The Ford Boys Make Good!

I have not been able to find any evidence that James and Henry Ford had relatives in Jamaica who might have suggested that they emigrate. Most likely they were encouraged to do so through the efforts of the Jamaican government’s immigration policies. One question I had was what became of the Ford family in England.  I could not find Thomas Ford in any census after 1851, so I assume he must have died. The name is a common one, but I believe he may be the Thomas Ford who was buried 24 December 1853 in Highgate Cemetery. His wife, Jessy Maria, had died in July 1846. Two of their children, Martha Cleland and Albert Charles, died in March 1843. I have been unable to find out what happened to the other two sons, Thomas Frederick and William, though there is a Thomas Ford, age 22 in the 1851 English census, whose age matches that of Thomas Frederick, who was born in 1829. This Thomas Ford is listed as a visitor at the house of one William Edwards, a journeyman carpenter in Camberwell. Thomas’s occupation is given as journeyman coach builder, so he may well have left home to find work elsewhere.

By chance, I found that the youngest daughter, Jessy Maria, came to Kingston, perhaps because her father and mother were dead, and Thomas was no longer living at home. It’s possible that James and Henry encouraged her to come to Jamaica to be with them. At any rate she died there, according to the Monumental Inscriptions of the British West Indies, by James Henry Lawrence-Archer, as excerpted on the Jamaican Family Search website on 23 March 1862 and was buried in the New West Ground “regretted by brothers”.

Family history research is more than just records of birth, marriage and death. We want to know more than just the bare facts about our ancestors –what they were like and how they lived. Without access to such materials as letters or diaries we have to depend on other sources, and one such is the local newspaper. Jamaican researchers are fortunate to have access to the online Jamaica Gleaner, a subscription website. Thanks to the Gleaner online I found several references to both James and Henry Ford and how they had prospered in Jamaica. Henry’s lengthy obituary gave me the date of their emigration to Jamaica, and other items and advertisement helped to portray a picture of both men. From Henry’s obituary, which ran to one and half columns, I learned that he had entered the office of Mr. J. Mais. where he was placed in the counting house under Mr. Newman.    He then moved on to the Receiver General's office where he was appointed acting Receiver of Stamp Duties under Mr. Barclay. After some years in the public service he left to go into business with the said Barclay in St. Thomas-in-the-East. Barclay died in 1860 and Henry continued on in the business. He also bought out the business of Mr. Rouse of Rouse and Gall, becoming a partner in the business which had been carried on by the late James Gall. Henry had also served as a member of the Mayor and Council of Kingston. During the Morant Bay Rebellion of 1865 his business was severely affected and he went there to serve as a captain of company of volunteers. He built up a business in the parish of St. Thomas but experienced some difficulty because he refused to sell liquor, being a teetotaler. He made an unsuccessful migration to Australia, returning to Jamaica, and by 1878 had assumed the position of Secretary to Jamaica Co-Operative Fire Insurance Company.

James’s obituary, unfortunately, was not as extensive. He died as a result of malarial fever in 1881, at age 56. The following brief notice appeared in the Gleaner of 16 June, 1881:

With deep regret we announce the death of Mr. James D. Ford, at his residence in

Duke Street

, at 3 o'clock this morning. Mr. Ford had been ill only a few days from malarial fever, but his strength gave way speedily. He was 53 [sic] years of age and at the time of death head of the Good Templars of Jamaica. We have been requested to state that in consequence of his death the Congregational Lodge, I.O.G.T., will not meet this evening. The funeral takes place at 5 p.m. today.

Nothing about his business endeavours or even his family! No doubt the obituary was written by a Masonic brother! Fortunately I found other items about James in the Gleaner. I knew from his marriage record that he was a bank clerk when he married Cordelia Henriques. He must have been incredibly industrious as he rose from that position to that of auditor for both the Jamaica Co-Operative Fire Insurance Company and the Jamaica Marine Insurance Company.

The advertisements appeared in the Gleaner in 1879. But other notices about James’s business endeavours were even more interesting. Along with his auditor’s work James ran a school at his home in Duke Street, the Kingston University School. It opened on 2 October 1871 and was described in the first advertisements as offering “a sound, practical and liberal education, based upon high moral and intellectual principles.”

The following is an example of one of the advertisements from the Gleaner of 12 November, 1872.

I was particularly intrigued by the mention of Hebrew as an extra subject.  Did Cordelia help teach that course, or did James hire a Jewish acquaintance to teach the language? Another interesting point is that the school took boarders, which means James’s house at

118 Duke Street

must have been quite large.

Duke Street

would have been quite an attractive neighbourhood to live in, and a sign that James had indeed done quite well for himself.

The purpose of the school seems to have been to prepare young men for the professions, judging by the following advertisement in the Gleaner of 10 June, 1878:

Less than three years later James was dead and one wonders what happened to the school. Cordelia outlived him by a mere seven months. Perhaps Henry took over the operation of the school. According to an advertisement in the Gleaner of January 27, 1902, he had been living at 118 Duke Street when he died and creditors of the estate were instructed to send their claims to his wife. However, I could find no further references to the school in the Gleaner after James’s death and it appears that 118 Duke Street must have been sold and eventually converted to apartments.

James and Henry are examples of immigrants to Jamaica who did very well both in business and in life. Both married and had families. James and his wife, Cordelia Henriques, had ten children. Henry married Ellen Hannah Savage and they had one daughter, Edith. One of James’s sons, Edmund George, settled in Panama and raised a family there. My research into this branch of the Cunha family has been a fascinating one.

Finding Out About the Fords

In my last post I mentioned that I had found evidence in the Gleaner that James Dearmer Ford and his brother, Henry, came to Jamaica in 1840. This information was in Henry’s obituary in 1901 and is really the only evidence I have that the Ford brothers came from elsewhere. I assumed that they had most likely come from England and so my next step was to see what I could find out about them. The International Genealogical Index, known as the IGI, is an excellent Internet resource to get one started in finding out more about one’s ancestors. It is part of the FamilySearch website from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, of which more in a moment. Since James Dearmer Ford had a rather unusual middle name I started with him. I knew, from the notice in the Gleaner, that he had died in 1881 at the age of 56, so armed with that information I searched the IGI and found his baptism, in 1825, in London, and that his parents were Thomas Ford and Jessey [sic] Maria. Further searching, using Thomas Ford and Jessey (or Jessy) as parents, brought up not only James but his brother Henry and other members of the family.


The IGI is only an index, created by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS), aka Mormons, as an aid to their members to perform their obligation to research five generations of their family, as part of their religious duties. The IGI includes records extracted from parish registers as well as records submitted by members of the church. It is therefore a good place to start, but one is advised to search for the original record if possible as there might be errors in transcription. Fortunately for me, a great many parish records for London are available on the subscription website, Ancestry, and that’s where I went to find out more about the family of Thomas Ford and his wife Jessy Maria.

Thomas Ford was born in 1802 in Bideford, Devon, the son of a John Ford.

A view of Bideford showing the bridge over the River TorridgeCourtesy of Old UK Photos

At some point Thomas moved to London where he met Jessy Maria Dearmer, who was born about 1804 in Hackney. They were married at St. Leonard’s, Shoreditch, on 1 May 1824.

St. Leonard's, Shoreditch

Their first three children, James, 1825, Henry, 1826, and Thomas Frederick, 1829, were baptized at St. Leonard’s. After that the family moved to St. Marylebone where William, 1836, and Martha Cleland, 1838, were born. By 1841 the family was settled in Southwark, where Albert Charles, 1841 and Jessy Maria, 1844, were born.

Thomas Ford seems to have tried his hand at various occupations. On the baptismal records for James and Henry he is listed respectively as a carpenter and a sawyer. By the time William comes along he is a clerk, and on Martha’s record, in 1838, he calls himself a timber merchant. By the time Albert is born Thomas is describing himself as a gentleman, but on Jessy’s baptismal record he has become a traveler, presumably a traveling salesman. It’s hard, therefore, to get a picture of how well-off the family was, but there must have been some reason for the two eldest boys, then aged fifteen and fourteen, to leave London and travel to a strange new country to seek their fortunes.

Why Jamaica? It’s entirely possible that Thomas Ford had a relative living there, but I have not been able to find any evidence to support that, though it is the most likely reason for the two boys to have chosen to go there. Another reason, however, is that the Jamaican government at that time was actively encouraging immigration to the island. Slavery had been abolished in 1834 but, in order to appease the planters, a system of apprenticeship for the freed slaves was put in place, so that in fact real emancipation did not come into being until August 1, 1838. It goes without saying that the freed slaves had no desire to continue working for their former slave owners and overseers, and in fact were happy to work their own little plots of land, being so encouraged by the Baptists who helped to set up various villages where former slaves could own and cultivate their own land. The Jamaican government, therefore, was forced to encourage immigration to the island to take the place of the former slave labour. Many schemes were put in place at this time, as per various Immigration Acts passed by the Assembly. The Government appointed an agent to recruit settlers to the island and immigration was encouraged from England, Europe and even the former American colonies. There is an excellent report on this on the Jamaican Family Search website at http://jamaicanfamilysearch.com/Samples/immig.htm.

As the only evidence I had for the Fords coming to Jamaica in 1840 was Henry’s obituary in the Gleaner I did search to see whether the date was correct by searching for them in England. The earliest nominal British census was taken in 1841.  I found the household of Thomas Ford in the 1841 census, in Christ Church, Southwark. With them were Thomas Frederick and Martha Cleland. There was no sign of either James or Henry, nor could I find them anywhere in the English census records. Nor could I find any trace of William who would have been five years old.  He may have died, but I could not find a record to support that.  However, childhood mortality was high in those days, and sadly, Martha Cleland Ford and her as yet unborn brother, Albert Charles, were both dead by March 1843.

Whether or not James Dearmer Ford and his brother, Henry, were recruited to Jamaica, or else came at the behest of a relative there, is not known, but once there they apparently made a success of it, not on any plantation that I know of, but in the city of Kingston.

Kingston, Duperly, 1850

In my next post I shall describe how the two brothers made a successful life in Jamaica.