Visiting Kingston -- My Two Grannies

My four grandchildren are very lucky in that they have known all four of their grandparents. I was not so fortunate. Both my grandfathers had died before my parents were married; as for my grandmothers, well, I knew them for only a short time in my childhood. Both of them were born in 1861, and both died in 1943, at which time I was just eight years old. I do remember them, however. They lived across the street from each other: my Grandmother Smedmore lived at 49 Beeston Street and my Grandma Levy lived at 22 Beeston Street.

I have a better memory of my Grandmother Smedmore because I probably saw her more often. Sadly, I have no pictures of her or of my grandfather, William Dey Smedmore. I do have a photograph of my grandmother's youngest sister, Theresa Eugenie Brown, and I rather think there must have been a resemblance between them. This is my Aunt Tess.


Aunt Tess was the Postmistress for many years in Montego Bay, but that's another story.

I would go to Kingston with my parents to visit the grannies. This was always a treat for me, living as we did in the suburbs of St. Andrew. Kingston was different .... busy, lots of people on the streets, all sorts of stores, higglers and vendors selling things on the sidewalks, and we got to ride the tramcar!

I remember that I used to tell my Grandmother Smedmore Anancy stories, which she enjoyed very much. Anancy, or Anansi, is a figure of folklore, a spider, a trickster hero, based on folktales brought from West Africa. Another Jamaican blogger, Floyd Brooks, has posted an excellent article by Marcia Davidson on Anancy stories on his blog, Jamaica Land We Love.

We didn't visit my Grandma Levy as much. I have one memory of her ... the room she was in was quite dark, and I do not really remember much about the house. I remember she was dressed in white. The room was probably dark because Grandma Levy was blind. She had had cataract surgery, which in the 1930s and '40s was nothing like what we know today ... no lasers! Patients had to lie completely still on their backs, with the head placed between two sandbags to keep it perfectly still as any movement too early after the surgery could cause blindness. My Grandma Levy was subject to nightmares and apparently had one which caused her to start up suddenly, and as a result she lost her sight. I remember she talked about her late husband, Leopold, but I do not remember what she said and at that age I wasn't particularly interested. It would be a long time before my interest in family history would lead me to find out what I could about him and about my Grandma Levy's past.

The House at 49 Beeston Street

The red block at the corner of Beeston Street and Love Lane shows approximately where the house at 49 Beeston Street, the Smedmore family home, was located. My memories of it are as a child and a young teenager. Unfortunately there are no photographs of the exterior of the house. I think the exterior architecture would have been considered in the Georgian style, something like this photograph taken in 2003 in Falmouth, Trelawny, Jamaica.

Colin G. Clarke, in his book, Kingston, Jamaica: urban development and social change, 1692-1962 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975), quotes Michael Scott who wrote of the architecture in Kingston in the 19th century as follows:

The appearance of the town itself was novel and pleasing; the houses chiefly of two stories, looked as if they had been built of cards, most of them being surrounded by piazzas from ten to fourteen feet wide ... On the ground-floor these piazzas are open ... on the floor above, the balconies are shut in with moveable blinds called "jalousies", with large-bladed Venetian blinds fixes in frames....

I don't know when the house at 49 Beeston Street was built. I do know that it was occupied by the family of Louis Cunha in 1878 (of whom more in future).

The house sat on the north side of Beeston Street, and well up from the street itself. There was a set of steps, perhaps about six or so, which led up to the house. There was in front a large piazza open to the air, which was never used by the family. The steps themselves led to a door in a wall ... for the entire property was surrounded by a high cement wall. You entered this door and were immediately completely away from the street outside. A short path led to the open back verandah on the left, and on the right was the courtyard which included a large Jamaican cherry tree, and in the walled garden all sorts of tropical plants mainly crotons, coleus and ferns.

The house itself consisted of two bedrooms on the ground floor, as well as a full bathroom, all off of the back verandah. Across from the back verandah, to the north of the house, was a separate building, connected to the house by a covered walkway. This building contained the dining area, pantry and to the west a laundry room. To the east of the house at the end of the property were other outbuildings, including the kitchen with huge wood burning stove, and servants's quarters.

The second storey, which one reached by a staircase, contained in the centre a large with-drawing room, and off of that four bedrooms with a bathroom. At the top of the stairs was another bathroom, which may have been added later, and another bedroom overlooking the courtyard. When I visited the house as a child, the large bedroom on the ground floor belonged to my eldest aunt Sylvia (and had originally been my grandparents' room), and the other bedroom was that of my youngest uncle, Julian. Two of the bedrooms upstairs were occupied by my aunt Elma and my uncle Owen. Whenever I stayed over I had one of the smaller bedrooms overlooking Love Lane.

My parents, Michael Leopold Levy and Maud Dey Smedmore, were married in 1926 and their wedding pictures were taken in the courtyard of 49 Beeston Street. This picture of them together is taken to the east of the house and one can see the kitchen outbuilding in the background.

Moving to Kingston: 49 Beeston Street

Before I leave Port Royal I'd like to pay tribute to the Jamaica National Heritage Trust. Since 1958 they have been working to preserve Jamaica's heritage. I was disappointed that I did not have an image of the Dockyard at Port Royal, but fortunately I was able to find one on line on the JNHT website. This image is of the Admiralty buildings and may very well have been where William Dey Smedmore and George Christopher Baylis worked as Admiralty writers.

My thanks to the Jamaican National Heritage Trust for permission to post the above image.

But now to Kingston .... William Dey Smedmore and his family moved to a house in Kingston at 49 Beeston Street, probably some time between 1896 and 1899. At the time this would have been a residential area. Later, as people left the city and moved to the suburbs of St. Andrew, it became less desirable to live there. Beeston Street is located north of the Parade and runs from the Spanish Town Road in the west to Text Lane in the east. Here it is on a current map of Kingston.

Here is how it would have looked in 1897, as found in Stark's Jamaica Guide illustrated (Boston: James H. Stark, 1902). Beeston Street was named after Sir William Beeston, one of the early Governors of Jamaica, who was granted a considerable amount of land, much of which went to make up the original City of Kingston.

The Smedmore family settled at 49 Beeston Street, on the north side at the corner of Love Lane. Across the street from them, at 22 Beeston Street, lived my paternal grandmother, Alice Levy. She did not, however, move there till some time between 1900 and 1917 and she was still living there when she died in 1943. I imagine that it was this proximity that brought my parents together.

I have a couple pictures which were most likely taken at 49 Beeston Street, but they give very little idea of what the house was like. Though I saw it as a child and teenager, I can still remember it and will attempt to paint a picture of it in words in my next post.