Kerry Alley of Oak Bluffs sees a parallel between some of the hardships being experienced by Brazilians on the Vineyard these days, and those of a century ago when the Portuguese arrived on the Vineyard. “There were a lot of them,” Mr. Alley said of the earlier immigrants. “They did all the work nobody else would do.

“They faced some of the same prejudices.”

Mr. Kerry gave a talk about his family’s proud heritage, and about the American Portuguese culture on the Vineyard to a gathering of Martha’s Vineyard Center for Living on Saturday. It was one in a series of luncheons at The Grill on Main, and an opportunity to raise money for the nonprofit. The Saturday afternoon chicken dinner included kale soup with Portuguese music in the background.

Mr. Alley, 73, is a familiar face on the Vineyard. In 2003, Mr. Alley received the much-respected Spirit of the Vineyard Award, an award given by Hospice of Martha’s Vineyard, for his significant contributions in the community. He is active as cochairman of the Red Stocking Fund, on the board of the Martha’s Vineyard Permanent Endowment, and volunteers for Vineyard Village at Home and other organizations.

Mr. Alley began working for the Edgartown School as a teacher in 1963. He retired in 1994 after serving 25 years as a guidance counselor in the Tisbury School.

But this afternoon, Mr. Alley spoke nothing of himself, but of cheerfully growing up in Oak Bluffs on Vineyard avenue under the love of family with riches not measurable. He referred to Vineyard avenue as the “epicenter of Portuguese culture on the Island.” He traced his family presence on the Vineyard back generations.

“Three of my four great-grandparents immigrated from the Azores,” Mr. Alley began his talk. The men moved to the Island with the last name of Medeiros.

What drew the smiles of the audience was his story going back to how Medeiros became Alley for a lot of his relatives.

“Dominges, who was my great-grandfather, remained in Oak Bluffs. He made a living as a fish monger, peddling fish around the town. He wheeled a cart around town and would yell the name of the fish he was offering. At the time one of the popular fish was halibut. In his broken English, when he yelled halibut ... it became Alley-but.”

“When I was born, it was still legally Medeiros. But back in the 1940s, everyone changed the name to Alley. It is a good thing they did, or all those summer tourists up in West Tisbury today would be walking around wearing Medeiros General Store T-shirts,” Mr. Alley said.

He spoke of his grandparents Antone H. Alley and Norann (Anne) Duffy Alley. She was Irish, hence as a grandson he got the first name Kerry.

In the late 1800s there was an exodus of Azoreans. Some went to California, Mr. Alley said, many went whaling, or to New Bedford, Fall River and Providence to work in the textile mills. They left the Azores for two principal reasons: first, over-population on the distant islands. Families were made up of many children, and ownership of land was usually divided up and passed out to all the children. so, there wasn’t enough land available for all the generations. The second reason, he explained, had to do with the Portuguese government’s need for soldiers. “Many left to avoid the draft,” Mr. Alley said.

While serving in the military was an honorable deed, Mr. Alley said that Portugal had many colonies. The thought of being sent to serve the empire out in Africa or as far away as China was last to be desired.

Mr. Alley said there were quite a few Azoreans in the whaling trade. He said the Portuguese who moved to Edgartown were absorbed quickly in that town. The last name of Norton was assumed by one man from the Azores, only for the simple reason he had worked on a whaleship that was captained by a Norton, Mr. Alley said. There was a group of Portuguese fishermen who owned a fleet of catboats in the Edgartown harbor. They fished in the off-season and would clean up their boats to take summer residents off to the Chappaquiddick bathing beaches.

Mr. Alley spoke of his relatives as being highly religious, of attending church regularly, and of being connected in family ways. But the greater legacy of the family was the way his relatives integrated into the family.

Mr. Alley said that when he stood on his porch he could look down Vineyard avenue and find many, many neighbors who did good things for the town. His grandfather, Antone, was a selectman and county commissioner. Kerry Alley’s brother became a fire chief. Across the neighborhood there were members of the Portuguese community who worked in many offices of town hall in different departments; ran different car and vehicle repair businesses; and many were shopkeepers.

Of the many people he mentioned, Mr. Alley spoke of state representative Joseph A. Sylvia, who went from owning the Ocean View to being a selectmen and then later was a state representative. The state beach between Edgartown and Oak Bluffs is named for him.

But on a darker side, Mr. Alley compared the troubles encountered now by the Brazilian community to the Portuguese who immigrated in the late 1880s. He read from a letter to the editor published in the Martha’s Vineyard Herald in June of 1882. The letter writer complained that “the town was filling up with Portuguese, who are buying tracks of land in the suburbs and are building little homes. They are crowding out the other laboring classes.”

For his talk Mr. Alley read from a number of sources, including interviews and research done through the years. He quoted from an old article his son Chris had written years ago and an interview done with his mother, Elizabeth, by Linsey Lee.

The Martha’s Vineyard Center for Living informational luncheons series will continue with a talk about whaling wives to be given by Cynthia Riggs later this spring.