José d'Almeida and his family legacy

This is the third and final post on José d'Almeida, a Portuguese pioneer of Singapore. Part 1 describes d'Almeida's life prior to arriving in Singapore in 1825, while Part 2 examines how he and his family flourished after that.

Part of the gravestone of José d'Almeida, now on a wall at Singapore's Fort Canning Park

D’Almeida is said to have had at least 19 children with two wives (the first, Macau-born Rosalia Vieira Ribeiro de Sousa, passed away in 1838 and he then married Maria Isabel Nunes in Singapore the same year). As was sadly common in those days, many did not survive childhood, although his first two children, Joaquim (born 1811) and José (born 1812), both grew up to join his trading company. The two brothers would play an active role in the Singapore Botanic Gardens, a UNESCO Heritage Site, after its founding in 1859. 

Joaquim first married in 1838, likely before his mother’s passing, but also the same year that his father remarried. After his father passed away in 1850, Joaquim was appointed to take over the role of Portuguese Consul General to the Straits Settlements. He passed away in London in 1874.

José the son also married twice, and passed away in Singapore in 1894. He lived at Mount Victoria (in reality a hill) and a street there was named Almeida Road after him. Mount Victoria itself is now known as Balmoral Park and Almeida Road does not exist anymore, leaving only the original D’Almeida Street in the historical centre that was named after José the father.

Julia, a daughter who passed away at age 20 in 1852

There were also at least 10 daughters, many of whom married well given the prominence of the family: husbands included a property agent, a lawyer, the partner of a trading company, and even the Deputy Superintendent of the Hong Kong police.

Over the years, d’Almeida's descendants, increasingly Anglicized and also in part Eurasian through children with both Chinese and Malay partners, continued to be a fixture of Singapore society until the Japanese occupation during the Second World War. Most moved during and after the war to the UK and Australia, although d’Almeida’s great-great-great granddaughter Linda Locke and her family still live in Singapore today. Interestingly, Locke’s family tree includes a famous great grandaunt, Agnes Joaquim. A Singapore-born Armenian originally known as Ashkhen Hovakimian, Joaquim created around 1890 what is known as the Vanda Miss Joaquim orchid. The first hybrid plant to be registered in Singapore, the beautiful orchid was chosen to be Singapore’s national flower in 1981. Its hybrid nature was meant to symbolize Singapore's multicultural society, which has a little-known but historically important Portuguese contribution.

Along with that of José d'Almeida himself, the tombstones of six of his children can still be found today at the former Fort Canning Cemetery. Aside from daughter Julia who lived until the age of 20, the other five children who are memorialized here all died very young.

Family photo of grandson Frederico George d’Almeida and Maria Grace Pereira (married 1891)