you.

Another picture of alligator jaws.One thing that happened down there was we gave out rice because rice was the

principal food. Rice and beans were eaten all day long and when they got tired of themthey ate beans and rice. When I found that you could put a few rice kernels in the earth,they would grow to 10 or 20 times, we gave our these little sacks of rice and theyproduced 200 times the rice and that rice was used to build the church. We called it "TheRice of God". It wasn't my idea. It was someone else's idea. A man also from New Yorknamed Tom Fox.

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