Densho Digital Archive - Bob Santos Interview I (denshovh-sbob

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TI: So this is all in the '20s, and you were born in '34, so before we get later on in his life, let's talk a little bit about your mother now.

BS: Okay.

TI: So what was your mother's name, and where did she come from?

BS: Okay. Virginia Nicol, N-I-C-O-L, Virginia Nicol was born in Nanaimo, Canada. That's on Vancouver Island, just an hour drive north of Victoria. Beautiful area, if you've ever been to Nanaimo.

TI: Yeah, I have, because that's a large terminal for the ferries, so you go to Tsawwassen, to Nanaimo, I think, and things like that. Right.

BS: Right, the ferry terminal. Yes. And it was several large timber mills there and lumber mills, and that's where my grandfather, Virginia's dad, Cornelio Nicol from the Philippines, settled in Nanaimo, Canada. He didn't come to Seattle. He was one of the very few Filipinos who went to Nanaimo, Canada. We could never trace his name, Nicol, the Nicol family in the Philippines. Couldn't find whether there's a Nicol family and it was always a question mark, what tribe did he come from? And a couple years ago Sharon Tomiko and I drove up to, drove up to the ferry up in Vancouver and took the ferry over to Nanaimo, and the front street when you drive into Nanaimo from the ferry depot, "Nicol." Now, Nanaimo leaders didn't, didn't name their street after my grandpa. Grandpa was running from something, somebody, and he changed his name. So we figured he didn't come to Seattle like most Filipinos; he went up to Canada, I think to hide. And so, "Ah, that's my name," so he changed his name to Nicol. And he married, he married a woman that was part French Canadian and part Native Canadian, Indian, and while in Nanaimo, of course, Sharon, a history sort of major, she starts checkin' out this family, and she finds out that Virginia's grandfather came from Quebec, a guy named LeBeouf. He comes to the Northwest, he comes to British Columbia from Quebec, and he meets a woman, a beautiful woman, Native woman from Alaska named Mary. We don't know her last name. So their children, Caroline is my great-grandmother, and Caroline's daughter, Adeline, her daughter was my (grandmother).

TI: Well, so your grandmother's name was what then?

BS: Adeline.

TI: Adeline.

BS: My grandmother's name was Adeline, and my great-grandmother was Caroline. So the lineage comes from Quebec and Alaska to British Columbia to Nanaimo to Seattle.

TI: Okay, so we have Virginia Nicol up in Nanaimo, so how does she meet your father?

BS: That's what, I guess when the climate was a little bit cooler Grandpa figured he could come, come down to Seattle. And he had two daughters, Virginia and Antonia, and they were, they must've been in elementary school when he moved to Seattle, moved from Nanaimo to Seattle. So some of the photos -- and he, what he did was he moved from Nanaimo to Bainbridge Island in the very early '20s -- and some of the photos that my mom kept, she's about six, seven years old in those classroom, those class photos in Bainbridge. And they went to the schools in Port Blakely. That's where she grew up, next to the lumber, the timber mill in Port Blakely. There was a large timber mill there. That's, the family grew up in that area. A lot swimming. And for some reason, during the later '20s, it must've been, it must've been nineteen, mid 1920s when Grandpa decided to bring the girls to Seattle to go to school, Broadway High School and then to University of Washington. Of course, they all ended through that way.