BRAZIL: American Town

The dusty, backlands Brazilian hamlet of Estaçäo de Santa Barbara was just a whistle stop on the Paulista Railroad until two foreigners arrived there in 1868. The foreigners were Colonel William H. Norris and his son Robert, unreconstructed U.S. rebels from Oglethorpe, Ga. Heartsick at the South’s defeat, they had listened with interest to tales of Brazil, a vast country where slavery was still a respected institution and a gentleman planter could work his lands in peace and dignity.

The Norrises liked what they saw around Santa Barbara. It was hot country, but without the debilitating humidity of Rio. The rolling hills were forested, and the promise of water was everywhere. The Norrises sent for their family. In the next six months, some 80 other American families joined them, and by 1894, the area was so thoroughly American that paulistas took to calling it Villa Americana, a name which the state of Sao Paulo later made official.

Although their lands were soon surrounded by coffee plantations, the Americans stuck to such familiar crops as cotton and melancia americana (watermelon). Hard work brought prosperity. Over the years the settlers intermarried with Brazilians and gave up their U.S. citizenship.

Except for the names on the Protestant cemetery’s moss-covered tombstones, little now remains to show that the town was settled by Americans. Of the descendants of the original settlers, only the family of Dr. James R. Jones, a young dentist-farmer, clings to the old ways. “Doutor Jaime,” his black-haired wife Judith (nee McKnight) and their two children still speak English at home; Doutor Jaime’s brother, who married an Italian girl, speaks it only haltingly, “because I have no practice of it.”

Last week Americana (the “villa” was officially dropped in the 19303), now a snug and thriving little (pop. 10,000) industrial town, opened a new $6,500,000 hydroelectric plant to power its mills, synthetic fertilizer factories, distilleries and farm-machinery assembly plant. Dr. Jones, who is also a city councilman, was one of those on hand to greet Sao Paulo’s beefy, ambitious Governor Adhemar de Barros and the planeload of federal officials who flew in for the inauguration of the power plant.