All the Sevens ... or Way Past My Shelf Date

I’ve been feeling guilty as I haven’t updated my blog for about four months, and wondered what I should write about next. Well, today is my birthday and I’ve reached the august age of seventy-seven … so I thought perhaps it was time to blog about myself for a change. The first thing to think about was what should I call this post? The title “Way Past my Shelf Date” came to mind, based on that wonderful quote from Psalm 90, verse 10: “The days of our lives are threescore years and ten …” which would seem to suggest that to live beyond seventy is to do so on borrowed time … Which is why I prefer “All the Sevens”. In my teenage years and somewhat later I used to go to the Sergeants’ Mess at Up Park Camp with my pal, Sheila Bewley, whose older sister, Dawn, had married a Sergeant, Andy Taylor, who was stationed there. There we played Tombola, a type of British bingo, which, if I remember correctly went up to 99, and was not played under letters like B I N G O , but had its own language. So 77 was “all the sevens”, 99 was “all the nines”, but 66 was “clickety-click”. 21 was “key of the door” … any number ending in zero was “blind”, i.e. 50 was “blind 50”, yet 11 was “legs eleven”, and so on. Perhaps there are some of you out there who remember all this …



I was born on May 31st, 1935 at Nuttall Memorial Hospital, at Cross Roads, Jamaica

The hospital was founded in 1923 built on land purchased by the Diocese of Jamaica and commemorates the work of the Reverend Enos Nuttall, Bishop of Jamaica, after whom it is named.  My parents, Michael Levy and Maud Smedmore, already had one son, Mickey, born 2 April 1927. They were then living at 7 Anderson Road, Woodford Park. My father was a civil service clerk in the Government of Jamaica. There is a photo of my brother, Mickey, probably taken at Anderson Road

 I have no memory of this place to go on, only the photo.

 When I was six months old my parents bought the house at 5 Holborn Road. I found an advertisement in the Gleaner of 5 August 1935 advertising the house as follows:

 I guess they must have bought the house at that time. It’s the only home I remember. Here’s a photo of my parents with me as a baby in front of the house at 5 Holborn Road --

My earliest memory of my birthday is of my fourth … I vaguely remember having this huge tube, like a very large Christmas cracker, which when opened contained all sorts of goodies. I don’t remember the contents, but I do remember dragging the container around the yard of our home at 5 Holborn Road. Somehow this was much more fun for me than whatever had been inside it.

I remember my childhood as being a very happy one. In a way I was almost an only child, as my elder brother, Mickey, was eight years older than I was and would have nothing to do with me. I realize now that, as the only male child in the family he had been quite spoiled until I came along … My mother’s aunt, Aunt Tess, made much of me and poor Mickey’s nose was quite out of joint, as we used to say. This led, of course, to ill feelings on his part, which I now understand, but did not at the time.

Our family was not that large. There were, of course, the aunts and uncles, all Smedmores, and of whom I’ve written before in my blog. I knew nothing about my father’s family on his mother’s side, the Da Costas, something I have always regretted. On the Smedmore side I had two cousins … daughters of my Uncle Lucius who had married Carrie May Burke, aka Maisie. They were both older than me. There was my cousin, Marjorie

And my cousin, Gloria

Marjorie had been born in 1925, so was two years older than my brother, Mickey, thus ten years older than me, and Gloria was born in 1927,a few months after Mickey. Both of them would have considered me as a mere child, so I really had not much interaction with them. I had another first cousin, whom I never met.  This was my cousin, Walter Berner, the only child of my father’s sister, Essie, who had married Cort Berner, and who lived in the United States. He was known as “Bunky”. I never had the opportunity to meet him, but I have made contact since with his daughter, Cheryl..

In my next post I’ll reminisce some more about my childhood memories.

 

In Memoriam, Victor Dey Smedmore

I had intended to return to my post about my grandfather, William Dey Smedmore, but today, January 29^th, 2012, is the 94^th anniversary of the death of his eldest son, my uncle Victor Dey Smedmore, who was killed in action January 29^th, 1918, in France during the Great War.

My grandfather, William, died before the War started, on July 2^nd, 1914. Would he have been in favour of his eldest son going to England to join a regiment? It’s hard to say. Victor sailed to England with other Jamaicans intent on joining up, as I wrote in a previous post, “Lest We Forget”. Victor joined the Life Guards – the picture of him above shows him in his regimental uniform -- and was sent to France with the British Expeditionary Force as part of the Household Battalion. He was killed in action near Arras on January 29, 1918. The family learned about his death from the War Office by this note which I found in my mother’s papers.

Although the note says that Victor was buried “at a point just North West of Monchy Le Preux, South east of Arras”, he has no known grave. I wrote to the Commonwealth War Graves Commission and received this response from them:

"Trooper Victor Dey Smedmore, 1140, serving with the Household Battalion, died on 29 January 1918... He has no known grave and therefore he is commemorated by name, along with others from his regiment on Bay 1 on the Arras Memorial, France. The Arras Memorial stands in Faubourg-d'Amiens Cemetery, Arras, 2 kilometres north-west of Arras Railway Station and bears the names of over 35,000 men lost without trace during the battles of Arras."

Thanks to the kindness of Rory McGregor I do have photos of Victor’s name on the Arras Memorial as well as pictures of the area around. Here is a shot of the memorial showing Victor’s name,

and another of one of the hallways:

While doing research for a friend in the Jamaica Gleaner, I came across a story of the commemoration of the War Memorial at Wolmer’s School, which Victor had attended and found that his name is also commemorated there. 

The notice is from the Gleaner of November 13^th, 1923. The monument, erected by the Wolmer’s Old Boys Association, was designed by an old Wolmerian, Vernon Streadwick, and commemorates those men who attended Wolmer’s who had died in the Great War.

Perhaps it’s as well that my grandfather never knew about the War or the death of his eldest son. In my next post I’ll return to William Dey Smedmore and what I was able to learn about him from stories in the Gleaner.

The Smedmores of Port Royal

William Dey Smedmore and his family lived in Port Royal until about 1896, probably on a street very much like this one pictured above. In fact, they lived at two different addresses according to the records I have found. But I’m getting ahead of myself here. Let’s begin with his marriage, as I know very little about him prior to that event.



William married Amanda Brown at the Kingston Parish Church on 6^th December 1882. He was a bachelor, aged forty-four, and gave his occupation as writer, H. M. Dockyard. Amanda was a spinster, aged twenty-one, no occupation. Both gave their abode as Port Royal. William gave his father’s name as William Dey Smedmore (dead), and Amanda’s was given as Daniel D. Brown.  They were married by the Rev. G. W. Downer, and the witnesses were B. Mortimer Dias and C. L. Cunha.

Well, there are a couple of problems with this record. No record has so far been found for William’s father, so we cannot be sure that this was indeed his name. Secondly, Amanda’s father’s name was Daniel Elias Brown, so the middle initial “D” is incorrect.  Another oddity is my grandmother’s age. I don’t know if my mother ever saw this marriage record, because, curiously enough, she always claimed that her mother’s birth date was 10 July 1864, and that she was actually only eighteen when she married William. However I have found the record of Amanda’s baptism in the Wesleyan Methodist church, in Jamaican Family Search, and she was definitely born on 9 August 1861, which would agree with her age at marriage. It seems odd to me that my grandmother’s children had a completely different date for her birth, not just a different year but a different month and day!

William’s occupation of “writer in H. M. Dockyard” was also puzzling. I discovered that a writer was  a clerk, a civilian employee in the Royal Navy, at the Dockyard in Port Royal. William’s close friend, George Christopher Baylis, who was a  connection through marriage to his wife’s half-sister, was also a writer at the naval yard.

The first three children were born at

Sime Street

in Port Royal. According to the birth records the two eldest, Sylvia and Victor, were born at no. 2 Sime Street, in 1884 and 1886 respectively, and the third child, Norman, was born in 1887 at no. 1 Sime Street. Shortly thereafter they moved to Fishers Row. I came across a brief note in The Gleaner of 1^st May 1888 which mentioned this move.

So it appears that the Smedmore home was to be taken over to be used as barracks for the Army. Might this have had something to do with a story my mother told me about her older brother, Victor? As a young child he had reported seeing a soldier in military dress walking up and down the balcony or piazza of the house they were living in. The tale was that the house had been a barracks and that Victor had seen a ghost. Victor would have been about two years old at that time. It’s possible he saw a real soldier if military personnel came to the house to inspect it prior to taking it over.  At any rate the family moved from there to Fishers Row where the next four children were born – Elma in 1889, Owen in 1891, Maud in 1894 and Rodney in 1896. Then, some time after this they removed to Kingston where the last two children were born – Lucius in 1899 and Julian in 1902.  By 1896 William Dey Smedmore was sixty years old and had retired from his position at the Dock Yard. The family settled down in a large house at

49 Beeston Street

and I have written about that house in a previous post.



In my next post I’ll relate the stories I heard about my grandfather from my mother, as well as a few other items I found in The Gleaner  about him … gold to the enquiring genealogist!

My Other Grandfather -- William Dey Smedmore

Having just about given up on finding out more about my elusive grandfather, Leopold Levy, I’ve decided to move to my maternal grandfather, William Dey Smedmore … not that’s he’s any easier to research. I have no idea who his father was, and only hearsay evidence as to the identity of his mother. I’ll explain why in a moment, but suffice it to say, I do at least know a great deal more about him than my other grandfather, thanks to the stories I’ve collected from my mother and her siblings over the years. I’ve also been able to find a few records pertaining to him as well as items about him in the Jamaica Gleaner.


My mother’s family lived in Port Royal. My maternal grandmother, Amanda Brown’s family had deep roots there and it’s where my grandfather, William Dey Smedmore, was born.

This is a view of Port Royal about 1890, showing the church and town, looking west towards the entrance to Kingston Harbour.  The town’s heyday was in the seventeenth century when it served as headquarters for the buccaneers who pillaged the Spanish Main, but all that came to an end with the disastrous earthquake of 1692 when more than half of the town was swallowed up by the sea. What remained was a small fishing village with a naval station and dockyard, but even that would pass away. By 1881 the population was 1205, exclusive of shipping. According to Michael Pawson and David Buisseret in their book, Port Royal, Jamaica (1975):

"By [1900] Port Royal's days as a naval base were numbered. The later nineteenth century had seen the rise of the so-called 'blue water school' of British imperial strategists, advocating very powerful fleets operating out of the United Kingdom, supported by a small number of strongly-fortified bases.  The Port Royal yard was too small to rank as one of these, and so in 1905, following the reorganization directed by Admiral Sir John Fisher, her last  commodore, F.W. Fisher, hauled down his flag."

My grandfather, William Smedmore, was employed at the Dockyard as an Admiralty writer, but seems to have retired some time between 1896 and 1899 when the family removed to Kingston.

The image below is of the baptismal record for my grandfather, William Dey Smedmore. As you can see, no parents are named in this record, a clear sign that he was illegitimate. For reasons that are highly frustrating to Jamaican researchers, there is a period of time in the baptismal records where many Anglican priests would not record the names of either parent if the child was born out of wedlock. Some would (very few), and some would at least record the mother’s name. Curiously, the very early registers prior to 1825 recorded all this information, including the fact that the parents were not married, but not so by the 1830s.

William Dey Smedmore … and no one can figure out where the name “Dey” came from … was born 29^th October 1836, and baptized on 1^st January, 1837. On June 20^th of that same year Victoria ascended to the British throne. My grandfather, from all that I’ve learned about him, was a Victorian paterfamilias through and through. He appears to have ruled his family in strict Victorian style and was much loved and feared by his nine children, who called him Papa.  His word was law, and no one defied it. All of the children lived at home after they moved to Kingston from Port Royal. None of those who married did so before his death, and even the eldest son, Victor, who went to England to enlist in the Army in the First World War, waited till 1915 after his father had been dead for over a year.

 

I know very little of my grandfather’s life between his baptism and his marriage to Amanda Brown in 1882. It was my mother who told me, when I was about fifteen, that my grandfather was illegitimate.  I was warned on pain of death not to let on to my two aunts, Sylvia and Elma, that I knew this. According to my mother, William Dey Smedmore was the son of an English sailor and a woman of Port Royal by the name of Ann Wood. When I began my family history research I searched the Port Royal baptismal records and did find a baptism for an Ann Wood, born in Port Royal 2 February, 1811 and baptized 12 October 1813.

Assuming this is my Ann Wood she was the illegitimate daughter of a Port Royal slave owner and vestryman named John Owen Wood. Her mother was one Mary Holms. I cannot, however, prove that she was the mother of William Smedmore. If she were, then she would have been 25 years old when he was born. I have not so far been able to find out anything more about her … whether she married, or when she died.  My mother told me that her father had been brought up by two aunts, but I have no evidence for this and do not even know who they could have been. Indeed, his birth is a mystery!

I found one more mystery surrounding my grandfather. Purely by chance I came across a birth record in Port Royal for one Dorothy Priscilla Theodosia Smedmore, the daughter of an Elizabeth Handfield, born 6 July 1879. No father is named in the record. Could this have been an illegitimate child of William Dey Smedmore? I know of no other Smedmores apart from my mother’s family. This child was born before the marriage of my grandfather. One thing is certain … no member of the family ever mentioned this child and I’m inclined to think that they knew nothing about this, assuming again, that this was my grandfather’s child.

In my next post I’ll continue the story of William Dey Smedmore.

My Grandfather Leopold -- Still a Mystery!

Okay, I know what you must all be thinking! Why have I waited so long to get another blog post up? To be honest, I’ve been bitterly disappointed by my inability to find out more about my elusive grandfather, Leopold Levy. As I reported in my last post, I thought I had found his birth and the marriage of his parents. The Leopold Levy I found … indeed the only one who showed up in the birth indexes for Strasbourg for the right time period … was born 6 December 1846 to Benjamin Levy and his wife, Marie Ann Bloch, at 115 Grand’ rue, Bas Rhin, Strasbourg. This fitted with what I knew about him so far, but in order to confirm that what I had found was correct, I really needed another piece of the puzzle – his marriage record which would most likely give the name of his father.

According to the notice in the Gleaner of Friday, July 23, 1886, Leopold and my grandmother, Alice Rodrigues Da Costa, had been married in Colon by the Registrar on 16 July of that year. All attempts so far – with help from others – to find a record of this marriage have been in vain. It is not clear whether the record is in Colon, Panama, or in Colombia, since Panama in 1886 would have been a province of Colombia. I have two documents which show that Leopold was in Colon. One is the birth record for his eldest child, Daisy, who was born in Kingston two months after the marriage, so presumably Alice returned to Jamaica as soon as she could after the marriage, but, one assumes, without Leopold.

Leopold’s occupation is given as merchant and his place of residence as Colon. One other document I have – thanks to another researcher, Jacky Paul Bentzinger of Bogotá, Colombia – refers to Leopold as a shopkeeper in Colon. It is on a page in French from a business ledger where his name is listed along with other French business people who had apparently suffered losses because of a fire. Other occupations listed on the page are of the manager of a section of the French Canal Company, and of an agent of the same. Leopold’s loss in francs appears to be 2363.00

There is no date on this ledger and that is all I have about him in Colon!


The reason he is still a mystery is that since my research into his supposed birth in Strasbourg I have found evidence on line which shows that the Leopold Levy I found cannot possibly be my grandfather! While trolling on Ancestry I came across two records for a Leopold Levy, born 6 December 1846. Here is the first one:

This is a record of a Leopold Levy, born 6 December 1846 in Strasbourg, who opted to become a French citizen on 28 May 1872. A little background here -- Germany having won the Franco-Prussian War, annexed the French departments of Bas-Rhin, Haut-Rhin, Moselle, a third of Meurthe, and some of Vosges. The Treaty of Frankfort contained a provision for French citizens of the region to retain their nationality and to be allowed to move to France. Many of the Jews of Alsace did this, becoming, in effect, refugees from their homeland as they had to leave Alsace. Now, this particular record might indeed refer to my Leopold, since I have no idea when he would have immigrated from Alsace or France to the West Indies. However, the second document completely destroyed my research! Here it is:

This is a record from the Electoral Rolls of Paris in 1891. It shows the same Leopold Levy, the optant, born 6 December 1846, now living in Paris, at 2 Championner, and his occupation is given as “cocher”, i.e. coach driver. This cannot be my grandfather, who, when his fourth child, Essie Gertrude Levy, was born 30 March 1891, was at that time an accountant in Port-au-Prince, Haiti.

All that research – for naught! The Leopold Levy born in 1846 in Strasbourg could not possibly be my grandfather. And that is why I need to have his marriage record, assuming that one exists, in the faint hope that it would give his parents’ names and once and for all confirm who he was, and where and when he was born.


I gave my previous post the caption – “A Cautionary Tale”. One cannot jump to conclusions based on one or two pieces of evidence. Genealogical research requires more than that to confirm one’s conclusions. I am missing the most crucial piece of information which might indeed settle once and for all the identity of my elusive grandfather!