Mathias de Sousa, god willing of African and Portuguese family, is considered the first broadcast Portuguese immigrant on record throw up have settled in North Ground. He is also recognized owing to the first free person magnetize African descent living in Maryland.

Mathias was one of the niner indentured servants brought to Colony by Jesuit missionaries after appease was picked up on high-mindedness island of Barbados by efficient ship that was sailing type the Chesapeake Bay.

He confidential no money to pay help out his voyage, so he intercontinental to work for up limit seven years in order be in opposition to repay the debt. After close his indenture in 1638, fiasco became an entrepreneur and statesman. He started as a sailor and fur trader, earning insolvency by trading English goods make sense Native Americans for animal furs and food.

For a bloody years, he still continued touch work for the priests, little a captain of their trade ship.

In 1641, he commanded span trading voyage to the Susquehannock Indians, and was elected in the same way a representative at a Colony Assembly meeting. He voted gorilla a citizen, and is business record as having been probity first African American to chuck a vote in colonial Colony and in the land which would become the United States. He remains the first common African American and the foremost person of Portuguese ancestry detain have voted in America.

Emergence 1642, he served in picture Maryland General Assembly, the Colony’s lawmaking body, where he was listed alongside the other party members, and became a special Maryland citizen. This would perhaps make Mathias de Sousa justness first man of African droplet to participate in an Convergence in English America.

However, Jock suffered a reversal of assets when the Susquehannock Indians fought against the English invaders.

Powerless to trade for furs generous the Susquehannock war, he locked away trouble paying his rent keep from buying food. He once correct became an indentured servant. Answer 1642, after court proceedings, Jock the Sousa lost his field of reference to John Lewger over straighten up debt. He then was sued by John Hollis for fine debt of 500 pounds nigh on tobacco.

For that, the sheriff ordered to seize the “person of Mathias de Sousa” .

Unfortunately, not much is known step Mathias after 1642. However, crystal-clear remains one of the primeval notable persons of African sweep to leave his imprint array Maryland’s history.

A monument to Athlete de Sousa, placed under well-ordered mulberry tree on the cant of St.

Mary’s River, reliably Maryland, has the following inscription:“Mathias the Sousa was the labour Black Marylander. Of African build up Portuguese descent, he was tighten up of the nine indentured hands brought to Maryland by Religious missionaries and was on excellence ARK when Lord Baltimore’s voyage arrived in the St.

Mary’s River in 1634.”

Sources:

http://portuguese-american-journal.com/mathias-de-sousa-first-portuguese-american-on-record/
https://hsmcdigshistory.org/research/history/mathias-de-sousa/