Oldtimers in Santo Ant‹o, a small dairy town near the southeastern tip of the Azorean island of S‹o Jorge, recall how young villagers wanting to leave home would build huge bonfires on the cliffs to hail ships bound from Europe to New York.

A century ago, "that's the way a lot of [immigrants] came to this country," said Tomales rancher Tomas Nunes, who emigrated from Santo Ant‹o fairly recently, in 1968. The attitude on the ships, Nunes said, was "as long as you have the money to pay, come on board."

Others left by subterfuge. Historian Paulo Melo of Angra do Heroismo on Terciera Island explained how some Azoreans, broke and desperate, packed themselves into barrels to be loaded onto sailing ships.

Typically, the hungry stowaways would present themselves three or four days out to sea. "Some of them would get beaten up," Melo said. "Some of them would have to work on the boat."

In fact, Melo's elderly neighbor, who has since returned to the island, got off Terciera precisely that way 70 years ago. Upon showing himself at sea, Melo said with understatement, "they gave him a spanking."

The ships, of course, were the only way off. The Azores (there pronounced ah-ZORZSH) is a nine-island archipelago spreading over 390 miles of the Atlantic Ocean and not very close to anywhere. Although an autonomous region of Portugal, the Portuguese-speaking Azores at their easternmost point are 900 miles from Lisbon. To the west - where islanders started heading in the 1860s - New York is 2,300 miles away.

Jo‹o Fontes, 72, a resident of Faj‡ dos Vimes on S‹o Jorge Island, told The Light at his home that his grandfather, Jorge Fontes, hopped aboard a sailing ship the very day his mother forbade him from going the United States.

Defying his mother's decision, Jorge Fontes, a dock worker, persuaded a ship's captain to let him stow away, said grandson Jo‹o (the name is Portuguese for John and pronounced Zhwawng, with sort of a swallowed "g"). Jo‹o is first cousin to Mary, Carolyn, and Bernadette DeSouza, three sisters who formerly lived in Olema.

For others, it wasn't so easy. Upon emigrating from S‹o Miguel Island, Jess and Mary Tacherra, parents of Bolinas rancher Jess Tacherra, had to work for years in Hawaii before settling in California, their ultimate destination.

The Hawaiian detour was common enough. Young Azoreans, often with families but almost always flat broke, spent years in the cane fields, working off their debt from the Atlantic passage.

"It was like treading water," said their grandson Ernie Tacherra of Bolinas. His grandparents, Ernie said, were caught in a form of "slavery." They arrived in California nearly 10 years after leaving home. It might have been longer had not Mary Tacherra's uncle, who lived in Massachusetts, retired some of the debt.

To the outsider, the Azores don't seem like a place people would be quick to leave. After being discovered by Portuguese navigators in the 15th Century (probably Diego

de Silves in 1427), the fertile, volcanic islands whose name derives from "blue," were variously fought over by pirates, the Spanish, the French, and the Portuguese, who with troops finally settled the question of sovereignty between 1829 and 1832.

At various times, the islands have exported wool, fish, dyes, wine, whale-oil, dairy products, and fruit - particularly oranges, which by the mid-18th century were being sent by the orchard-full to Great Britain.

But then the British starting looking elsewhere for oranges, ending what's commonly called the islands' "orange period," said historian Melo. At the time, many islanders, with little formal education and diminished prospects, started moving on.

Overpopulation had also become a major problem. Almost all Azoreans were (and still are) Roman Catholic, and almost all families were huge. Families with 10 to 15 children were typical; 20 children was not unheard of.

Tomales rancher Tomas Nunes and his wife Rosalia, who both came from Santo Ant‹o, said the problems that prompted Azoreans to emigrate a century ago contin

ued as late as the 1960s.

"No opportunities," said Tomas Nunes plainly. "You make a living, but that's it."

Added his wife Rosalia, "If you didn't want to be a priest or a doctor, there was nothing else to do."

Azoreans started appearing in California soon enough. Melo cited scholars who noted that the 1860 census found 121 Azoreans in the state. In 1870, there were 443. By 1890, there were 2,587.

Most of West Marin's Azorean immigrants left the islands around the turn of the century. However, the earliest immigrants in Marin County, where they and their descendants were known as Portaghees, populated Southern Marin - Sausalito, Tam Valley, Muir Woods, and Muir Beach - beginning in the 1870s.

Most of West Marin immigrants came from S‹o Jorge, the scenic, sliver-like centerpiece of the archipelago. A few came from the islands of S‹o Miguel, Pico, Graciosa, Terceira, Flores, and Faial. It's possible that no West Marin families can trace themselves back to the other two islands, Santa Maria and Corvo.

Among the first known Azoreans here was Jo‹o Machado Azevedo, who left his home in Ribeira Seca on S‹o Jorge in 1883.

Eighteen years old at the time, Azevedo sailed to Boston and took a train to Marin County, where he worked briefly on the Miller Ranch in Ignacio. Subsequently he milked cows on the Wilkins ranch in Bolinas before joining up with a brother-in-law in a dairy business in Jewell.

In 1895, Jo‹o Azevedo - known here as John - married Maria (Americanized to Mary) Espirito Santo Gomes, who had immigrated from Faj‡ dos Vimes on S‹o Jorge. The couple started a dairy business and a family on Vision Ranch atop Inverness Ridge.

They returned to Vision Ranch after a four-year stay in Novato, then finished out their lives on dairies in Tomales and Fallon. The Vision Ranch returned to Portuguese hands in 1924, when Manuel Leal

- father of Nicasio resident Grace Farley and grandfather of Light typesetter Cat Cowles - leased it from the Oscar L. Shafter estate.

Like other groups of immigrants, the Azoreans at first stuck together, mostly marrying within the Portuguese community. Not only did the Azevedos and the Leals share the Vision Ranch, they were extended family.

Leal's father, also named Manuel Leal, immigrated to Sausalito in 1881 when he was 13. His mother, Mary Ferreira Cunha, was born in Sausalito to immigrant parents.

Nicasio's Grace Farley nŽe Leal, said both her parents, although American-born, learned to speak Portuguese fluently from their parents. By speaking Portuguese, parents sometimes tried to talk about topics that weren't meant for children's ears.

"If they wanted to talk about us, they talked in Portuguese," said Farley, one of six Leal girls. With a chuckle, she said she and her sisters often heard the same phrase, which they figured meant "the oldest one," and concluded that the complaints centered on the eldest sister Georgia.

Farley's mother, Rose Sousa, was the granddaughter of Antone DeSousa, an immigrant who left S‹o Jorge in 1877. (One of DeSouza's sons changed his surname back to the Portuguese "Sousa" while his other children kept "DeSouza." Hence some

descendants are Sousas and some are DeSouzas.)

Families such as the DeSouzas, Leals, Azevedos, Gomeses, and Moredas alighted on points throughout West Marin: Inverness Ridge, Olema, the Bolinas Ridge, Tomales, and Chileno Valley.

Others gravitated toward more-concentrated Portuguese communities. The majority of Azorean immigrants became dairymen on the Point Reyes peninsula or moved to the southern Olema Valley and Bolinas.

Joseph Mendoza, the first in a line of three successful dairymen with the name, emigrated from S‹o Jorge in 1899 and became one of the most prominent and respected ranchers on Point Reyes. His son (Joe) and grandson (Joey) still operate a dairy on B Ranch, which the family sold to the Park Service in 1971.

Next door at A Ranch is George Nunes, grandson of another immigrant from S‹o Jorge and son of Tessie Nunes nŽe Mendoza, a daughter of the original Joseph Mendoza.

Other Azorean names on Point Reyes over the years include: DeFraga, Pedrosa, Amador, Regallo, Avila, Lacerda, Martins, Paulino, Machado, Ladera, Ferreira, and Lopes.

Creating a Little Azores from Dogtown south to Bolinas have been families like Silveira, Teixeira, DeFraga, Vieira, Mattos, Terra, Silva, Afonso, Sequeira, Tacherra, Brazil, Sousa, and Francisco.

(Separate stories in this series provide more details about Azorean immigrants on Point Reyes and in Bolinas)

Wherever the Portuguese settled in West Marin, their numbers grew, noted historian Dewey Livingston of Point Reyes Station. "If you could put all the family names on a map, there were certain periods of time - say, between 1900 and 1920 - when the Portuguese dominated West Marin."