History
The first record of the parish, which was named for one of the original inhabitants, dated August 7, 1590, came from a financial transaction between King Sebastian who sent the vicar 25 thousand reis (ostensibly for construction or furnishing of their church).
Pedro Miguel became a parish in 1666. In order to protect itself from surprise attacks by pirates that roamed the Canal, a small fort Forte Baixo was constructed in the 17th century.
In 1871, both a boy's and girl's school operated from Pedro Miguel, since the community was part of a greater district that included Ribeirinha and Praia do Almoxarife. A justice of the peace operated from this district, where the electoral assembly was also situated. The population had reached 1,757 inhabitants by this time.
During the 1998 earthquake, which hit affected the northern communities of the island, several houses were damaged and the parochial church was unusable.
Read more about this topic: Pedro Miguel
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“I am ashamed to see what a shallow village tale our so-called History is. How many times must we say Rome, and Paris, and Constantinople! What does Rome know of rat and lizard? What are Olympiads and Consulates to these neighboring systems of being? Nay, what food or experience or succor have they for the Esquimaux seal-hunter, or the Kanaka in his canoe, for the fisherman, the stevedore, the porter?”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The history of persecution is a history of endeavors to cheat nature, to make water run up hill, to twist a rope of sand.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“There is a history in all men’s lives,
Figuring the natures of the times deceased,
The which observed, a man may prophesy,
With a near aim, of the main chance of things
As yet not come to life.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)