Introduction
Studies in Jamaica archæology and history naturally fall into three main groups: Aboriginal, Spanish and English.
Though, owing to the high form of civilization there attained, research has in Egypt revealed very full information concerning the condition of life in the Nile valley thousands of years before the Christian era, it has hitherto told us very little about the aborigines who inhabited Jamaica a little more than 400 years ago. How long they had been here when Columbus discovered the island no one can say for certain, though the thickness and extent of their middens, some thirty of which have been opened from time to time, offer evidence of value.
As in Hispaniola, the natives of Jamaica were ruled over by caciques or chieftains. The estimates of historians of the number of inhabitants in the West Indian islands differ widely. Las Casas says that the islands abounded with inhabitants as an ant-hill with ants, and puts them down at 6,000,000. But Peter Martyr gives but 1,200,000 to Hispaniola and, taking this as a guide, there would probably have been about 600,000 in Jamaica—or, roughly speaking, three-quarters of its present population. Not many were left when the English took the island in 1655.
Judged by the English standard, Indians are short in stature. The Arawâks of Guiana to-day are described as being of a red cinnamon in colour. The hair on the scalp is thick, long, very straight and very black. The features of the face are strikingly like those familiarly known as Chinese (Mongolian), and the expression is decidedly gentle. Physically they are weak, and life hardly ever exceeds fifty years. The natives of Jamaica—as a few skulls found from time to time testify—possessed, in common with other West Indian tribes, the peculiarity of tying boards on to the foreheads of their children in such a way that the skulls assumed and permanently retained an extraordinarily flat shape.
Peter Martyr, who heard it spoken, said that the language in the Greater Antilles was “soft and not less liquid than the Latin,” and “rich in vowels and pleasant to the ear.” Of words of West Indian origin, those most frequently in use in the English language are avocado (aguacate) pear, barbecue, buccaneer, canoe, Carib and its derivative cannibal, guava, hammock, hurricane, iguana, maize, manatee, pirogue, potato and tobacco.
Columbus has told us of a cacique of Cuba who believed in a future state dependent on one’s actions in this world, but Sir Everard im Thurn found nothing of the kind amongst the Indians of Guiana, and it is probable that Columbus’s guide from Guanahani (Watling Island) only partially understood the cacique, or that Columbus only partially understood his guide. Their houses were primitive alike in shape and construction. In Jamaica, they were probably circular, and were provided with walls of wattle work plastered with mud, and with a high-pitched roof of palm leaves; they probably had no windows. The Indians slept in hammocks. The weapons of the Arawâks of Jamaica and the other large islands consisted of darts and war clubs; but they apparently did not possess bows and arrows, which were the form of weapons preferred by the Caribs, and the use of which gave them a great advantage over their more peaceful foes.
Ornaments were more worn by the men than the women. Painting was the simplest form of ornamentation; the colours used being blue, black, carmine, white and yellow, derived from plants and earths. They wore necklets of hogs’ teeth and stone beads, crowns of feathers in their heads, aprons of palm-leaves or woven cotton, and bands round their arms and legs. Their chief occupations and means of living were hunting and fishing and agricultural pursuits with, in some cases, a certain amount of trading. As they required nothing more than canoes for travelling on the water, simple houses to live in, baskets for domestic purposes, hammocks for rest, rude weapons of the chase, and implements such as hatchets and chisels, earthen vessels, and a few ornaments and articles of dress, these, with a few crude rock-carvings, formed the sum total of their arts and manufactures.
In common with the other aborigines of the West Indies generally and with the natives of New Zealand and with all the nomad tribes of the new world from Patagonia to the Arctic circle, the Arawâks of Jamaica were, when discovered, without any knowledge of the metals as such. From their kitchen middens we know that they were great fish eaters.
Until 1895, but few remains had been discovered to testify to the existence of a tribe which not so very long ago lived by gathering the fruits of the land and sea of Jamaica. During that and the following years several collections of Indian remains were found.2 They are scattered fairly throughout the island, except curiously enough, the eastern end, and are thickly grouped in St. Andrew and Vere, in St. Ann, and in the west end of Westmoreland. They all supply objects similar in character and giving evidence of no very high advance in civilization or the arts; being considerably below those of Mexico and Peru. The objects consist for the most part of petaloid or almond-shaped polished celts of metamorphic or igneous rocks, found somewhat abundantly all over the island; circular or oval, shallow, unglazed bowls of baked pottery, with but crude ornamentation, used in the preparation of food, and some as mortuary vessels for the heads of their chiefs—found here and there in the caves and on the sites of dwellings; calcedony beads, hitherto found, curiously enough, only in Vere; stone and wooden images and rock-carvings and the rock-pictures; and a few shell and flint implements and mealing-stones rarely found.
It is to be regretted that many of the objects shown at an exhibition of native remains held at the Institute of Jamaica in 1895, following on the discovery of the Halberstadt cave, as well as others discovered later, should have been allowed to leave the island. Such things once lost can rarely be regained.
Some of the early Spanish historians—putting as they frequently did X for J—wrote the name of the island Xaymaca, but it appears in its present form as early as 1511 in Peter Martyr’s “Decades.” He called it Jamaica and Jamica. The island is unnamed in Juan de la Cosa’s map of 1500.
Its first appearance in cartography is on the map made by Bartolommeo Colombo, Columbus’s younger brother, to illustrate the admiral’s fourth voyage, where it is spelled Jamaicha. In Cantino’s map (1502–04) it appears as Jamaiqua: in Caneiro as Jamaiqua and in Waldseemüller’s map of 1507 as Jamaiana. In the so-called Admiral’s map of 1507 it appears as Jamaqua: the name does not appear in Ruysch’s map of 1508, but in the Ptolemaeus edition, Strasburg 1513, it is given as Jamaiqua, and in the Waldseemüller map of 1516 it is also Jamaiqua.
In the Maggiolo map of 1519 it is Jamaica, but in the Maggiolo map of 1527 it is Jamaicha: in Ribero’s “Antilles” of 1529 and in Mercator’s map of 1541 it is Jamaica: but in Herrera’s map of 1601, it goes back to the old form Xamaica, and as late as 1734 in Charlevoix’s “L’isle Espagnole,” it appears as Xamayca. Amongst Englishmen who wrote of it from personal knowledge immediately after the British occupation, Commissioner Butler (1655) wrote it Gemecoe and Gemegoe. Daniell (1655) calls it Jamico, Gwakin (1657) wrote it Jammaca, and General Fleetwood (1658) wrote it Jamecah.
Columbus on his return from his first journey was told by the natives when off Tortuga, that if he sailed in a certain direction two days he would arrive at Babeque, where he would find gold. Columbus mentions Babeque many times in his journals, but he never found it, at least under that name. The “Historie,” of 1571, identifies it with Hispaniola but this is doubted. Las Casas thought that it might refer to Jamaica.
In common with most other West Indian native names Jamaica has come to us through a Spanish source; and the native pronunciation was possibly something like Hâmîca. Several derivations have been given of the meaning of the word. The most extraordinary is that which seeks to connect it with James II. On Moll’s map of the island, published early in the eighteenth century, it is stated that it was first called St. Jago by Columbus, who discovered it, but that the name was afterwards changed to Jamaica, after James, Duke of York. In this connection it is somewhat sad to note that not one of the Greater Antilles retained the name given to it by Columbus. Española, Santiago and Juana, went back to their native Hayti, Jamaica and Cuba; and St. Juan Bautista became Porto Rico, but Hispaniola still survives to some extent and is the most convenient name for the island which contains two republics. Of the smaller islands, the names of Trinidad, Antigua, Dominica, Montserrat and Guadeloupe still remind us of their great discoverer.
James Knight, in the rough draft of his history of Jamaica (1742) in the British Museum, gives the following derivation of the word Jamaica: “In the original it was Jamajaco. Jamo in the Indian language is a country, and Jaco is water.”
John Atkins, in his “Voyage to the Guinea, Brazil, and the West Indies” (1737), says that “Jamaica was altered by King James, it being a compound of his name and ‘ca’ an island.” He was possibly not far wrong in regard to the “island.” The West Indian word for an island, cai (or the Biscayan word cay) is supposed to appear in Lucayos (Bahamas), “Men of the Island”; in the Caicos islands, and also in various cays or keys in the West Indies; albeit modern etymology makes cay or key the same word as the Welsh cae.
Long wrote in 1774 that “it is not improbable that Jamaica is a name of Indian extraction, perhaps derived from Jamacaru, the Brazilian name of the prickly pear, which overspreads the maritime parts of the south side, where the aboriginal Indian discoverers of this island might have first landed,” but this derivation has found no supporters among later writers.
Bryan Edwards, writing in 1793, says: “The early Spanish historians wrote the word Xaymaca. It is said to have signified in the language of the natives, a country abounding in springs.”
Bridges, who as a rule displays a more fertile imagination than Long without half his trustworthiness as a historian, says, writing in 1828: “In the speech of Florida, Chaübaan signified water and makia wood (Lescarbot, I.6, c.6). The compound sound would approach to Chab-makia; and, harmonized to the Spanish ear, would be Chamakia, or some such indistinct union of these two significant expressions, denoting a land covered with wood, and therefore watered by shaded rivulets, or, in other words, fertile.” This suggested origin has been usually adopted by later writers. Why Bridges sought in Florida the meaning of words of Jamaica, he does not explain. Carib and Arawâk are probably the only two languages which Columbus heard spoken in the Greater Antilles. Wood, in Arawâk, is ada; woods are in Arawâk konoko and in Carib eotch; and water is in Arawâk winiab (Hillhouse) or comiaboo (im Thurn), and in Carib tona.
Bryan Edwards points out that Fernando Columbus’s “Historie” states that the Indian name of Antigua was Jamaica, and he adds: “It is a singular circumstance that this word which in the language of the larger islands signified a country abounding in springs, should in the dialect of the Charaibs have been applied to an island that has not a single spring or rivulet of fresh water in it.” Until further research proves the contrary Jamaica must remain, what it truly is, the land of woods and streams.
Apart from the name of the island itself, there are few names of native origin left. These will be referred to in the body of the work as they occur.
There is some difficulty in discriminating between the native Indian and Spanish origin of West Indian names: and too great a faith in the laws of philology are apt to lead one astray. Placenames are not infrequently rather evolved in accordance with the rule of phonetics.
On this subject Long wrote: “From the resemblance which the language of these islanders bears in some respects to the Spanish, I am apt to suspect that many of their words have been altered by the Spanish mode of pronunciation, and the difficulty which the discoverers found in articulating and accenting them without some intermixture of their own patronymic. In some this is exceedingly obvious, where the letter b is used indiscriminately for v, agreeably to their idiom. This perversion may easily lead us to ascribe a Spanish or Moorish origin to the names of places, such as rivers, mountains, headlands, &c., which in fact are of Indian derivation. Thus the article gua, so commonly met with both in these islands and on the Southern continent, was often prefixed or appended to the Indian names of places and things; and even of their provincial caciques. Of the latter were Gua-rionexius, Gua-canarillus, Gua-naboa, and others. Of the former a vast multitude occurs, as Gua-nama, Xa-gua, Gua-há-gua, Camayá-gua, Aicayazá-gua, Má-gua, Nicará-gua, Verá-gua, Xará-guo, Gua-ríco, Ni-gua (Chigger), etc., which may seem to confound them with derivatives from the Spanish or Moorish word agua (water). So the terminations, ao, ana, coa, and boa or voa, as Manabax-ao, Cib-ao, Gu-ana, Magu-ana, Yagu-ana, Ligu-ana, Zav-ana (Savannah), Furac-ana (Hurricane), Caym-ana, Guaiac-ana (Guiacum), Haba-coa, Cuana-boa, and so forth. The names therefore occurring in our island of Liguana, Cagua, Tilboa, Guanaboa, Guadibocoa, and others of similar finals are with more propriety to be traced from the Indian than the Spanish dialect.”
With regard to the Spanish occupation of the island both history and archæology are almost as scantily supplied as in the case of the Arawâks.
It is estimated that when Jamaica fell into the hands of the English the population of the capital was half Spanish and Portuguese or their descendants and half slaves; but it is a curious fact that a negro is mentioned as holding the position of priest of the Roman Catholic church.
The more important islands of Cuba and Hispaniola, to say nothing of the rich mines of South America, offered greater attractions to the Spaniards than did Jamaica, where—then, as now—the field had to be ploughed before the harvest could be reaped. They utilized for their hatos, or pastures, the low-lying lands on the sea-coast, which had formerly been used by the native Arawâks for the cultivation of Indian corn and cassava.
Of these hatos the principal were, going from east to west, Morante (the name of which still lives in Morant Bay), Ayala (Yallahs), Lezama (where Mona now is), Liguanea (Lower St. Andrew), Guanaboa (the name of which still exists), Guatabaco (about Old Harbour), Yama (in Vere), Pereda (Pedro Plains), El Eado (behind Bluefields) and Cabonico (near Savanna-la-Mar).
They had settlements at St. Jago de la Vega (the present Spanish town, established in 1520), Puerto de Esquivella (Old Harbour, named after the first governor about 1501), Parattee (still bearing the same name), Oristan (Bluefield, named after a town in Sardinia then subject to the crown of Spain), Savanna-la-Mar, Melilla (in the north-west corner of St. James, named after a town on the coast of Barbary, then in the possession of Spain), Sevilla Nueva (St. Ann’s Bay), Chireras (Ocho Rios), Rio Nuevo and Hibanal (somewhere near Buff Bay).
Roads ran from Puerto Antonio westerly along the coast to Punta Negrilla, connecting their townships of Santa Anna, Melilla and Manteca. From Manteca a road ran southerly to where Savanna-la-Mar now is, and thence easterly to Old Harbour, and thence northerly to Santa Anna.
There are but scanty remains of Spanish masonry in the island; none of great importance. The “Columbian Magazine” in 1796 recorded that an old Spanish tavern, with laths of bamboo, was taken down to make way for Rodney’s statue, and the adjacent buildings, but there is, of course, no certain proof that this was Spanish work. The only known relic of Spanish Jamaica is the church bell from Port Royal now in the Institute of Jamaica.
Of their buildings in general, Sir Hans Sloane, who was here in 1687–88, only thirty-three years after the conquest, says that they were “usually one storey high, having a porch, parlour, and at each end a room, with small ones behind. They built with posts put deep in the ground; on the sides their houses were plastered up with clay or reeds, or made of the split trunks of cabbage trees nailed close to one another and covered with tiles or palmetto thatch. The lowness, as well as fixing the posts deep in the earth, was for fear their houses should be ruined by earthquakes, as well as for coolness.” It seems strange, according to modern ideas, to build a house one storey only for coolness; although one might do so for fear of earthquakes.
Long tells us that “a certain number of posts of the hardest timber, generally lignum vitæ, brazilletto, or fustick, of about 18 feet in length and 6 to 8 inches in diameter, being first well-seasoned and hardened in smoke, were fixed at proper distances to the depth of 2 or 3 feet in the ground; then a wall of brick, enclosing these posts, was carried up with very strong mortar to the plate, which was pinned with wooden spikes to the tops of the posts. The main rafters were small, but being of the like hard wood, and perfectly well-seasoned, were sufficiently strong; these were likewise pinned upon each other, and at their angle of intersection at top formed a crutch to receive the ridge pole. The smaller rafters were of the lesser ebony trees, stripped of their bark, hardened in smoke, notched at bottom, and being placed at the distance of about 18 inches from each other, were pinned to the plate. Athwart these on all rafters a stratum of the wild cane (Arundo Indica, bamboo species), previously smoked, was tied on by way of wattling with straps made of the bark of mahoe or mangrove trees. Upon these wattles some mortar was laid, to the thickness of about 4 inches; and the whole covered with large pantiles, well bedded in. The thickness of these roofs, from the outward shell or tile-covering to the ceiling within, was about 8 or 10 inches. A canopy of so solid a texture was certainly well contrived to shelter the inhabitants from the disagreeable effects of a vertical sun,” and accordingly it is found by experience that these old Spanish houses are much cooler than our modern ones covered with shingles. After regretting the failure to establish a manufacture of tiles, and the importation of North American shingles, Long goes on to say: “The chief error the Spaniards committed in their buildings was the placing their ground floors too low; these were nearly on a level with the surface of the earth out of doors, or at most raised only a few inches higher.” In his time there were, he tells us, upwards of fifty Spanish houses remaining in Spanish Town “very little the worse for time or weather.”
Of Spanish names given to towns and villages, St. Jago de la Vega (St. James of the plain) still survives in custom, although supplanted officially by Spanish Town. So also do Ocho Rios, Savanna-la-Mar (the plain by the sea) and Oracabessa; Esquivel became Old Harbour soon after the British occupation.
Of the Spanish names of rivers, many survive; the principal being Rio Alto (deep river), Rio Cobre (copper river), Rio Grande, Rio Minho, Rio Bueno (the good river), Rio Magno (the great river), Rio Novo (new river), Rio d’oro (golden river), Rio Pedro (Peter’s river). It is thought that Rio Pedro may be a corruption of Rio Piedra (stony river). The Rio Minho is said to have been named after a river in Portugal or, as Long says in another place, after some mine in the neighbourhood. It is thought by some that it should be Rio Mina, (the river by the mine). Others are named after rivers in Spain.
Amongst districts we have Santa Cruz (Holy Cross); as well as Pedro both in St. Ann and in St. Elizabeth. The former is said to have been named after Pedro Esquivel, the Spanish governor.
The following derivations of Spanish names in Jamaica are given by Long. Notes by the present writer are added between square brackets:
Auracabeza. Aura, air or breeze; Cabeza, head or high land. [This is now Ora Cabessa in St. Mary. Others derive it from Oro Cabeza, the golden head.]
Alta Mela. Deep Gap. (Alta Mela, Savannah, St. James.)
Agua Alta Bahia. Deep water Bay, corruptly Wag-Water. [Still known as Wag Water.]
Los Angelos. The Angels. [Angels in St. Catherine was the first terminus of the railway.]
Rio Bonito. The Pretty River.
Cabo Bonito. The Pretty Cape. [In St. Catherine.]
Cabarita Punta. Kid or Goat Point. [In Westmoreland, where there is a river of the same name; there is another Cabaritta Point in Old Harbour Bay, and a Cabaritta Island in Port Maria Harbour.]
Rio de Camarones. Perhaps from Gambaro, a crab, from the abundance of black crabs hereabouts.
Cobre Rio. Copper River, or Cobra Port, Snake River. [Still known as Rio Cobre.]
Caborido. Quasi Caba Arido, the dry or withered cape (part of Healthshire highlands.)
Carvil or Caravel Bahia. Caravela signifies a light round kind of a ship formerly used by the Spaniards.
Diablo Monte. Devil’s Mount. [Now called Mount Diavolo.]
Escondido Puerto. The hidden harbour. [In Portland; now called Turtle Crawle Harbour.]
Flora Ria. Flower River.
Fortaleza Punta. Fort Point. [On Blome’s map there are two in St. Ann.]
Gallina Punta. Hen Point. [Galina Point is in St. Mary.]
Guada Bocca. Guada, brook of water; boca, mouth.
Hoja Rio. River of leaves, now corruptly Riho Hoa. [Now called Rio Hoe.]
Jarisse Punta. Cross-bow or arrow, probably refers to some action with the Indians.
Javareen. Rustic expression, signifying a wild boar.
Lacovia. Quasi Lago-via, or the way by the lake. [A village in St. Elizabeth. Elsewhere Long suggests it may be a corruption of La agua via, the watery way. It was once in the possession of the Gladstone family.]
Liguanea. Lia-withe-guana, the name of an animal, probably one frequent in that part of the island. [That part of Lower St. Andrew, bordered by the Long Mountain, the St. Andrew Mountains and the Red Hills.]
Moneque or Monesca Savannah. Savannah of monkeys. [Now confined to the village of Moneague.]
Mari bona. Maria-buena, Mary the Good. [Maria Buena Bay is in Trelawny.]
Multi-bezon Rio. Multi, many; buzon, conduit.
Macari Bahia. Macari, a tile, such as is made for floors, which the Spaniards universally used here and probably manufactured them near this bay, the soil being proper for that purpose.
[Long adds as a footnote to Macari: “Or perhaps it may derive more properly from the Indian word Macarij (which signifies bitter), and allude to the tree commonly called the Majoe, or Macary-bitter which grows in great abundance along this part of the coast, and with whose leaves, bark and root, which are all of them extremely bitter, some very notable cures in cases of inveterate ulcers, the yaws, and venereal distempers, were some years ago performed by an old negress named Majoe, in commemoration of whom it took its name.” Macary Bay is in Vere. Majoe Bitter, or Macary Bitter (Picramnia Antidesnia Sus.) is a shrub about 8 feet high, with small whitish green flowers, and berries first scarlet, then black.]
Mantica Bahia. Butter (now Montego Bay). This part abounding formerly with wild hogs, the Spaniards probably made here what they called hog’s butter (lard) for exportation. [In a very old deed of conveyance of land in St. James a road is marked as leading to Lard Bay.]
Ocho Rios said to mean eight rivers. [In St. Ann. It was more commonly called Chareiras in Long’s time; and indeed as late as 1841, William Rob wrote “Ocho Rios, called to this day by the old inhabitants ‘Cheireras,’ its early and appropriate name ‘the Bay of the Water-Falls,’ but has now gone back to Ocho Rios.” It is not unlikely that the present form Ocho Rios and the derivation from eight rivers is wrong, and that the real name is Chorréra, a spout. There is a Chorréra River in Cuba, near Havannah.]
Perexil Insula. Samphire Island.
Sombrio Rio. Shady river. [Now called the Sambre.]
Yalos. Frosts (whence, perhaps corruptly, Yallahs), the high white cliffs having the appearance of a frosty covering. [Now called Yallahs. Long was probably wrong in connecting Yallahs with Yalos. The Hatô de Ayala extended from Bull Bay nearly to Morant Bay, and the name is probably a personal one. Pedro Lopez de Ayala was a celebrated poet and politician in the fourteenth century; Pedro de Ayala was Spanish envoy to the Court of St. James in 1498; and, curiously, a recent Spanish representative at Havana bore the name de Ayala. There was a Captain Yhallahs, a privateer who flourished in Jamaica in and about 1671, and the locality may have been named after him.]
Luidas. Perhaps from Luzida; gay, fine. [Lluidas Vale is in St. Catherine.]
Martha Brea. Martha, a woman’s name; Brea, tar; perhaps a nickname of some Spanish sailor’s Dulcinea like the English vulgar appellation Jack Tar. [Martha Brea village and river are in Trelawny. The name is a corruption of Rio Matibereon.]
No traces are to be found to-day of the following: Alta Mela, Rio de Camarones, Caborida, Carvil Bahia, Guada Bocca, Jarisse Punta, Javareen, Multi Bezon Rio, Perexil Insula.
Of corruptions of Spanish names the best known are: Agualta (Agua Alta, the deep river); Bog Walk (Boca d’Agua, water’s mouth); and Mount Diablo. Cagua became with the English Caguay, then Cagway when it was renamed Port Royal.
Those who see in Porus a survival of the name of Columbus’s companion, Porras, are probably drawing on a fertile imagination. Columbus and his companions saw little of the interior of the island. It is more probably called after some well sunk there, or from the porous nature of the soil, “pitted with holes.” In the English edition of Ferdinand Columbus’s “Historie,” we read that the Morant Cays were called by Columbus Los Poros because “not finding water in them they dug pits in the sand”; but in the Italian edition (Venice, 1571) they are called “le pozzi” (the pits), and in the Spanish edition of 1749 they are called “Las Poças” (the pits). It is possible that in the case of Porus, as in that of the Morant Cays, there has been a confusion between Poros and Pocas; and that the town in Manchester should be called Poças. The Spaniards called the Black River, el Caovana (the Mahogany River).
In the English section of Jamaica history for the two centuries from 1655 to 1855, there is a wide field of exploration.
What with earthquakes, hurricanes and floods, the march of time, and rebuilding, the typical old-time planter’s houses are getting scarcer. Then, again, there are the monuments and gravestones which contribute to our knowledge of Jamaica genealogy and history. Captain Lawrence-Archer, in the middle of the last century, did much in his “Monumental Inscriptions of the British West Indies,” to put this information in a handy form, but his work, which is often inaccurate, by no means covers the whole field. Something of late years has been done in that direction by Mr. Oliver in “Caribbeana.”
Although Jamaica is probably no worse than other countries in its disregard for ancient monuments, that there is need for improvement cannot be denied by those who have looked into the matter. The Spanish invaders burned the Arawâk huts; the old-time English planters despoiled Spanish buildings to find material for their sugar works; and in our own day a ruined seventeenth-century building which withstood the recent earthquake was later pulled down by peasants for the sake of its stones. When Lawrence-Archer wrote less than fifty years ago, he recorded a statue by Bacon to Richard Batty in the cathedral. Only a fragment of it remains to-day. The author of his epitaph little thought that the literal truth of part of it would be so early established when he wrote in 1796:
“Yet vain the Record, which sculptured stone
Would raise to those pre-eminently known.”
The most strongly constructed building will wear out with time and, in the tropics especially, vegetation is apt to interfere with monuments and gravestones; but a little care without much expense should be all that is needed to render unnecessary an expensive restoration, which many individuals and bodies find themselves unprepared to meet and which, after all, can never take the place of preservation.
In 1672 Port Royal contained 800 well-built houses, “as dear rented,” Blome tells us, “as if they stood in well-traded streets in London.” Twenty years later, when it was at its zenith, the number was 2000, “the greatest number of which were of brick, several storeys in height.” In 1692, as is well known, a large part of the town perished by an earthquake, and from that event Kingston dates its origin, Port Royal being partially destroyed again, by fire, in 1703 and by hurricane in 1722.
Charles Leslie, writing in 1739, says of Jamaica: “One is not to look for the beauties of architecture here; the public buildings are neat but not fine. The churches in the town are generally in form of a cross, with a small cupola a-top, built high in the walls, paved within, and adorned with no manner of finery.” The churches, he says, except those at Spanish Town and Halfway-Tree, are “decent small houses, scarce to be known for such,” and he adds, “the clergy trouble them little, and their doors are seldom open,” in marked contrast to the present state of affairs. “The gentlemen’s houses,” he says, “are generally built low, of one storey, consisting of five or six handsome apartments, beautifully lined and floored with mahogany.... In the towns there are several houses which are two storeys, but that way of building is disapproved of because they seldom are known to stand the shock of an earthquake or the fury of a storm.”
On Craskell and Simpson’s large map of Surrey, of the year 1763, is shown a view of a presumably typical Jamaica house, two storeys high, with an open veranda in front only. It is evident from what Long says that, at all events for the first century of the island’s occupation by the British, not much attention was paid to domestic architecture by the planters of the island. “It is,” he says, “but of late that the planters have paid much attention to elegance in their habitations; their general rule was to build what they called a makeshift; so that it was not unusual to see a plantation adorned with a very expensive set of works, of brick or stone, well executed, and the owner residing in a miserable thatched hovel, hastily put together with wattles and plaster, damp, unwholesome, and infested with every species of vermin. But the houses in general, as well in the country parts as in the towns, have been greatly improved within these last twenty years.”
In this connection mention may be made of the aqueducts on some of the sugar estates, which are amongst the best pieces of architectural work in the island. They and some of the old stone bridges compare more than favourably with the modern bridges, many of which—excellent monuments of engineering skill as they may be—their best friends would never venture to call works of art. Moreover the stone bridges will probably be standing when the iron ones have perished by decay.
Peter Marsden, writing a little later (1788), says: “Except a few excellent houses which have lately been built of brick and two or three of stone, after the English fashion, by rich merchants, the houses are in general of wood, very often mahogany, which is plentiful in this island. They consist but of a room or two below stairs, with piazzas all round and a storey above.” Stewart, whose account of the island was published in 1808, gives much the same account of the domestic houses, but goes on to say: “As for bridges and other public structures of the kind, in this part of the world there are few that deserve mention, except a neat cast-iron bridge imported from Great Britain and some years ago thrown across the Rio Cobra. There is, indeed, often a marked deficiency here of public spirit in undertakings of this sort.”
Many of the houses on the sea-coast were, in the eighteenth century, made defensible with loopholes and fortified by guns, so as to guard against the attacks in war time of the enemy’s privateers. In other cases a like precaution was taken against the risings of slaves; houses in some instances being supplied with towers at the corners, each of which commanded two sides of the building.
Of direct records of slavery days there are not many prominent relics.
Here and there a punishment cell is found, with indications of the fixing of shackles; but of stocks and such-like implements no traces remain. A few examples of branding-irons exist. In this connection it may be of interest to quote Bryan Edwards’s account of the method adopted in branding slaves:
“A gentleman of my acquaintance, who had purchased at the same time ten Koromantyn boys and the like number of Eboes (the eldest of the whole apparently not more than thirteen years of age) caused them all to be collected and brought before him in my presence, to be marked on the breast. This operation is performed by heating a small silver brand composed of one or two letters, in the flame of spirits of wine, and applying it to the skin, which is previously anointed with sweet oil. The application is instantaneous and the pain momentary. Nevertheless, it may be easily supposed that the apparatus must have a frightful appearance to a child. Accordingly when the first boy, who happened to be one of the Eboes, and the stoutest of the whole, was led forward to receive the mark, he screamed dreadfully, while his companions of the same nation manifested strong emotions of sympathetic terror. The gentleman stopt his hand, but the Koromantyn boys, laughing aloud, and, immediately coming forward of their own accord, offered their bosoms undauntedly to the brand, and receiving its impression without flinching in the least, snapt their fingers in exultation over the poor Eboes.”
A branding-iron such as that mentioned above, in the Institute of Jamaica, is shown in the accompanying illustration. It is 6⅞ inches in length.
Doyley’s Council had been elected by the people, and so, in a sense, was a forerunner of the Assembly. But the first regular Assembly was summoned by Lyttelton and met at Spanish Town on January 20, 1664, and from that day until the Assembly of the time resigned its powers to the Crown on December 21, 1865, the political destiny of the colony is to be read in the pages of its Journal and its Votes.
The first Assembly chose as its speaker Robert Freeman, who represented Morant, one of the then twelve districts that returned members.
The troubles which Doyley, the first governor, had had in inducing adventure-loving soldiers to become planters had given place to a more settled state of affairs, and when the House rose on February 12, 1664, it “parted with all kindness and feastings, having passed as good a body of laws as could be expected from such young statesmen.” But this peaceful condition was not destined to last. Familiarity with legislative functions bred contempt for the opinions of others, and unreasonable demands on the part of these young statesmen were met by high-handed actions on the part of the Crown.
In his opening speech to the Assembly Carlisle said that the King looked on Jamaica as “his darling plantation, and has taken more pains to make this island happy than any other of his colonies.” These kind words were, however, nullified by the fact that the new governor had brought with him forty acts which Charles had had drawn up (and to which he had affixed the great seal of England) in lieu of the acts which the Assembly had passed under Vaughan, and that he was instructed to get the House to pass them. This plan had been suggested in a letter written in England by a Mr. Nevil (who was evidently acquainted with Jamaica) to Carlisle just before he started to take up his appointment, and had been adopted because—to quote the words of the Lords of Trade and Plantations to the King in Council—“of the irregular, violent and unwarrantable proceedings of the Assembly.”
The virtual point of difference was this, that under the original constitution the island (through the Governor, Council and Assembly) made its own laws in accordance with what it conceived to be its needs and sent them home for approval, they remaining in force for two years till the royal pleasure was known, while under the new arrangement (based on Poynings’s Law, or the Statutes of Drogheda, in use in Ireland), the laws were to be made in England (on the advice of the Governor and Council), and remitted for the approval of the Assembly. The style of enactment was altered from the “Governor, Council and Assembly, etc.” to the “King, by and with the advice, etc. of the Assembly.”
This proposed change, which had been decided on by the Lords of Trade and Plantations, in opposition to the advice of Lynch, who knew Jamaica well—the Assembly resisted with might and main, but though they were in a very great measure successful, it was not until 1728 that the complete legislative power for which Jamaica contended was granted.
Lynch, when he returned as governor, was able to tell the people of Jamaica, “His Majesty, upon the Assembly’s humble address, was pleased to restore us to our beloved form of making laws, wherein we enjoy beyond dispute all the deliberative powers in our Assembly that the House of Commons enjoy in their House.”
In return for the constitution now conceded the Assembly pledged itself to grant to the King a fixed revenue, which if not perpetual should at least last for seven years. The quarrel, however, with regard to the revenue bills lasted up till 1728; the Crown desiring a perpetual revenue, the Assembly persistently declining to do more than grant bills for a few years’ duration. The Crown on the other hand declined to approve many of their laws. In 1728 the Assembly gave way and settled a permanent revenue in return for the royal confirmation of various acts of importance to the island and a concession as to their past laws which they regarded as “the grand charter of their liberties.”
To return for a moment to the early struggles, we find that under the Duke of Albemarle, a very unwise governor, matters were far from satisfactory. He dissolved the House suddenly because one of the members, John Towers, in a debate repeated the old adage salus populi suprema lex, in protesting against the Speaker’s refusal to grant him permission to attend a race meeting. Albemarle had the offender taken in custody and fined £600. In his dispatch on the subject he wrote: “The Assembly have done very little, the major part having made it their business to wrangle and oppose all things that are for the King’s service and the good of the country.” The freedom of election was grossly violated by the duke, who admitted hosts of servants and discharged seamen to the poll at the election, and actually imprisoned many legal voters of wealth and consideration. He imposed fines on the latter to a large amount, and threatened to whip two gentlemen for requesting a habeas corpus for their friends. In spite of this he had the effrontery to write home to the Board of Trade and Plantations: “While the elections were going forward there were unwarrantable oppositions made in most parishes as well as malicious practices to prevent fair election!”
His successor, Inchiquin, met with considerable opposition from a section of the Assembly whose temper had been ruffled by Albemarle’s arbitrary government, and whom he treated in a somewhat tactless manner. That they would not do what he wanted he considered “an indignity and affront to himself and the board.” He finally rejected their address of congratulation, and “then it was thrown to them with some contempt.”
The franchise established by the law of 1681 for appointing the members of the Assembly was still in force in 1812: “Freeholders in the same parish where the election is to be made.” At a by-election in 1804, in St. Andrew, seventy-nine freeholders voted, forty-six for the successful candidate.
The House met usually from October to Christmas, the time of the year when the planters could be absent from their estates with least inconvenience.
The closing scene in the life of the Assembly was acted on December 21, 1865, around amendments to the “Act to alter and amend the Political Constitution of the Island,” and especially to that to the second clause, which ran:
“It shall be lawful for Her Majesty’s Imperial Government to assume the entire management and control of the affairs of this island, and by orders in Council or otherwise, as Her Majesty may be advised, to conduct the affairs of this island as Her Majesty may think fit: and such orders shall have the effect and force of law.”
The Council’s amendment was as follows:
“It shall be lawful for Her Majesty the Queen to create and constitute a Government in this island, in such form and with such power as to Her Majesty shall seem fit, and from time to time to alter and amend such Government.”
The Legislative Council had adjourned while their amendments to the Constitution Bill were being discussed by the Assembly, and some of them were in the House during the discussion. So soon as they saw that the amendments had passed, they retired and formed a board, which passed the bill in almost ten minutes after it left the Assembly.
In proroguing the assembly on the following day Governor Eyre said:
“In releasing you from further attendance upon your legislative duties, I cannot lose sight of the probability that you may never be called upon to exercise these duties again, under the existing form of constitution, and that this general sacrifice has been consummated by yourselves from an earnest and sincere desire, regardless of all personal considerations, to benefit the colony.
“On behalf of the colony and of the many interests associated with it, I return you the thanks which are so justly your due. History will record the heroic act, and I trust that history will show from the ameliorated state of the country, and a renewed prosperity, that your noble self devotion has not been in vain.”
In concluding, he said, with reference to the Morant Bay outbreak:
“The session which is now about to terminate has been the most important that has ever taken place since Jamaica became a dependency of the British Crown.
“It is impossible to help regretting the necessity which has enforced the abandonment of institutions so deservedly dear to every British heart, and which, even in this colony, have remained unchanged for a period of 200 years; but it is wiser and better, circumstanced as we are, to give up institutions which are valued rather for the associations which are connected with them, than for any advantages which have resulted to the colony from their existence in Jamaica, and to substitute in their place a perhaps less showy and less time-honoured form of Government, but which is certainly more practicable and better suited to the altered circumstances of our position.
“Well, I think, it is that we have taken warning by the terrible circumstances which have forced upon us the conviction that a Government, to be effective, in times of difficulty and danger, must be a strong and united one; and well will it be if by a voluntary reconstruction, the community may receive some compensation in future good government, for the dreadful calamity with which it has just been afflicted.”
The House took a deep interest from time to time in the barracks for which they voted funds. In 1702 orders were received from home to build barracks to receive 3000 men. Handasyd, the Lieutenant-governor, said that it would cost more than £40,000 “where such buildings are unreasonably dear” to build such as were built in Ireland, but that suitable barracks could be built of wood for £3000.
The following account of the state of the forts and barracks in the island in May 1745, taken from the “Journals of the House of Assembly,” may be fittingly quoted here.
“Then the House resolved itself into a Committee of the whole House, upon the report made on Friday last, of the number and condition of the barracks already built, and of such others as were necessary to be provided; and the plans laid before the House, and the said report, being read, is in the words following:
Mr. Speaker,—Your Committee, appointed to make enquiry into the number and condition of the barracks already built, and what more shall be necessary to be provided, have accordingly done the same; and, by the best information they have been able to get, find to be as follows:
Port-Morant. A complete barrack, newly built by the Parish of St.-Thomas-in-the-East, framed, boarded, and shingled, in good order, which will contain about sixty men.
Manchioneal. A barrack, formerly built by the said parish of St.-Thomas-in-the-East, which will contain thirty men; the body built with stone, a framed roof, wants new shingling, and already ordered to be forthwith done, and to be put in good repair.
Morant-Bay. A new barrack now building at the expense of the aforesaid parish of St.-Thomas-in-the-East for twenty-five men.
Yallahs Bay. A large house with proper conveniencies belonging to Mr. Donaldson, already hired for a barrack, to receive twenty-five men.
Cow-Bay. A barrack for twenty men going to be built, by Mr. Vallete, in the room of the former barrack destroyed by the hurricane.
Westmoreland. A barrack already built, capable of receiving a whole company, situate at Savanna-la-Mar, as informed by Mr. Hall.
St. Ann’s. A barrack now building at St. Ann’s Bay, and is calculated to be a crutched house, wattled and plastered, and capable to receive fifty men, as informed by Mr. Whitehorne.
Moneague. A barrack which now lodges twenty men, and capable of holding thirty; is at present water-tight, but will soon want new shingling, as informed by lieutenant Troah.
Vere. The barrack was blown down in the late hurricane but the parish has agreed with Mr. Pusey for his storehouse in Carlisle Bay, which is boarded, shingled and in good order and capable to receive one hundred men.
St. Elizabeth. A barrack situate at Black-River; it being a crutched house, wattled and plastered, injured by the storm, but is now ordered by the parish to be repaired.
St. James. A barrack at St. James, of a hundred feet long and twenty feet wide, with a stone wall, a framed roof, well shingled, in good order, which will completely contain fifty men as informed by Mr. Hall.
Hanover. A barrack situate at Lusea-Fort, which will be capable of receiving fifty men; a crutched house, wattled, plastered and thatched, in good order; and a convenient house for the reception of four officers, well shingled and floored.
Port Antonio. A barrack in good order, which now lodges one company, and will soon be in a condition to receive another, by the information of lieutenant Bailey.
St. Mary’s. No barrack built in said parish, but as the Committee are informed his excellency intends to send some soldiers for their protection, a barrack is necessary to be forthwith built.
Old Harbour. No barrack built, but the parish of St. Dorothy have hired a house for a detachment of thirty soldiers, as informed by Mr. Edmund Pusey.
Spanish Town. The barrack-house is in good order, the officers’ cook-room wants repairing, the cook-room for the private men is entirely down, and the palisado enclosure, on the back part of the out-houses, carried away by the late storm; said barrack contains sixty men.
The Committee are informed that his excellency intends four companies of soldiers to be in this town, if proper lodgements were provided for them; and, as the barrack contains so few, it will be necessary either to enlarge the present barrack or to buy such house or houses as may be convenient and sufficient to lodge the aforesaid four companies, as are intended for this town; but as we are informed that the house belonging to the estate of the late Colonel Heywood is as proper and convenient for the purpose aforesaid as any building in this town, and to be sold, we think proper to lay before the house a plan relating thereto, as also a plan of a barrack to be built adjoining to the present barrack, or such other place as shall be judged most convenient; all which is submitted to the consideration of the house.
Kingston. No barracks built, and his excellency is willing to let this town have one or more companies of His Majesty’s troops was there proper lodgement to receive them.
Port Royal. The barracks in that town being too small for receiving the number of men intended to be quartered there, your Committee are informed that said barracks are to be enlarged for that purpose.
And, after some time spent in the Committee, Mr. Speaker resumed the chair, and Mr. Chief Justice, from a Committee, reported that they had gone through the matter to them referred, and come to several resolutions, which he read in his place, and afterwards delivered them in at the table; where they being again read were agreed unto by the House, and are as follows:
1. Resolved. It is the opinion of this Committee, that it be recommended to the House, to appoint a Committee to bring in a bill for obliging the several parishes to repair and keep up the respective barracks already built.
Ordered. That Mr. Fuller, Mr. Fearon and Mr. March be a committee for that purpose.
2. Resolved. It is the opinion of this Committee, that it be recommended to the House, to appoint a committee to treat with the attornies of Abraham Elton and Mary Heywood for the purchase of a house and footland, late of James Heywood, deceased, for a barrack for the service of the public.
Ordered. That Mr. Arcedeckne, Mr. R. Beckford and Mr. Fuller be a committee for that purpose.
3. Resolved. It is the opinion of this Committee that a barrack be built at Kingston, at the expense of the parish of Kingston.
4. Resolved. It is the opinion of this Committee that the barrack at Port-Royal be enlarged.
Ordered. That it be an instruction to the committee appointed to bring in the bill for obliging the several parishes to repair and keep up the respective barracks already built, to insert a clause therein to oblige the parish of Kingston to build a barrack at the expense of the parish.”
We learn from Foster’s “Alumini Oxonienses” that William Dennys, of New College, a chaplain who took his B.A. degree in 1652, obtained leave of absence from the parliamentary visitors, for special service at sea in 1654, and died at Jamaica in 1655. He probably came out with Penn and Venables, and predeceased Thomas Gage who was chaplain to the expedition.
In 1655, the very year in which the English took the island, Admiral William Goodson, one of the Commissioners charged with the conduct of Penn and Venables’s expedition, requested that “some godly ministers with monies for their maintenance” should be sent out. Two years later the want of ministers in Jamaica was referred by the Council of State to the Committee for America for suggestions. It was one of the instructions to Doyley, when he was made governor in 1661, that he should give the best encouragement to ministers “that Christianity and the Protestant religion, according to the profession of the Church of England, may have due reverence amongst them”; and later in the year it was resolved that the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of London should choose five able ministers to be maintained in Jamaica at the King’s expense for one year, the governor to provide for their maintenance afterwards.
In 1664 Sir Thomas Modyford, the governor, stated that there was “but one church (in the whole island) at St. Katherine’s [at Spanish Town], being a fair Spanish Church ruined by the old soldiers, but lately in some measure repaired by Sir Charles Lyttelton; but they are now levying contributions to raise churches in some of the richest parishes.” There were then five ministers in the island, Henry Howser (a Switzer) being at St. Catherine’s.
In 1671 Sir Thomas Modyford replied to enquiries of His Majesty’s Commissioners that: “Their Lordships will find among the statutes with these presented a law for the maintenance of the ministry; until this His Majesty was piously pleased to pay five ministers £100 each, but since they were left upon the charity of the inhabitants, he has encouraged them to enlarge their payments at St. Katherine’s, where he lives, from £50 to £140, and at Port Royal £200. At St. Katherine’s, Mr. Howser, a Switzer, officiates; at Port Royal, Mr. Maxwell, a Scotchman; at St. John’s, Mr. Lemmings, an Englishman, lately sent by my Lord of London; and in St. Andrew’s, Mr. Zellers, another Switzer; all these are orthodox men, of good life and conversation, live comfortably on their means, and preach every Sunday. Mr. Pickering, of St. Thomas and St. David’s, at Port Morant and Yallows, is lately dead, and they have none to supply his place. But, alas, these five do not preach to one-third of the island, and the plantations are at such distance that it is impossible to make up congregations; but they meet at each others’ houses, as the primitive Christians did, and there pray, read a chapter, sing a psalm, and home again; so that did not the accessors to this island come so well instructed in the article of faith, it might well be feared the Christian religion would be quite forgot. I have, my Lords, and shall use all the persuasive means I can to advance this people’s knowledge of the true God, as also of all Christian and moral virtues.”
In 1675 a Mr. Crandfield reported that there were six churches and four ministers, and two years later there were but three clergy in the island. In a MS., once in the House of Assembly Library, entitled “The State of the Church in His Majesty’s Island of Jamaica,” dated May 1675 (which was allowed to perish after Richard Hill quoted from it in 1864), it was stated, after enumerating the then stipended ministers of religion: “All the other parishes on the northside, and St. Elizabeth’s on the south, are great and ill-settled, without churches, they being almost planted in Sir Thomas Lynch’s time, who ordered Glebe lands to be reserved in two or three places in every parish, that in time may prove convenient.”
In 1677 Howser and Zellers, “His Majesty’s chaplains in Jamaica,” petitioned that they might receive the pay promised to them, and declared that “the island, in regard of its great poverty, is not able to allow maintenance for four chaplains resident there.” In the same year the Bishop of London represented the ill-usage of ministers in the Plantations, and their too great subjection to the vestrymen, especially in Jamaica; and the Lords of Trade and Plantations resolved that the clergy should, in future, “make a part of the vestry in the regulation of all matters, except in the settlement of their maintenance.”
In 1681 an Act was passed for the maintenance of ministers and the poor, and erecting and repairing churches. Ten vestrymen and two churchwardens were yearly elected by the freeholders of each parish. The law provided for the keeping of a register of births, christenings, marriages and burials. Port Royal was to pay £250 to its minister, St. Catherine £120, St. Thomas, St. Andrew and St. John £100, and other parishes £80. These stipends were apparently not sufficient inducement, for in 1706 an Act was passed “for the encouragement of good and able ministers to come to this island.” The salary of St. Catherine was fixed at £150 (or £250 if the vestry wished); for St. Thomas-in-the-Vale, St. Dorothy, Kingston, Vere, and Clarendon, it was £150 (or £200), and for the other parishes (including Port Royal, by reason of its recent disasters) £100 (or £150 if the vestry wished). This system of payment of the rectors by the parishes was continued till late in the eighteenth century, when they were placed on the Island Establishment.
In 1682 Sir Thomas Lynch sent home to the Bishop of London a detailed report of the state of the Church in Jamaica. He says: “At St. Jaga de la Vega the minister is also a Swiss, Mr. Howsyer; he has £140 a year by law, and, since I came, £150. He is a reasonable preacher, a good liver, well esteemed, and very rich. The church is a Spanish church, and the parsonage good. The parish is called St. Catherine’s.”
When, by an Act passed in 1789, burying in churches was prohibited, on penalty of £500 imposed on any rector who permitted it, the rectors received compensation in lieu of fees, the largest amount falling to the rector of Kingston, who received £100 per annum, St. Catherine being next with £70.
As evidence of the relative value of the livings in the island at the time it is interesting to quote from the “Jamaica Magazine” that in November 1814, “The Reverend Alexander Campbell has been translated from the living of Kingston to that of St. Andrew’s, vacant by the death of his father, the reverend John Campbell; the Reverend Isaac Mann to that of Kingston; the Reverend William Vaughan Hamilton from St. Elizabeth’s to St. Catherine’s; and the Reverend William Peat from St. Dorothy’s to St. Elizabeth’s.”
In 1800 Ecclesiastical Commissioners were appointed. But it is evident that they had not been able to effect much by April 1802, when Lady Nugent wrote: “I will conclude my tour through the island with a few remarks. In this country it appears as if everything were bought and sold. Clergymen make no secret of making a traffic of their livings; but General N—— has set his face against such proceedings, and has refused many applications for the purpose. He is determined to do all he can towards the reformation of the Church, and thus rendering it respectable. It is indeed melancholy to see the general disregard of both religion and morality throughout the whole island.”
Matters were much improved when the see of Jamaica, which then included the Bahamas and British Honduras, was formed in 1824; and in 1870, when Disestablishment threw the Church almost entirely on to voluntary resources, it gave to it a new vitality.
Many of the old Baptismal, Marriage and Burial registers are deposited for safe keeping in the Record Office at Spanish Town, where all the old church registers should be, as they would there have a chance of longer life than when exposed to the vicissitudes of local vestries, and would, moreover, be more readily available for research than when scattered throughout the island.
It may be convenient to give here a list of the earliest date of the Baptismal, Marriage and Burial registers for the island, taken from “Sketch Pedigrees of some of the early Settlers in Jamaica. By Noel B. Livingston, Kingston 1909.”
| Earliest Date of Parish Registers | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Parish | Baptisms | Marriages | Burials |
| Kingston | 1722 | 1721 | 1722 |
| Port Royal | 1728 | 1727 | 1725 |
| St. Andrew | 1664 | 1668 | 1666 |
| St. Thomas ye East | 1709 | 1721 | 1708 |
| St. David | 1794 | 1794 | 1794 |
| Portland | 1804 | 1804 | 1808 |
| St. George | 1806 | 1807 | 1811 |
| St. Mary | 1752 | 1755 | 1767 |
| Clarendon | 1690 | 1695 | 1769 |
| St. Ann | 1768 | 1768 | 1768 |
| Manchester | 1816 | 1827 | 1817 |
| St. Catherine | 1668 | 1668 | 1671 |
| St. John | 1751 | 1751 | 1751 |
| St. Dorothy | 1693 | 1725 | 1706 |
| St. Thomas ye Vale | 1816 | 1816 | 1816 |
| Metcalfe | 1843 | 1843 | 1843 |
| Westmoreland | 1740 | 1740 | 1741 |
| St. Elizabeth | 1708 | 1719 | 1720 |
| Trelawny | 1771 | 1771 | 1771 |
| St. James | 1770 | 1772 | 1774 |
| Vere | 1696 | 1743 | 1733 |
| Hanover | 1725 | 1754 | 1727 |
John Roby, Jamaica’s most celebrated antiquary, published (from notes made in 1824) in 1831, at Montego Bay, where he was then collector of customs, “Monuments of the Cathedral Church and Parish of St. Catherine.” The information therein given was included and supplemented by Lawrence-Archer in his “Monumental Inscriptions of the British West Indies,” published in 1875: and annotations to Lawrence-Archer’s account, by the present writer and Mr. N. B. Livingston, were published in “Caribbeana” for January and April 1910. A full account of the history of the Church of England in Jamaica may be gathered from the work of the Rev. J. B. Ellis, published in 1913, “The Diocese of Jamaica.”
The history of the Department of Public Gardens and Plantations, now known as the Agricultural Department, is intimately connected with the various vicissitudes through which the island has passed. The following particulars have been taken in great measure from the account in the “Handbook of Jamaica for 1900.”
Directly and indirectly during the last hundred years and more the Department has been the means of introducing and propagating some of the most valuable plants, now the sources of the staple products of the island.
It is a striking fact that with the exception of pimento and a few others of comparatively little value, most of the staple products of the island are derived from exotics or plants introduced from other parts of the globe, either by accident or by direct intention.
The sugar-cane, though here in the time of the Spaniards, was first cultivated by the English, by Sir Thomas Modyford, in 1660; but its most valuable varieties, the Otaheite and Bourbon canes, were introduced in His Majesty’s ships by Captain Bligh as late as 1796. Coffee was introduced by Governor Sir Nicholas Lawes in 1718. The mango, brought by Captain Marshall of Rodney’s squadron in 1782, was first planted in Hinton East’s botanic garden, in Liguanea, and is now one of the commonest trees in the island. The plentiful and free-growing logwood was introduced from Honduras by Dr. Barham, the author of “Hortus Americanus,” in 1715. The beautiful akee was obtained by Dr. Thomas Clarke, first Island Botanist, from a West African slave ship in 1778. The cinnamon came with the mango in Captain Marshall’s ship in 1782, and was distributed from the Bath Garden by Dr. Dancer. The ubiquitous but graceful bamboo is also an exotic and owes its introduction to M. Wallen, who brought it from Hispaniola and first planted it in the parish of St. Thomas-in-the-East. To Wallen, formerly owner of Cold Spring and Wallenford, the friend of Swartz and a successful botanist, we are no doubt indebted for the first plants of the watercress, chickweed, wild pansy, groundsel, dead nettles, dandelion, common honeysuckle, black-berried elder, evening primrose, nasturtium, common myrtle, the English oak, white clover, and the sweet violet, now common on the Port Royal and Blue Mountains, being possibly escapes from his garden at Cold Spring, which even in 1793 was well stocked with choice selections of introduced flowers and European trees and shrubs. For the cherimoyer we are indebted to Hinton East, who introduced if from South America in 1786; to East and his magnificent garden we also owe the jasmines and many species of lilies, many convolvuli, the oleander, the horse-radish tree, numerous roses, the trumpet-flower, monkey-bread, the camellia, Calla æthiopica, the weeping willow, the mulberry tree, the Arbor vitæ, and the sweet-scented mimosa. Dr. Clarke, on his arrival as Island Botanist in 1777, brought with him the jujube tree, and the litchi, the purple dracæna, the sago palm, and the valuable camphor tree; at the same time there came the now common “almond tree,” the tea tree, and the “sunn” hemp plant. The wanglo, or zezegary, was sent by Sir Simon Haughton Clarke in 1801. The nutmeg tree, first brought by Rodney in 1782, was reintroduced by Dr. Marter in 1788, together with the clove and black pepper, for which he received the thanks of the House of Assembly and an honorarium of £1000. The seeds of the valuable and now indispensable Guineagrass were accidentally introduced from the West Coast of Africa as bird food in 1745. Scotch grass received its name from having been first brought from Scotland to Barbados.
Pindars were brought to Hinton East from South America; the afou, the acorn and Guinea yam, and indeed all but one of the cultivated yams, are from the coast of Africa or East Indies. The seeds of the guango were brought over from the mainland by Spanish cattle. Cacao is indigenous to Central America. The shaddock was brought to the West Indies from China by Captain Shaddock, hence its name. The genip was brought to Jamaica from Surinam by one Guaf, a Jew. The ginger is a native of the East Indies, introduced to Jamaica by a Spaniard, Francisco de Mendiza. The locust tree and blimbling were brought to Jamaica from the South Seas in H.M.S. Providence in the year 1793. The orange, both sweet and Seville, the lime, the lemon and citron, were brought hither by the Spaniards. The Jerusalem thorn is from the Spanish main. The prickly pear is a Mexican plant.
It appears that the first public garden established in the island was the old Botanic Garden at Bath; and in the Journals of the House of Assembly mention is made of Dr. Thomas Clarke, “Practitioner in Physic and Surgery,” who came to the island in 1777, at the particular instance and request of Sir Basil Keith, to superintend two botanic gardens, then intended to be established in the island. One was to be a European Garden, which however was not established till long after, at Cinchona, and the other was the Tropical Garden at Bath.
A private garden possessing many rare and valuable plants had already been formed by Hinton East in Liguanea (Gordon Town), which, on the death of the founder, became the property of his nephew, E. H. East, “who with great generosity offered it to the Assembly of Jamaica for the use of the public at their own price.”
Bryan Edwards remarks that “the Assembly of Jamaica, cooperating with the benevolent intentions of His Majesty (to introduce valuable exotics and productions of the most distant regions to the West Indies) purchased in 1792–93 the magnificent Botanical Garden of Mr. East and placed it on the public establishment, under the care of skilful gardeners, one of whom, Mr. James Wiles, had circumnavigated the globe with Captain Bligh.”
An interesting catalogue of the plants in this garden, at the time of East’s decease, was prepared by Dr. A. Broughton, and forms an appendix under the title of “Hortus Eastensis” to Bryan Edwards’s “History of the British West Indies.”
From a letter addressed to Sir Joseph Banks by the Botanic Gardener, Jamaica, 1793, we gather that the bread-fruit trees “were upwards of 11 feet high, with leaves 36 inches long, and the success in cultivating them has exceeded the most sanguine expectations; the cinnamon tree is become very common, and mangoes are in such plenty as to be planted in the negro grounds. There are, also, several bearing trees of the jack or bastard bread-fruit... and we have one nutmeg plant.” For his services in introducing the bread-fruit tree, 1000 guineas were granted in 1793 to Captain Bligh and 500 guineas to Lieutenant Portlock.
The Botanic Garden at Liguanea continued to be under Wiles’s care (superintended by a Committee of the House of Assembly) for many years, while that at Bath was entrusted to Dr. Dancer as Island Botanist. The allowance for the two gardens was fixed at £800. The duties of the Island Botanist were defined as follows: “To collect, class and describe the native plants of the island; to use his endeavours to find out their medicinal virtues; to discover if they possess any qualities useful to the arts, and annually to furnish the House with a correct list of such plants as are in the Botanic Gardens, together with such information as he may have acquired relative to their uses and virtues.”
For the purpose of distributing the bread-fruit and other valuable plants from the Botanic Garden the Committee of the House “appointed several Committees for each county, to receive and distribute the allotments destined for them,” and, according as sufficient numbers were prepared for propagation, the Chairmen of the County Committees were apprised and their respective proportions delivered and distributed, “by which means,” it is quaintly remarked, “the public has derived all the advantages to be expected from these establishments.”
During the years 1791–1807 the Committee in charge of the Botanic Gardens, with Shirley as Chairman, greatly developed and improved them. Enquiries were made everywhere for new products; thanks and gratuities were voted for the introduction of valuable plants, and these were cultivated and distributed with great assiduity and care. In order to make the islands less dependent on America for supplies every encouragement was given to the cultivation of yams, cocoas, maize, plantain, and such products as the bread-fruit, zezegary or wanglo, nutmeg, clove, cinnamon, pindars and coffee, it being believed that the “cultivation of these valuable exotics will without doubt in a course of years lessen the dependence of the Sugar Islands on North America for food and necessaries; and not only supply subsistence for future generations, but probably furnish fresh incitements to industry, new improvements in the arts, and new subjects of commerce.”
These beneficial efforts, long and successfully maintained, were however greatly relaxed after the year 1807, and under the influence of domestic troubles, want of due appreciation of the value and nature of botanic gardens, or the need of strict economy, a bill was introduced into the House of Assembly in 1810 “for vesting the Botanic Garden in Liguanea in the Commissioners of the Board of Works, to be sold and the money to be brought to the credit of the public.” This bill was finally passed December 1810, and, the garden passing to private hands, many of the valuable plants contained in it, and collected with so much care and industry, were entirely lost.
The garden at Bath was however maintained, though in a very reduced state. Dr. Stewart West acted for some time as Island Botanist, and was engaged in collecting the plants that had been lost from the gardens, for the purpose of propagating and distributing them.
The first record to be found of any agricultural society in Jamaica occurs in 1807. The society, which had evidently been in existence for some little time, belonged to Cornwall. As it was called the Agricultural Society it was presumably the only one of its kind in existence. In 1825 a Jamaica Horticultural Society was formed at Kingston, which two years later became the Jamaica Society for the Cultivation of Agriculture and other Arts and Sciences, which did good work till it ceased to exist in 1850.
In the year 1824 an effort was made to restore the value and usefulness of the botanic gardens, and Sir M. B. Clare, from the Committee appointed to enquire into the state of the Botanic Garden, reported: “That the Botanic Garden in St.-Thomas-in-the-East, established more than fifty years ago, has during that period received and transmitted for propagation throughout the island many valuable plants. That the royal munificence of his late Majesty promoted the object of this institution by vessels of war employed to collect plants in the settlements of the east and south seas, some of which are now naturalized in this island, and more might be added, greatly to the advantage of its inhabitants. Your Committee therefore recommend that proper care may be taken to preserve the valuable plants which the Garden now contains. That in addition to the above considerations, Your Committee are of opinion that one object of this institution of chief importance has never been properly attended to, namely, the investigation of the many unknown native plants of this island, which, from the properties of those already known, it is reasonable to infer would prove highly beneficial in augmenting our internal resources, by supplying various articles either for food, for medicine, or for manufactures, to be cultivated, prepared and exported as staple commodities, by which great commercial advantages might be obtained; among others the various vegetable dyes claim particular attention as promising a fruitful field for discovery. That it appears to your Committee that the person fit for undertaking such enquiries ought to be a well-educated and scientific man, combining with his botanical knowledge sufficient information in experimental chemistry to enable him to discover the useful qualities of such indigenous plants, and improve the productions of those already known; but at the same time your Committee strongly recommend that such person should not be a medical man, as his whole time and attention ought to be applied to promote the above objects. Your Committee recommends to the House to instruct the Commissioners of Correspondence to direct the Agent to apply for such a person to the President of the Linnean Society in London.” As a result of this proposal James Macfadyen was selected and approved of as a botanist, and arrived in the island in 1825.
At the same time it was felt that the botanic garden at Bath was too distant from Kingston and the seat of government to answer the intention proposed, and it was recommended that a bill be brought in for purchasing a proper place for such a garden in the vicinity of Kingston and Spanish Town.
This proposal was, however, never carried into execution, and the garden at Bath on the removal and death of Macfadyen, “fast falling to decay,” was placed in charge of Thomas Higson; and his petitions addressed to the House of Assembly during 1830–32 show that the allowances made were not sufficient for the maintenance of the garden even in its reduced state, and that no remuneration had been made to him for its superintendence.
In 1833, in another fit of economy, owing to domestic troubles and the need for retrenchment, a Committee was appointed to “report on the best means of diminishing the contingencies and expenditure of the island and to consider whether the Botanic Gardens at Bath could be sold for the benefit of the public.” The report was made at the close of the year and ordered to lie on the table. Nothing further, however, appears to have been done for the garden till 1840, when the sum of £300 was “voted for the improvement of the Garden at Bath and for the services of a Botanist.” This sum, afterwards reduced to £200, was placed in the hands of the members of St. Thomas-in-the-East, Portland and St. David, by whom it appears to have been administered down to the year 1852, when the garden was transferred to the Board of Directors of the Bath of St. Thomas the Apostle. Nathaniel Wilson was appointed Curator of the Garden in 1847, and devoted many years, often labouring under great discouragements, in maintaining and improving the garden and introducing new plants. His yearly reports contain sufficient evidence of the value of the garden, small as it was, to an island entirely dependent for its prosperity on its agricultural interest; and, assisted and encouraged by the Rev. Thomas Wharton, Wilson laboured most successfully in the propagation and distribution of valuable plants, and especially in developing the “fibre” resources of the colony.
In 1842 we find there were local agricultural societies in St. Dorothy, St. John, St. Thomas-in-the-Vale, St. Thomas-in-the-East, St. Catherine, St. Andrew, St. James and Trelawny. In the following year a general Agricultural Society was established, with the governor as patron, with eighteen vice-patrons, and local committees in each of the parishes. In 1845 this society became the Royal Agricultural Society of Jamaica. In 1854 a Jamaica Society of Arts was established, which two years later became the Royal Society of Arts of Jamaica. This in 1864 was amalgamated with the Royal Agricultural Society—the two becoming the Royal Society of Arts and Agriculture, but it ceased after about 1873: the present Jamaica Agricultural Society being established in 1895.
In 1857 a grant was passed by the Legislature for purchasing land and for a botanic garden at Castleton, in the parish of St. Mary, nineteen miles from Kingston, and steps were at once taken to establish the garden and remove such plants as could be spared from Bath.
Writing in 1861 Wilson referred to the successful introduction of seeds of the valuable cinchona tree to Jamaica, through the liberality of the British Government and recommendation of Sir W. J. Hooker of Kew. By the month of October 1861 Wilson reported that he had over four hundred healthy plants quite ready for planting out. As the climate of Bath was unsuitable for the successful growth of cinchona, by the kindness of Dr. Hamilton, they were tried at Cold Spring coffee plantation in St. Andrew, at an elevation of 4000 feet. Here Wilson found “the climate and soil to be all he could desire,” and as it afforded every facility for carrying out so valuable an experiment he at once availed himself of it, and planted out in the coffee fields, November 1861, several plants of each species.
The garden at Castleton was then finally established, and ultimately the government Cinchona plantations were opened in 1868, and placed under the management of Robert Thompson, who on Wilson’s retirement had been appointed superintendent of the Botanic Gardens. The cinchona trees flourished, but the industry was killed by the cheaper production of bark from India.
Thompson retired in 1878, and was succeeded by Mr. (now Sir) Daniel Morris till 1886, then Mr. William Fawcett till 1908, when the Department was changed into an agricultural Department, with Mr. H. H. Cousins as Director and a Farm School and Stock Farm were added to the Hope establishment. At the same time the Government Laboratory, originated in 1870 as a separate department, and in 1901 brought into direct connexion with agricultural work, was amalgamated with it.
The Palisadoes plantation of coco-nuts, which in 1884 had some 23,000 palms in bearing, was while in the care of lessee later attacked by disease.
Mining operations have been carried on with more or less success in Jamaica from time to time. In 1857 there were four mining companies operating: the Clarendon Consolidated Copper Mining Company in Clarendon, where mining has recently been reintroduced; the Wheal-Jamaica, with a capital of £100,000; the Ellerslie and Bardowie Copper Mines (capital £50,000) in St. Andrew; and the Rio Grande Copper Mine (capital £60,000) in Portland.
The earliest reference to Education in the history of Jamaica occurs under date February 23, 1663, when a warrant was issued to prepare a bill for the king’s signature authorizing the treasurer of the exchequer to pay the sum of £500 yearly to Thomas Povey to be by him transmitted and equally distributed to five ministers serving in Jamaica or to four ministers and a schoolmaster as shall seem fit to the governor.
Jamaica then apparently preferred preaching to teaching—there being at the time obviously few children of a teachable age—for there is no further reference to the schoolmaster.
In 1671 the last of twenty-four enquiries sent to the governor, Sir Thomas Modyford, was “what provision for instructing the people in the Christian religion and for paying the ministry?”; but there was no mention made of secular education.
In 1675 Sir Thomas Lynch reported that “Mr. Lemon, a sobergoing man and a very good preacher, is minister of Guinaboa, St. John’s parish; he has £100 per annum from the parish, and about as much from Colonel Coape for keeping a free school he has erected.” To John Coape, who was a member of the first Council, Custos of Precinct VII (consisting of the parishes of St. John, St. Ann, St. George and St. Mary) and a Quaker, is due the honour of having spent the first money recorded in the cause of education in Jamaica.
The art of self-defence was not neglected. Sara Lyssons, of St. Thomas, employed John Lookmore, “a master of the noble science of defence,” to teach her sons, in 1678.
Till the end of the seventeenth century the safety of trade and commerce, the means of defence against Spanish or French invasion, the encouragement of immigration, government, and legislation, formed the subjects of discussion with the home government, and the comparatively newly formed colony was too unsettled to think of imparting knowledge to the rising generation.
The only reference to education found in the legislation of the century is in an “Act for Confirmation of Pious, Charitable and Public Gifts and Grants,” to “erecting or maintaining of Churches, Chappels, Schools, Universities, Colledges, or other places for education of Youth or maintenance of men of Learning, or any Alms-houses or Hospitals, or any other uses whatsoever, heretofore made, and hereafter to be made within the time aforesaid.” But it was long ere “Colledges” came into being, and the Universities are as yet in the future.
In the year 1688, Sir Henry Morgan, of buccaneering fame, gave £100 to aid the bequest of £100 sterling by Joachim Hane to found a school in St. Mary, but nothing was rendered available to the establishment of such a school.
Bridges tells us that “in the year 1695 Sir Nicolas Lawes bequeathed his estate, in default of heirs, to found a free school for the benefit of the parishes of Kingston and St. Andrew. A school was consequently incorporated, with a seal, bearing the founder’s arms, but it failed for want of sufficient means, and the land was attached to the rectory. Twelve years afterwards Zacariah Gaulton left £80 per annum to pay a master and £500 to build a schoolhouse, and in 1721 Benjamin Cotman bequeathed his estate for the same purpose.” As a matter of fact Sir Nicholas Lawes’s will is dated August 21, 1730, and the bequest was not to establish a school, but “unto the Governors of the Free School of St. Andrews in the Island of Jamaica for the time being, and in case there be no Governors at that time as the Law directs then to such Governors as the Chancellor or Commander-in-Chief of the said Island shall direct and appoint Governors of the said Free School then I say I give to such Governors of the said Free School and their successors for ever the estate and premisses aforesaid for and towards the maintenance of the Masters Teachers and other Officers of the said Free School the repairing and making new Buildings more fitt and comodious large house or houses on the land at Halfway Tree which I formerly gave for that use finishing and furnishing the same and for and towards the maintenance support education and learning of so many Scholars (native youths of Jamaica) as the said Governors of the said School or the major part of them shall from time to time think fitt to admit to that benefit and the said bequest can support and maintain.”
But this bequest never took effect, for all his children who were living when he made his will—his sons James and Temple and his daughter Judith Maria—survived him.
Roger Elletson, Speaker of the House of Assembly, and Chief Justice, in the year 1690 gave £20 towards the foundation of a school in St. Andrew. Edward Harrison, in 1695, and Charles Delacree, in the succeeding year, each bequeathed £10 per annum for the same purpose. The bequests, however, were allowed to lie dormant until the year 1789, when the principal and interest were estimated at £14,710, no part of which was, however, recovered.
John Mills, in 1711, after several entails, left money to establish a free school in St. Elizabeth, but no such institution ever existed.
In the year 1736, Edward Pennant left £200 for a school and books, in Clarendon; and a school was founded in Old Woman’s Savannah, aided by subscriptions to the amount of £2000. It flourished about the year 1758, when, by some ill-management, it failed; the premises were vested in trustees for sale, and the institution vanished.
By the end of the seventeenth century the need of education for the sons and daughters of the colonists must have become pressing. The plan usually adopted by those who could afford it was to send their children (often the illegitimate as well as the legitimate) home; and so it continued in the main till the end of the following century, and indeed far into the nineteenth. Many a son of Jamaica acquired a good education in England, and not a few graduated at the universities. A manuscript “Catalogue of Men born in the Island of Jamaica who matriculated at Oxford 1689–1885 extracted from Alumni Oxonienses. (To which I have added a few stray names of men connected with the island.) By William Cowper, M.A.,” in the Library of the Institute of Jamaica, contains 268 names of men known to have matriculated at Oxford. Peter Beckford, who matriculated in 1688, and afterwards became lieutenant-governor of Jamaica, is the first on the list which includes other well-known names, such as Garbrand, Dawkins, Nedham, Ellis, Price, Gale, Gregory, Haughton, Morant, Barham, Lawrence, Lewis, Clarke, Barrett, East, Dallas, Dwarris and Scarlett.
A review of the state of education in the middle of the eighteenth century is given by Leslie in his “New History of Jamaica” (1740). He says:
“Learning is here at the lowest Ebb; there is no publick School in the whole Island, neither do they seem fond of the thing; several large Donations have been made for such Uses, but have never taken Effect. The Office of a Teacher is looked upon as contemptible and no Gentleman keeps Company with one of that Character; to read, write and cast Accounts, is all the Education they desire, and even these are but scurvily taught. A Man of any Parts or Learning, that would employ himself in that Business, would be despised and starve. The Gentlemen whose Fortunes can allow it, send their Children to Great Britain, where they have the Advantage of a polite generous Education; but others are spoil’d, and make such an inconsiderable Figure ever after, that they are the common Butt in every Conversation. Mr. Beckford3 has lately bequeathed £2000 sterling, for a Free-School: It is doubtful whether this Gentleman’s Intentions will be answered by the Managers; for by their way of proceeding there is small Appearance they design to encourage Men of Merit to take upon them such an Office. Several have lately offered themselves who were every way qualified for the Undertaking; and some promised themselves Success, from the good Disposition they perceived in many to encourage their Design; but after a Trial were of Necessity obliged to quit it. ’Tis Pity, in a Place like this, where the Means could be so easily afforded, something of a publick Nature should not be done for the Advantage of Posterity; but when such a Spirit will appear, is hard to determine. There are indeed several Gentlemen who are well acquainted with Learning, in some of its most valuable Branches: but these are few; and the Generality seem to have a greater Affection for the moodish Vice of Gaming than the Belles Lettres, and love a Pack of Cards better than the Bible. To talk of a Homer, or a Virgil, of a Tully, or a Demosthenes, is quite unpolite; and it cannot be otherwise; for a Boy, till the Age of Seven or Eight, diverts himself with the Negroes, acquires their broken way of talking, their Manners of Behaviour, and all the Vices which these unthinking Creatures can teach: Then perhaps he goes to School; but young Master must not be corrected; if he learns, ’tis well; if not, it can’t be helped. After a little Knowledge of reading, he goes to the Dancing-school, and commences Beau, learns the common Topicks of Discourse, and visits and rakes with his Equals. This is their Method; and how can it be supposed one of such a Turn can entertain any generous Notions, distinguish the Beauties of Virtue, act for the Good of his Country, or appear in any Station of Life, so as to deserve Applause? Some of the Ladies read, they all dance a great deal, coquet much, dress for Admirers; and at last, for the most part, run away with the most insignificant of their humble Servants. Their Education consists intirely in acquiring these little Arts. ’Tis a thousand Pities they do not improve their Minds, as well as their Bodies; they would then be charming Creatures indeed.”
That the object of those few who, amongst a community indifferent to such matters, wished to benefit education in Jamaica, had been in the main disregarded during the eighteenth century, is evident from a report of a Committee of the Assembly presented in November 1791 by Bryan Edwards, the historian. The Committee had been appointed to “enquire into and prepare an account of the several charities and donations that have been made and devised from time to time, by well disposed persons for the establishment of free-schools in the different parts of this Island, and which have not been carried into effect agreeably to the intention of the donors; and further to report a state of the landed and other real property, funds, and securities for money, which, in the judgment of the Committee, are at this time subject and liable to such donations; and their opinion what steps are proper to be taken for the recovery and establishment thereof for the purposes intended.”
They reported “that the committee, limiting their enquiries to such charities or donations only, in the recovery whereof there appears at this time any visible property to which resort can be had, confine themselves to the several Parishes of St. Ann, St. Andrew, Vere, and Westmoreland: In each of these parishes donations have been made for the purpose in the resolution of the House mentioned; some of which donations have not been carried into full effect, and others have remained wholly unapplied and unaccounted for by the several devisees, executors, purchasers, or possessors, under the original granters or donors of such estates or properties as were specially charged with such donations.”
That matters had not much improved by the beginning of the nineteenth century is evident from “An Account of Jamaica and its Inhabitants,” published in 1808. “Literature,” the author says, “is little cultivated in Jamaica, nor is reading a very favorite amusement. There is a circulating Library in Kingston, and, in one or two other places a paltry attempt at such a thing, these collections of books not being of that choice and miscellaneous nature which they ought to be, but usually composed of a few good novels mixed with a much larger proportion of these ephemeral ones which are daily springing up, and which are a disgrace to literature, and an insult to common sense.”
John Rippingham, the author of “Jamaica considered in its Present State, Political, Financial, and Philosophical” (1817), presented a memorial to the Assembly, setting forth that “there is no establishment provided by this Island for the education of sons of gentlemen, that he had had considerable experience in the higher departments of education, and had published several works upon intellectual improvement, and that he offered his abilities, acquirements, and assiduity to supply the deficiency and craved the aid of the house.” The matter was referred to a Committee and the House agreed, on their report, that they did not consider it expedient to adopt any measure on the subject. Whether the House thought higher education was not necessary or doubted Rippingham’s ability to give it, is not stated.
Bridges, writing in his “Annals,” gives some account of the educational efforts of the past. He reports “no endowments of any kind” in the parishes of Trelawny, Manchester, St. Dorothy (now part of St. Catherine), St. Thomas-in-the-Vale, and St. Thomas-in-the-East or in St. James, although the Legislature had early in the eighteenth century appropriated £1400 per annum for the purpose.
In 1843 the Charity Commissioners of England reported on the schools of Jamaica:
“With this view, then, we may be permitted to observe that almost all the schools in question have been greatly modified by, and that many owe their very existence, or their increased income to, acts of the Legislature. The original bequest to the Jamaica Free School would probably have been lost to that institution, but for the interference of the Legislature, and a great part of its present funds was derived from a grant of the Crown. So at Vere, the Act 2 Geo. 4, c. 19, recites that the school was failing for want of scholars, and its original constitution was accordingly varied, by throwing it open for the reception of children from the adjoining and other parishes. Grants have, from time to time, been made to each of these schools for temporary purposes, e.g. repairs, etc., and a permanent rate of interest amounting to no less than 8 per cent. is paid by the Receiver General to both. It is not, therefore, we think, too much to say that the Legislature has thus acquired (even if it did not necessarily possess it) a right to deal with the funds of these institutions, in such manner as it may deem expedient. Least of all can this be denied where the object is not to divert them from, but to apply them more usefully to the great purpose of education, for which they were originally intended. More especially does this remark apply to the Jamaica Free School, which appears by the Act 18, Geo. 3, c. 25, s. 5, to have been expressly intended to fulfil this end, and was even permitted to incorporate with its own funds those of any other charitable institution, which were either unappropriated, or which parties were willing to transfer to it, with a view to carry out this very object.”
Of the condition of education in the middle of the nineteenth century, Gardner, in his “History” (1873), states:
“Another Commission, first appointed in 1843, was also discharging the duty of enquiring into the extent and management of the different charities of the island, and quietly preparing the way for some wholesome reforms. Many painful facts were brought to light relative to the culpable alienation of benevolent bequests from their intended purpose; and other facts equally discreditable, in reference to the mode in which existing charities were managed.”
Robson, in “The Story of our Jamaica Mission” (1894), says:
“In 1855 the Governor, Sir Henry Barkly, in a despatch to the Colonial Secretary, said: ‘By far the most creditable institution in the island is the Presbyterian Academy, principally intended for training young men of the ministry or the scholastic profession. It still held a foremost place and was accomplishing excellent work; there were twenty-four missionary students and fifty-six public scholars in attendance. But the expense to the Home Church, amounting to nearly £500 a year, appeared to call for some more economical scheme.’”
In a chapter in his “History” devoted to “Religion, Education, and Social Progress, from 1839 to 1865,” Gardner makes no reference to Secondary Education, unless the foundation of Calabar College in 1843 for the training of a native Baptist Ministry can be so considered.
In 1865 an Act (28 Vic., c. 23) was passed by which the Government appropriated the sums of money deposited from time to time in the Public Treasury by various charities and institutions at varying rates of interest, and became responsible for the payment of perpetual annuities in lieu thereof, thereby preventing for the future so far as those funds were concerned any of that misapplication alluded to in the reports of the Committee of 1791.
Under that able organizer, Sir John Peter Grant (1866–1874), elementary education was put on a sound basis of encouragement and support; by him was also founded the too ambitious and short-lived College at Spanish Town which aimed at providing a university education for a community that was not yet ready for it.
During the governorship of Sir Anthony Musgrave the needs of Secondary Education—which was defined as being the encouragement of education of a higher grade “among those classes of the community who would value it, if placed within their reach, but whose means do not enable them to send their children to Europe for the purpose of obtaining it”—received full consideration.
By the creation in 1879 of the Jamaica Schools Commission, which exercises over endowed schools in Jamaica the same sort of supervision formerly exercised by the Charity Commissioners in England over English schools, means were afforded for placing the old endowed schools of the island under suitable management. The Jamaica High School was established, the Jamaica Scholarship was started, and the Cambridge Local Examinations were held for the first time in 1882; and later in 1891 the University of London was induced to hold its examinations in the colony.
The Wesleyan Church started their High School at York Castle, in St. Ann, in 1876; and the Institute of Jamaica for the encouragement of Literature, Science and Art was founded by the Government in 1879.
In 1892 a Secondary Education Law (32 of 1892) was passed, empowering the Governor in Privy Council on the recommendation of the Board of Education—a Board formed with the main object of advising on elementary education—to declare any important centre of population to be without adequate provision for secondary education and to establish a school there, to be managed by a local committee of management under the supervision of the Board. A subsequent act of the Legislature transferred the duty of supervision of all such schools from the Board of Education to the Jamaica Schools Commission. In 1911 the secondary schools of the island were first inspected and reported on by an English school inspector.
Taverns must have existed in Jamaica from early times. They are mentioned in the Deficiency law, by which one white hired or indentured servant had to be kept for every tavern or retail shop; and White’s Tavern in Kingston is referred to in the Journals of the Assembly in 1730. That there was a tavern at Dry Harbour in 1769 is evident from a rare view published in that year entitled “Dry Harbour in the Parish of St. Ann’s, Jamaica, taken from the West end of the Tavern, with the Fort and Barracks, now in Ruins.”
But when one considers the large amount of travelling by road that was done in Jamaica in the past, there were, comparatively speaking, few taverns or posting houses, the truth being that planters and even strangers relied in the main on the proverbial hospitality of the inhabitants. Of “the Permanent natives, or Creole men,” Long tells us in his history (written in 1774), “their hospitality is unlimited; they having lodging and entertainment always at the service of transient strangers and travellers; and receive in the most friendly manner those, with whose character and circumstances they are often utterly unacquainted.” And he adds as a footnote: “One obvious proof of this is, that there is scarcely one tolerable inn throughout the whole Island, except at a great distance from any settlement.” He refers to Knockpatrick, now in Manchester, and “two good taverns” at Lacovia in St. Elizabeth. He says: “The Tavern at Knockpatrick (belonging also to Mr. W—stn—y), the next settlement we come to, stands very commodiously, and enjoys a most excellent climate. The English beans, pease, and other culinary vegetables of Europe grow here in most seasons of the year, to the utmost perfection. A gentleman who supped here could not help remarking, that the victuals were literally brought smoaking-hot to table, a phenomenon seldom observed in the low lands, where the air is so much more rarefied.” Elsewhere he states that “Mr. W—stn—y” is said to be a natural son of the late “Duke of L—ds.”
Bryan Edwards in 1806 says: “As Mr. Long has remarked, there is not one tolerable inn throughout all the West Indies.” He then goes on to contrast the general plenty and magnificence of the Jamaica planter’s table and the meanness of their houses and apartments: “it being no uncommon thing to find, at the country habitations of the planters, a splendid sideboard loaded with plate and the choicest wines, a table covered with the finest damask, and a dinner of perhaps sixteen or twenty covers; and all this in a hovel not superior to an English barn.”
Monk Lewis, writing on his visits to the Island in 1816 and 1818, in his “Journal of a West India Proprietor,” alluded to a “solitary tavern called Blackheath” near Claremont, and to a lodging-house in St. Ann’s Bay where he found “an excellent breakfast at an inn quite in the English fashion;” to the “Wellington Hotel” at Rio Bueno in Trelawny; to “Judy James’s” in Montego Bay, in St. James; to “Miss Hetley’s” inn at Yallahs in St.-Thomas-in-the-East; to a “solitary tavern” at Bluefields in Westmoreland, where he met “the handsomest creole that I have ever seen,” Antonietta by name, of Spanish-African parentage; and to “West Tavern,” which must have been somewhere near Ewarton, as it was nineteen miles from Spanish Town on the north road. He also alludes to “The Gutturs” in St. Elizabeth, where they found “everything that travellers could wish.”
Lewis says: “All the inns upon this road [the western half of the north side] are excellent, with the solitary exception of the Blackheath Tavern, which I stopped at by mistake instead of that at Montague [an obvious misprint for Moneague].” While elsewhere he says: “Inns would be bowers of Paradise if they were all rented by mulatto ladies like Judy James.”
A strangely long time was allowed to elapse after the settling of the various islands in the West Indies before printing presses were established. Perhaps some of the governors thought like Berkeley of Virginia, who, in his report to the Lords of Trade in 1671, wrote: “But I thank God, there are no free schools, nor printing, and I hope we shall not have, these hundred years; for learning has brought disobedience, and heresy and sects into the world, and printing has divulged them, and libels against the best of government. God keep us from both.”
The earliest printing press in America was set up in Mexico before the middle of the sixteenth century.
The first printing press in English Colonies was set up in Massachusetts in 1638. In Jamaica it was established in 1721, sixty-six years after the acquisition of the colony by the British. The first almanac printed in the colonies was produced at Cambridge in 1639. Unfortunately no copy is known to exist: the earliest existing being one issued at Cambridge in 1646 in private possession. Printing was practised at Havanna, in Cuba, as early as 1729, and in Martinique as early as 1727; a Royal printing house was established in St. Domingo in 1750. The “Barbados Gazette,” published weekly, has been called the earliest British West Indian newspaper. Its first issue appeared on May 18, 1731, but Isaiah Thomas, in his “History of Printing,” says that the “Weekly Jamaica Courant” was published at Kingston as early as 1722.
The first Jamaica wall almanac and the earliest piece of Jamaica printing known to be extant dates from 1734, a copy of which is in the Library of the Institute of Jamaica. The earliest Jamaica-printed book known is the “Merchant’s Pocket Companion,” printed in Kingston—be it observed, not in Spanish Town, the then capital of the island—in 1751. The next oldest Jamaica-printed book known is a volume of Love Elegies by Peter Pindar of the year 1773. A copy of each is in the Institute Library. The best known of the early Jamaica newspapers was the “St. Jago de la Vega Gazette.” There may be early volumes of the “St. Jago de la Vega Gazette” (founded in 1756) in existence, but the earliest in the Institute Library bears date 1791, and the earliest of the “Royal Gazette” (founded in 1779) there bears date 1780. The earliest example of a Jamaica newspaper in the Library is an issue of “The St. Jago Intelligencer” of Kingston of the year 1757, possibly the earliest copy of a Jamaica newspaper extant.
In Hickeringill’s “Jamaica View’d,” published in the year 1661, appears what is probably the oldest English map of the island. With the exception of Guanaboa, The Seven Plantations, The Angels, and St. Jago de la Vega, only towns on the sea-board are mentioned in it, and there is no attempt to divide the island into parishes.
In a census taken in 1662 the Island was divided into ten districts, as follows: the Precincts of Port Moranto; Morant; Yealoth; and Legene; the town of Saint Angelo Delvega [St. Jago de la Vega]; Between Black River, Bower Savanna and thereabouts; In the Angles Quarter; In the Seven Plantations, Macaria, Quathebeca; In the Quarters Quanaboa and Quardelena; and Point Caugway.
Sir Thomas Modyford, in his “View of the Condition of Jamaica, the 1st of October, 1664,” reprinted in the appendix to the first volume of the “Journals of the House of Assembly” ([Spanish Town] 1811), says “there is in the said island but seven established parishes: videlicet, the town and parish of St. Katherine’s, St. John’s, the town and parish of Port Royal, Clarendon, St. David’s, St. Andrew’s, and St. Thomas, which are very large, and in them all but one church, that at St. Katherine’s.”
The parish of St. David was part of the precinct of St. Thomas-in-the-East, and St. George was part of the precinct of St. Mary.
As a result of the survey ordered by Sir Thomas Modyford, and made by “Serjeant-Major John Man, Surveyor-General for His Majesty,” who calculated that the island comprised seven millions of acres, a map was prepared by Man and copied by “Mr. Innians, the surveyor,” and published in Blome’s “Description of the Island of Jamaica” in 1671. There are included on this map, in addition to two unnamed precincts occupying approximately the positions of the present Hanover and Manchester, the precincts of St. Catherine, St. Andrew, Port Royal, St. David, St. Thomas, St. George, St. Mary, St. John, St. Ann, St. James, St. Elizabeth and Clarendon.
In the year 1673, Vere was formed by cutting off a portion of Clarendon, but it still remained part of the precinct of Clarendon; and in 1675 when an Act was passed for dividing His Majesty’s Island of Jamaica into several parishes and precincts, St. Thomas-in-the-Vale was taken from St. Catherine; and Clarendon lost another piece out of which was formed St. Dorothy, which parish became part of the precinct of St. Catherine.
In “The State of Jamaica under Sir Thomas Lynch, His Majesty’s present Captain-General and Chief Governour, September 20th, 1683,” prefixed to the “Laws of Jamaica” (London 1684), it states “since that time (1661) it has been divided into Fifteen Parishes and they into eight Provinces or Precincts.”
The first act on record having reference to the parishes of the island was read on the 11th of May, 1675, by the Council, and sent to the Assembly with this amendment, that the Magotty be annexed to the sixteen-mile-walk, but continue still to pay all parochial duties to St. John’s except to the repairing of the highways, until a church be built and a parish settled in the parish of St. Thomas-in-the-Vale. A law was passed in 1677. The law itself had not been preserved, but it is recited in a law passed in 1681 (33 Car. 2), “An Act for the maintenance of Ministers and the Poor, and erecting and Repairing of churches.” (“The Laws of Jamaica,” London 1684): “and whereas this Island, in the twenty-ninth year of His Majesty’s reign, by an Act of this Country, was divided into fifteen parishes, which were called, distinguished and known, by the several names hereafter mentioned, that is to say, St. Thomas, St. Davids, Port Royal, St. Andrews, St. Katherines, St. Dorothys, St. Thomas in the Valley, Clarendon, Vere, St. Johns, St. Georges, St. Maries, St. Anns, St. James, and St. Elizabeths; Be it therefore enacted and ordained by the Authority aforesaid, That all and every of the said Parishes, rest, remain, and for ever hereafter be distinguished and known by the aforesaid respective Names, and by no other whatsoever, anything in this or any other Law to the contrary notwithstanding.”
In 1692, on the destruction of the greater part of Port Royal by earthquake, most of the inhabitants that survived settled in hastily erected buildings in St. Andrew, on the harbour, and in the following year the parish of Kingston was formed.
In 1703 Westmoreland was formed out of a portion of St. Elizabeth. In 1723 Portland was formed, the land being taken partly from St. Thomas-in-the-East, and partly from St. George (by 10 Geo. 1); and Hanover was formed out of part of Westmoreland. In 1739 (12 Geo. 2, ch. 6) parts of the Carpenters Mountains, heretofore esteemed part of St. Elizabeth and Clarendon, were transferred to Vere.
In 1758 the three counties of Surrey, Middlesex and Cornwall were created (by 31 Geo. 2, ch. 15) with a view to the more convenient holding of courts of justice. The middle county was appropriately called Middlesex; the westernmost was named after the most western county in England, Cornwall; and the eastern division was called Surrey, probably because, like Surrey in England, its principal town was Kingston.
Kingston was declared the county town of Surrey; St. Jago de la Vega, that of Middlesex; and Savanna-la-Mar, that of Cornwall. In the first-named were the seven parishes of Port Royal, Kingston, St. Andrew, St. David, Portland, St. George and St. Thomas-in-the-East; Middlesex comprised St. Catherine, St. John, St. Thomas-in-the-Vale, St. Dorothy, Clarendon, Vere, St. Ann, and St. Mary; while Cornwall had but four parishes, St. Elizabeth, Westmoreland, Hanover and St. James. The next change was in 1770, when Trelawny was formed out of a portion of St. James. In 1814 Manchester was created by taking parts from Clarendon, Vere and St. Elizabeth, thus transferring a portion of Cornwall to Middlesex.
In many old maps of the island, notably James Robertson’s (published in 1804) the names of the owners are given rather than the names of properties, and in many instances these proper names exist to this day; and to-day the negro peasantry are often able to tell one the name of the owner when they are ignorant of the name of the estate or house.
In 1809 a law was passed (50 Geo. 3) for fixing the boundaries of the several counties and parishes of this island, by which the extent and boundaries of the counties and parishes as laid down and delineated in the three maps of the counties and the general map of the island, made and published by Robertson, were taken as the bounds of the counties and parishes, and printed copies of the maps were recognized as evidence in all courts of justice in the island.
In 1831 McGeachy and Smith, surveyors, proposed to publish by subscription maps of the three counties at £20 apiece. They received the names of eighty-six subscribers, but the maps were never published, as we learn by “St. Jago de la Vega Gazette” for February 12, 1831.
In 1841 the last parish to be created in the history of Jamaica, Metcalfe, was formed out of the parishes of St. Mary and St. George, whereby Middlesex again gained land, this time at the expense of Surrey. The parishes then numbered twenty-two. In 1844 an Act (8 Vic. c. 39) was passed defining the boundaries of Kingston Harbour.
In 1867, as part of the reformation scheme of Sir John Peter Grant, was passed the law for the reduction of the number of parishes. In Surrey, Kingston, was increased by taking part of St. Andrew, a part of the parish and the whole town of Port Royal. St. Andrew took the remaining part of Port Royal parish; and St. David was merged into St. Thomas-in-the-East, and St. George into Portland, which also took the Manchioneal district of St. Thomas-in-the-East.
In Middlesex the recently created parish of Metcalfe was merged into the parish of St. Mary. St. Thomas-in-the-Vale, St. John, and St. Dorothy were all merged into St. Catherine, and Vere again became part of Clarendon; St. Ann and Manchester remaining as they were. In Cornwall there was no alteration, the five parishes remaining as they were.
In 1900 Port Royal was made a separate parish for municipal purposes, remaining still part of the electoral district of Kingston.
Of names given owing to natural features, there are numbers in Jamaica—the Blue Mountains; the Red Hills; the Great, White, Swift, Dry, and Milk Rivers; Green Island; Dry Harbour; Dry Mountains; the Round Hill (in Vere), and so on.
The Y. S. River (pronounced Wyers) is, Long tells us, so called from the Gallic word Y. S., which signifies crooked or winding. Another authority says the name of the property was Wyess, and its commercial mark for shipping purposes was Y. S.
Labour-in-vain Savannah in St. Elizabeth is a name perfectly descriptive of its nature. So, too, is Burnt Savannah.
The struggle for and the success of emancipation have left their names on many a free negro settlement; some of which, it is to be feared, have not realized their early promise: Clarkson Ville, Sturge Town, Wilberforce, Buxton, Liberty Hill and others.
Some names are typical of the simple faith and language of the negro, such as Wait-a-bit and Come-see. Me-no-sen-you-no-come, in Trelawny, must have been named by folk of recluse habits. Others are not euphonious—Fat Hog Quarter, Running Gut (which Lawrence Archer, in his “Monumental Inscriptions of the British West Indies,” thinks may probably be a corruption by some seafaring man of Harangutta, a branch of the Ganges), Starve Gut Bay; and one rather wonders whether they are not vulgar corruptions of different designations. We find, however, similar names in the other islands: Dos d’Ane in Dominica, and Mal d’Estomac in Trinidad. On the other hand Kick-em-Jenny, the rock between St. Vincent and Grenada, is said to have been originally called Cay qu’on gêne—the islet that bothers one, from the roughness of the neighbouring sea.
Many names of townships and properties have been translated from the old country—Oxford, Ipswich, Cambridge, Newmarket and the like—and the number of Bellevues, Belvideres, Contents, speak little for the inventive faculties of those who named them.
Of its trade with the outside world Jamaica has evidences in Jamaica Bay, in Acklin’s Island, Bahamas; in Jamaica (as old at least as 1699), Long Island; in Jamaica Plain near Boston; in Jamaica Street in Glasgow; in Jamaica Street in Greenock; and formerly in the Jamaica coffee house in London.
The Jamaica coffee house was in St. Michael’s Alley, Cornhill, which runs out of Cornhill to the west of St. Michael’s church. This alley is famous as having contained the first coffee house established in London. The Jamaica coffee house is kept in memory there by the Jamaica wine house which adjoins the office of a wine merchant (E. J. Rose & Co.) and by Jamaica buildings. Like all city alleys, the place has been entirely rebuilt.
Jamaica Street, one of the busiest streets in Glasgow, leading to Jamaica Bridge over the Clyde, was named in 1763, and its name was doubtless suggested by the business connexion. There are other evidences in Glasgow of West Indian trade in St. Vincent Street, Tobago Street, and the “Havannah” (Street); but the name of Kingston Dock has no connection with Kingston, Jamaica.
There is a Jamaica Road in Bermondsey and a Jamaica Street in Shadwell.
Notes
2. For this subject consult “Aboriginal Indian Remains in Jamaica. By J. E. Duerden, A.R.C.Sc., Kingston, Ja., 1897.”
3. Peter Beckford, the grandfather of William Beckford of Fonthill, who behaved badly with respect to the Drax property.