The Levy Family -- Coming to America

Of the four surviving children of Leopold and Alice Levy three went to the United States. My father, Michael, was the only one who remained in Jamaica, to take care of his mother who had been widowed in 1917. Michael joined the Civil Service in 1908 at the age of nineteen and remained there until his retirement at age sixty. Here is a view of the Governernment Buildings as they would have been in his time there.

Michael worked in the Administrator General's office, eventually becoming Trustee in Bankruptcy in 1948. This photo of him was taken inside the government offices.

After my father retired from the Civil Service he took another job, as his pension was not large enough to support the family, but that's another story ... For now I want to write about my aunt and uncles who did not remain in Jamaica but made a life for themselves in America.

The story of Jamaicans is one of movement away from Jamaica ... to other islands, to Central and South America, to the United States, to Britain and to Canada, always on the lookout for a better life, a better job, or perhaps just to get away. Just as Jamaica attracted all sorts of people from various parts of the world so too Jamaicans have left the island and settled elsewhere. In the 1900s they flocked to the United States, most of them to live in New York. On pages of the 1930 U.S. Federal Census one finds Jamaicans living together in groups in such boroughs as Manhattan.

The Ellis Island database is a wonderful source for this movement of people to the U.S. Another great source is the subscription website, Ancestry. I have used both to try to find information on my father's siblings. I have found his sister, Essie and his brother, Joseph, travelling to New York, but Leo, the other brother, continues to elude me. More of him later.

At this point I must explain that I did know Uncle Joe, who visited Jamaica in the 1950s and whom I visited with my family in 1960 when we left Jamaica to go to Canada. Unfortunately, at that time I wasn't particularly interested in family history research and didn't ask the questions I should have, so much of what I now know about my uncle Joe has been through research carried out some time after his death.

The same year that my grandfather Leopold died Joe left Jamaica to go to the U.S. The story I was told about why my father's siblings left Jamaica was this: my grandmother, Alice, was afraid that the younger boys would have to join up to fight in the first World War. (My father, apparently, was not eligible to join up because of some medical reason.) She wanted them to go the U.S. because America wasn't in the war. Joe arrived in New York in September 1917, but the U.S. had entered the war on April 6, 1917, so this story doesn't really make sense to me. At any rate, I found Joe in the Ellis Island database, travelling to New York on board the ss Catherine Cuneo, leaving Port Antonio on August 28th and arriving on September 5th. Here is what the first page of the ship's manifest looks like.

Under the column "Name and complete address of nearest relative of friend in country whence alien came" Joe gave his mother's name and this is how I knew that by 1917 she was living at 22 Beeston Street. On page two of the manifest, under the heading "Whether going to join a relative or frined...", Joe gave the name, "Mrs. Warner (friend), 346 Summer Avenue, Brooklyn, N.Y." I have no idea who this Mrs. Warner could be! So often the records we find produce more questions than answers.

In my next post I'll write about some of the other surprising things I learned about my uncle Joe.

Falling Walls -- the 1907 Earthquake -- part 2

It is not known exactly how many people perished in the 1907 earthquake and subsequent fire that ravaged the city of Kingston on January 14th, 1907. Estimates range from 600 to 1000. Lists of the dead and injured can be found on line: on the Jamaican Family Search, as reported in the Gleaner of January 18, 1907 and a further list of victims in the paper of January 21, 1907. The Genealogy of Jamaica webpage also lists victims of the earthquake, extracted from the Gleaner of March 2, 1907. I have spent some time going through the death registrations for 1907 for Kingston. There are names that appear on the death lists for whom there is no registration, and conversely, death registrations for some whose names are not on the lists. For the majority of those killed on January 14th the cause of death given is "Killed by falling walls". Not everyone died instantly; many died later in hospitals as a result of their injuries or of tetanus from amputation of a limb or limbs. The Mayor of Kingston, Charles Walter Tait, was one who died later -- on 10 February 1907, of "concussion of the spine".


The downtown business area of Kingston was most affected by the quake. Some places of business lost a number of workers. Nine staff members at the Myrtle Bank Hotel were killed. Here are two postcards of the Myrtle Bank Hotel, before and after the earthquake:



I found death registrations for six members of the staff of Emanuel Lyons and Sons Ltd. at the corner of King and Harbour Streets. This postcard of what was left of the building shows how devastating the damage must have been.


As I read through the records I found a variety of comments under cause of death. One woman, Lucinda Allen of 4 James Steet, married, age 40, died "apparently from fright -- no injury". Thomas Bernard Philpotts, cigar maker, age 57, died of "heart disease and fright due to the earthquake". Another woman, Henrietta Pinnock, "died after premature delivery brought on by shock received from the earthquake". One of the saddest I found was the record for a little girl, Emily Letitia Jopp, age 6. On her record this note was added: "This little girl was found dead with a slate beside her on which she had just written 'God is Love'".

It would be too easy to say that people died because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time -- that sentiment could refer to all those who lost their lives, but some deaths stand out, such as that of Marcus Moses Delgado. Thanks to Stephen Delgado Porter I know something of Marcus' history. He was the son of Edwin Delgado and had married Miriam Brandon, daugher of Nathaniel Brandon. They had six children. In December 1904 Marcus emigrated to Cartagena, Colombia, to improve his fortune, leaving his wife and children in Kingston. He returned to his family at Christmas 1906 and on January 14th, 1907, went downtown to buy his daughter, Sybil, a birthday present -- that day was her eleventh birthday. Marcus was killed by falling walls, at the corner of Harbour and Duke Streets. He was 48 years old.


Another casualty,somewhat closer to me. was that of Bertie Bold Vendryes, the wife of Philip Camille Vendryes. Bertie was the daughter of George Christopher Baylis and his wife, Elizabeth McDonald. Elizabeth was the step-daughter of my great grandfather, Daniel Elias Brown who had married her mother, the widow of Donald McDonald. Not only were the Brown and the Baylis families close but George Baylis worked at the Dock Yard in Port Royal along with my grandfather, William Dey Smedmore. Bertie, who was pregnant at the time, died on January 23rd at Winchester Hospital,as a result of premature delivery brought on by the earthquake,as well as puerperal fever and heart failure. The child, a boy, Joseph, did not survive. Also killed on January 14th was Bertie's and Philip's daughter, Vida, who was nine years old. So Philip lost his wife, his daughter and his newly born son.

Many well-known buildings in Kingston and elsewhere in the island were damaged or totally destroyed. The Kingston Parish Church lost its steeple and its clock.


The tower and clock were restored but without the steeple.
Some odd things happened as a result of the earthquake; for example, the statue of Queen Victoria at the Parade was turned completely around,



and the statue of Father Joseph Dupont, one of the longest-serving Jesuit priests in Jamaica, was knocked completely off its pedestal.

It is no wonder that there are so many postcards of the damage wrought by this earthquake, the worst that Jamaica had experienced since the 1692 quake which destroyed the town of Port Royal. In a matter of a minute or two so many buildings in the city were reduced to rubble and so many people died. Yet the people of Kingston would come back from this devastation. As the Gleaner of January 18, 1907, put it:

"Just when we were talking of returning prosperity the hand of adversity has again touched us, and once more we are called upon to fight our way forward. We will do so. We will not allow ourselves to be terrified. We will build Kingston again and, with God's help, will build it better."

When the Earth Moves -- the 1907 Earthquake

I'm leaving the Levy Family story for a while to write about the 1907 earthquake which happened 101 years ago on January 14th. This event fascinates me, not just because my family experienced it, but because it became more personal when I discovered that some family members had perished in the earthquake. I am fortunate to have several postcards showing the devastation after the event. This postcard shows a burnt out streetcar on King Street.

Growing up in Jamaica meant living with the dangers of two natural disasters -- hurricanes and earthquakes. I was less afraid of hurricanes because at least you could see them coming, whereas earthquakes give no warning of their arrival. I lived through Hurricane Charlie in August 1951 and I remember all the preparations we made at 5 Holborn Road to withstand that event. It was very scary while it lasted but we survived with some water damage and the loss of trees which, fortunately, did not damage the house in their fall. Charlie was the worst disaster to hit Jamaica since the 1907 earthquake and did a great deal of damage. You can read more about in on the website of the Office of Disaster Preparedness and Emergency Management. Here is a photo of the United Fruit Company in the aftermath of Hurricane Charlie.

In March 1957 Jamaica experienced an earthquake of some magnitude, the epicentre of which was located in the western part of the island where most of the damage was done. It was about 7:30 in the evening and I was outside playing badminton next door with my friend, Sheila Bewley, when the earthquake struck. We could literally see the earth moving in waves while the electrical wires sparked and flashed. It was terrifying for the brief time it lasted. I had felt other earthquakes but none as strong as that. Frightening as this earthquake was to me it could never equal what the inhabitants of Kingston must have felt that afternoon on January 14, 1907. I will not try to describe the earthquake -- there are many excellent accounts by eyewitnesses and others. I recommend the article from the Jamaica Gleaner Pieces of the Past. Another excellent source is the book, The Cruise of the Port Kingston, by W. R. Hall Caine (London: Collier, 1908) which includes an eyewitness account of the damage which amounted to £2,000,000 as a result of the earthquake and subsequent fires. Over 800 people lost their lives, mainly from falling walls during the earthquake.

Prior to the 1907 earthquake Jamaica had experienced one other devastating quake -- the Great Earthquake of 1692 which destroyed more than half of Port Royal. This event had such an effect on the Jamaican psyche that the event was commemorated until well into the 19th century every year on that day, June 7th, "as a perpetual anniversary fast", as per the The Great Earthquake: Acts of William and Mary,A.D. 1693, . By this statute all places of commerce were closed and the day was to be spent in the churches "with prayers, preaching and singing of psalms". The following police notice to this effect appeared as late as June of 1866:

Over the years merchants and shop-keepers complained about having to close their stores on that day and in 1866 the Gleaner reported that several merchants had been fined 24 shillings and costs for not closing their businesses on the day. By 1867 the Government passed Law 4 by which the Act was no longer to be read as obligatory but as permissive. However, well into the 1890s banks and government offices were closed on June 7th and services were held in the churches.

The earthquake of January 14, 1907, struck without warning. Hall Caine compares the noise of the quake as follows:
"The heightening roar is of eternal memory -- it was as though some vast herd of tigers, with warm blood already on their tongues, had been suddenly robbed of their prey".

His first view of the city of Kingston after the quake is devastating:

"At 3:32 Kingston was happy and well. At 3:33 the city was a hopeless wreck, with the very sun itself obscured from our vision. All man's handiwork of a generation, nay a whole century or more, was instantly flouted. A whole community lay in ruins and in tears, in suffering and in death."

The Gleaner published lists of the dead and injured but many more were killed whose names were never published nor were there death records for them. Many victims were buried in common graves. I have spent much time going through the 1907 death indexes and found whole sections labelled "Earthquake Book" which do not appear to have been microfilmed as I have been unable to find the actual registrations. Most of the dead seem to have been killed by falling walls -- this was a constantly recorded cause of death. When one looks at pictures of the wreckage it is hard to believe that anyone could survive such devastation. This postcard shows the damage at the corner of King and Harbour Streets.

My mother's family, living north of the Parade, were fortunate in that the house at 49 Beeston Street did not sustain serious damage, however the wall around the garden collapsed. By a strange accident of fate, my Uncle Rodney, who would have been eleven at the time, was outside playing in the garden when he was ordered by his father to go upstairs to practise the piano. He grumbled about going but did not disobey. Had he remained where he was he would have been killed by the falling wall.

Many others were not as fortunate. In my next post I'll write about some of the victims of the earthquake.

Looking for Levys -- a moveable family

My first foray into genealogical research on my father's family was to find and confirm the births and deaths of all the children of Leopold Levy, the mystery man from Alsace, and his wife, my grandmother, Alice Rodrigues Da Costa. I had been given the names of some of the children. I knew that there had been a daughter, Daisy, who died in infancy and a son, Gustave, who also died young. I knew that my father was the eldest surviving and that he had a sister, Essie, and two brothers, Leo and Joe, and that all three were in the United States. We would hear occasionally from Joe, whereas nothing was ever heard from Leo. Essie did keep in touch with my mother, and I know that my Mom and Dad visited her and her husband, Erich, in Fort Worth where they lived. (They had also lived in Muskogee, Oklahoma). Later this correspondence would cease as a result of Essie's descent into dementia, though my mother did continue to keep in touch with the wife of their only son, Walter, my first cousin, also known as Bunky. I never met him nor did we ever correspond.

But to return to the Levy children. In my last post I mentioned that the eldest child, Daisy, was born a scant two months after the marriage of Leopold and Alice in Colon, Panama. Alice returned to Jamaica and Daisy was born 23 September 1886 at 106 King Street, and, as I mentioned, the informant on the birth register was a Mrs. Jacob Rodrigues Da Costa. The father's name on the record is Leopold Levy, occupation "merchant", abode "Colon", so Leopold was not present at his daughter's birth.

As I found the births of the other children, and the deaths of Daisy, Lucien and Gustave, I noticed two things: first, Leopold was the informant on only two of the ten events I found: the birth of Lucien, the second child, and the birth of Gustave, the fifth child. The second thing I noticed was that the addresses where these events took place kept changing. In a span of fourteen years the Levy family lived at seven different addresses in Kingston!

What was the significance of the fact that Leopold was the informant on only two events? Did it mean that he wasn't there? I've done a lot of research in Jamaica and looked at a great many birth records and generally speaking the father is usually the informant when the child's birth is registered. I'd be interested in hearing from other Jamaican researchers regarding this. Yet, with the Levy children the two people whose names show up on six of the ten events are those of Alice, their mother, and Selina Rodrigues Da Costa, Alice's mother. More about her in another post. Certainly on Essie's birth registration Leopold's address is given as Port-au-Prince, Haiti. On the other records it appears that Leopold is in Kingston, so why is he not the informant? In fact, the birth of the youngest, Joseph Dudley, was registered by a Cathy D'Costa who, I finally figured out, was most likely the wife of Eugene Da Costa, Alice's nephew, the son of her older brother, Joseph.

Then there's the moving around! Here is a list of events which shows the various addresses the family lived at:

-- Daisy is born in 1886 at 106 King Street

-- Lucien is born in November 1887 at 83 Church Street

-- Daisy dies in December 1887 at 83 Church Street

-- Michael is born in 1889 at 127 King Street

-- Lucien dies in 1890 at 125 Tower Street

-- Essie is born in 1891 at 125 Tower Street

-- Gustave is born in 1894 at 121 Orange Street

-- Leo is born in 1895 at 13 Rosemary Lane

-- Gustave dies in 1899 at 68 Duke Street

-- Joseph is born in 1900 at 68 Duke Street

Here is a section of Stark's 1897 map of Kingston showing the area where the family would have been.

Why did the family move around so much? Again, this is not usual. My research has found that families usually seemed to stay in one spot, so it was quite common to see children being born at the same address over the years. This would, of course,indicate that the family in question owned their home. I believe that the Levy family must have been renters and more than likely were not financially secure. Certainly if Leopold was away a great deal money may have been tight. Eventually my grandmother Alice would own a home, at 22 Beeston Street, but I do not know when this was purchased. When Joe emigrated to the United States in 1917 he gave his mother as next of kin and that was the address that was listed for her on the ship's manifest. I know that my father helped her to pay the mortgage on the house before he was married.

Sometimes finding vital records about the family one is researching can lead to more questions than answers. I'll continue with this in my next post.

Looking for the Levy Family

Some time after I started researching my family I realized that I knew far more about my mother's family than I did about my father's. My Dad did not talk about his family very much. My mother told me what little she knew and my Uncle Rodney contributed information as well. As I've mentioned before, I did know my Grandmother Levy as a child. She lived across from my mother's family, the Smedmores, at 22 Beeston Street, on the south-west corner of Beeston Street and Love Lane.

I remember visiting her as a young child with my parents, but I don't think we went there very often. We seemed to spend more time with my mother's family. I don't know the reason for this, but I suspect my mother was somewhat resentful of her mother-in-law. The story I was told was that she and my father had been engaged for seven years before they could get married because my father had to support his mother and help pay the mortgage on her house. My grandmother was a widow. Her husband had died a long time ago and my father's three siblings had taken off for the United States so he was the only one left to take care of her. Another possible reason for this lack of closeness was that my grandmother was Catholic and my mother was a staunch Anglican, and though it seems strange in these days of ecumenicism, back then there was separation between denominations of the Christian religion. In fact, there were even differences of opinion between high-church and low-church Anglicans!

The stories I was told about my grandfather were that he was a Jew from Alsace, an oculist by trade, and that he travelled throughout the Caribbean and Central and South America. He is supposed to have brought back a gold nugget from Brazil which was made into two signet rings, one each for my brother and myself. This is a picture of my ring --

It is engraved with three of my four initials, D M L, intertwined. Did the gold nugget really come from Brazil? I have no evidence that he was ever in South America. The few records that I have for him show him in Port-au-Prince, Haiti; Colon, Panama; and Cuba, where he died. My grandfather was indeed a mystery.

Here's what I was told about him by my mother, who, by the way, never knew him as he had died some years before my parents married. His name was Leopold Levy and my father was given the name, Leopold, as a middle name. Leopold could speak seven languages ... again I wonder about this. Certainly he would have spoken French and most likely German, coming as he did from Alsace, a country which has bounced back and forth between France and Germany. He certainly would have spoken English and no doubt Spanish as he spent a great deal of his time in Spanish-speaking countries. I assume that as a Jew he may have spoken Yiddish ... that makes five languages and I've no idea what the other two would have been. I was told also that he was an oculist, and in fact that is stated in my father's entry in Who's Who Jamaica. Yet, in the few records I found that name Leopold his occupation is invariably given as "clerk", "bookkeeper", or "merchant".

How and where did he meet my grandmother? Well, that was another story, this time from my Uncle Rodney who told me that they had married in Haiti. What was my grandmother, Alice Rodrigues Da Costa, doing in Haiti? According once more to Rodney, she was operating a ferry service between Kingston and Haiti! I have not so far found any evidence of this. How many children did they have? Seven, I was told, but three had died young. And then there was this fanciful tale that Leopold had insisted the first child be brought up Jewish, but she died so he stated that the rest might as well be brought up Catholic! It sounded feasible, except that certain questions kept popping up in my mind. First of all, my grandmother was Catholic and Leopold was Jewish, so who would have married them? At that time I didn't think either the Jews or the Catholics would have done so. Secondly, if they were married in the Catholic Church then wouldn't Leopold have had to agree to bring up the children as Catholics? Finally, no child of this marriage would have been named in the synagogue as the mother was not Jewish. And the tale was pretty well disproved after I discovered a baptism, performed by Father William Spillman, S. J., in Holy Trinity Catholic Church in Kingston for the eldest child, Daisy Agatha.

So, here's what I knew so far. My grandfather, Leopold Levy, came from Alsace; met my grandmother in Haiti and married her; they had seven children and he died in Cuba. As for the children the names I had were Daisy, Lucien and Gustave, all of whom died in infancy, and the remaining four were my father, Michael, and his siblings, Essie, Leo and Joe, all three of whom moved to the United States. When I began researching the family I started with birth records for the children, all of whom were born in Kingston, between 1886 and 1900, and it was not difficult to find registrations of their births in the microfilm records of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS), aka Mormons. I have spent a great deal of time at an LDS Family History Centre and I am grateful to the Mormons for microfilming many Jamaican records, including Church of England parish records as well as the civil registration of births, marriages and deaths. I found birth records for all seven children and was therefore able to sort out their birth order: Daisy, born September 1886, died December 1887; Lucien, born November 1887, died April 1890, my father, Michael, born August 1889; Essie, born March 1891; Gustave, born May 1894, died December 1899; Leo, born July 1895; and Joe, born January 1900.

Whenver anyone asks me how to begin doing their family history I always repeat the well-known axiom: "Start with yourself and work back". Another one is: "Talk to your relatives and ask them questions." Good advice! I certainly did. But the next good piece of advice is: "Look for the records which should confirm that what you have been told is true". (I should make one thing clear ... I didn't really get started on the research until many years after I was told the "facts", so was unable to share the results of my research with my family as they were no longer alive.)

I was somewhat stumped by the fact that my grandparents had got married in Haiti. I had no idea where in Haiti they were married -- Port au Prince was a possibility, but how to get the record? I assumed that the marriage must have taken place around 1885 as Daisy was born in September 1886, but for the longest time I had no proof of this particular fact, and then I had an email from Madeleine Mitchell, an indefatigable Jamaican researcher who is also the co-ordinator for the Jamaican Genealogy page on Rootsweb. Madeleine had been going through microfilm of the Jamaica Gleaner and had come across something of interest to me in the paper for 1886. (I also for a while went through the early issues of the Gleaner on microfilm, which I got on interlibrary loan from the Library of Congress, but at the time that I heard from Madeleine I had not yet got to that year. Now that the Gleaner is digitized and on line it is less onerous to search.) Madeleine had found evidence of the marriage of my grandparents, and it wasn't what I was told! They had not married in Haiti; in fact, the marriage took place in Colon, Panama, and not in 1885, but in July 1886! Here is a copy of the notice as it appeared in the Gleaner of July 23, 1886:

So, there was one "fact" proved wrong. I now had what appeared to be something of a scandal in the family, in that my grandmother was some seven months pregnant when she got married! Which brings up another question, namely, when and where did Alice meet Leopold? Was he living in Jamaica and then took off for Colon, as a result of which Alice went after him? She did return to Jamaica as Daisy was born there at 106 King Street. A Mrs. Jacob Rodrigues Da Costa was the informant on the birth record and Leopold's occupation was given as "merchant of Colon".

So it turns out that finding that piece of information brought up more questions than I had previously, such as, who was Mrs. Jacob Rodrigues Da Costa? The answer to this would lead me to a whole new family that I knew nothing of previously, but before that I would investigate the Levy family more thoroughly.