[from Brooklyn district:] “Another interesting street meeting was held Sept. 19th, when Mr. Rocha from the Hawaiian Islands was one of the speakers. He told of the wonderful work that is being done by the missionaries in Hawaii and asked the people to open their doors to the elders, for their great desire is to bring the glad message of peace and goodwill to all mankind. He desired the people to learn to appreciate the sacrifice the ‘Mormon’ missionary makes for his religion.”

I suppose Scott got the date right–”sometime in the early 1960s” is as close as I am to a date, and I’ll take a look at my City Saints book to check it. I may also give the stake patriarch a call and get his confirmation.

And that’s great news about the Rocha family. How pleased they must be to learn of their father’s/grandfather’s early connection to the church.

And, I’ll let you know what my friend discovers on his trip here next week.

I do have one wonderful correction to make to the original post, though: This morning I received an answer to a comment I left on one of the genealogical bulletin boards, from a granddaughter of Marcy (who used Marshall in adulthood). Olga (the younger Rocha daughter), and my correspondent’s mother (a daughter of Rocha’s older son Marcy) did join the Church in later life! The family, according to my correspondent, has heard nothing about John Rocha’s connection to the missionaries in Hawaii, or his speaking up for the Church in Brooklyn, and she tells me that this story will be of great interest to her mother and to more distant Mormon family members. (I can imagine how unexpected and how pleased I would be to learn of this unexpected connection in the life of one of my non-Mormon family branches.)

I got the 1962 sale date from a timeline in Scott Tiffany, ed., City Saints: Mormons in the New York Metropolis (New York: New York New York Stake LDS History Committee, 2004). Does that date agree with your understanding, or do we need something else to confirm it?

There will be another post — probably more — about this building in the weeks to come, including an account of its dedication, and some of the activities held there. And I’d *LOVE* to come for your anniversary celebration there, Mark!

(If anyone else has an attachment to a particular building that is old enough that I might run across it in the kinds of records I read, please say so. I can’t guarantee to find stories set there, of course, but if I do see a story that has a personal connection to any Keepa readers, I certainly want to grab it.)

Let us know how it goes with your friend’s pilgrimate to his father’s old home, and whether the younger teacher is your friend’s father.

Now, all I want is copies of the Brooklyn Chat. Both the original one that sparked Mr. Rocha’s letter, and the one in which the letter was published. Plus anything else you’ve found. By the way, where did you get the 1962 sale date?

On a related subject, an old mission friend called today, and said he would be in New York next week. One thing he wanted to do was to go over to Nostrand Avenue, to take a photograph of the house where his father, a young German immigrant, lived after arriving in the U.S. in 1929, until about seven years later when he and his family moved west to Utah. A quick trip to google maps showed the address to be just a block off Gates Avenue, and Franklin, where the church was, is just two blocks down from Nostrand. I could almost imagine this German family walking the block down to Gates, and then the two blocks west to Franklin to join with their fellow saints for worship. They would have felt right at home–the Brooklyn Branch in those days was full of German immigrants, and a few stray Norwegians, including some guy named Haakon–did I spell that right, Kristine?–(maybe he was living elsewhere by then, but in the district/stake leadership so he still made it down to Brooklyn regularly).

A quick look through my Brooklyn Ward Chapel 21st anniversary book showed a boy of the same surname being sustained as the teacher’s quorum secretary in 1935 or 35–I’ll have to wait until next week to find if that’s the father of my friend.

I”m planning to have a 100th year anniversary celebration at the building in just 10 years and a few months. Maybe you should plan to come, Ardis. With this story as a starting point, you could tell us all the history of the building. We just need to get the stake presidency on board–not a problem, I expect–and hope that our stake patriarch, who may be the last person in Brooklyn who actually went to church in that building, will still be with us then. Oh, and we need to get the current owner of the building to agree to let us use the building for at least part of the celebration. If we can’t get a member of the twelve to come, maybe we could get a Republican senator from Utah to make the trip up from Washington.

By the way, Google Maps street view pulls up a fine picture of the building. Google locates no. 272 Gates Avenue across Franklin Avenue from the church–click just to the west of Franklin, on Gates, and go to street view. The church is the white building on the corner–just to its west is the red brick home that was the Eastern States Mission Home.

John Edward Rocha, born 26 December 1876 in Portugal (probably the Azores), son of Manuel and Elzida Rocha. Married, about 1905, Hawaii:

Mary Carvalho, born 23 November 1887, Hawaii.

Children:

Marcy/Marcia/Marseillaise, born 16 January 1906, Hawaii.

Cecilia, born 22 November 1909 (although her gravestone reads 22 November 1915, the 1910 and 1920 censuses confirm 1909 as the correct year), Hawaii; married — Clark; died 4 May 1990; buried National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific.

Olga, born 29 August 1911, Hawaii; married — Crow.

Harold, born 2 November 1913, Hawaii.

The family may have moved to California in 1921.