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.

A Month in the Country -- part 2

My summer holiday would start the moment the car climbed the hill from Vale Royal up to the house at Friendship. Actually, there were two houses at Friendship. Uncle Rodney's house was at the top of the hill, and at the bottom of the hill was the Nash's house, where Len Nash, his wife Daphne (formerly Newman) and their three children, Dennis, Richard and Arlene, lived. Len Nash was an engineer at Vale Royal and first cousin of my Aunt Marjorie, Rodney's wife. I wish I had pictures of the two houses, because I find my memory is not as clear about what they were like inside as I would wish. Uncle Rodney's house was built up off the ground so that there was a sort of above-ground basement underneath where he had his office and made his various liqueurs (more of that later), as well as where the generator was installed. This was known merely as the Delco, and in fact I went through life for the longest time thinking that was what all generators were called. The Delco provided power when the electricity went off, as it often did.

I have a painting, given to me as a wedding present, and painted by yet another Nash, Sylvia Nash the artist, which immediately brings to mind the end of the property where I used to go and walk away over the rolling countryside, accompanied by the two dogs, Jill, a black Lab, and Bessie, a cairn terrier. Here is the picture.

In my imagination just over that hill I would go off with Jill (Bessie being more of a house dog wouldn't go that far with us), and the two of us would walk along the paths by the cow ponds, where I would skip stones and Jill would go in for a swim. Finally, I would go back home ... Jill didn't always come with me, but would return at her leisure.

I remember a guinep tree on the property. The guinep tree (Melicoccus bijugatus) according to Olive Senior's Encyclopedia of Jamaican Heritage, is a large tree bearing small, round, green-skinned fruit which grow in clusters like grapes. Here is a picture of the fruit of the guinep:

The fruit is sweet and juicy with a seed in the middle and I remember, on one my visits to Friendship, gorging on them one day. That night I awoke feeling quite ill and proceeded to be very sick indeed, much to the disgust of my brother, Mickey, who was sharing a room with me at the time. (I don't recall why, but I guess my parents were also there and we had a full house.) I learned my lesson about eating too many guineps!

The highlight of my holiday at Friendship was going to the beach to swim. Not that I was a good swimmer, and it didn't help that Mickey used to duck me in the water. We went to Derby Beach (pronounced Darby), not far from Duncans. This was a lovely white sand beach with a gradual slope out into the sea. Here is a photo of my Aunt Marjorie at Derby Beach.

and one of Rodney, with the Burke family.

Derby Beach is now the famous resort, Silver Sands, and now looks like this:

My Uncle Rodney was a sugar technologist at Vale Royal Estate and as a hobby he made the most wonderful liqueurs. He made a creme de cafe, a creme de cacao, and incredible orange liqueur and best of all, a pimento dram to die for! Pimento dram is made from the fruit of the Pimento or allspice (Pimenta dioca). Olive Senior in her Encyclopedia of Jamaican Heritage notes that the pimento is Jamaica's only indigenous spice. He never made a commercial venture of this hobby, but rather would bottle enough to give away each year as Christmas presents to friends and family. On one occasion he told me that he had been approached by Dr. Kenneth Evans who was also experimenting with a coffee liqueur, to invest in Dr. Evans's project. Rodney declined and Ken Evans went on to develop Tia Maria, and the rest is history!

Another one of my memories of Friendship is of Rodney's collection of books of Punch cartoons. He had bought them, I believe, from a bookseller on a trip to England, and I would spend hours going through them and reading all the cartoons by famous illustrators such as George DuMaurier. One of my all-time favourites is DuMaurier's cartoon, "True Humility", also known as The Curate's Egg. Who can forget the wonderful caption:

Right Reverend Host: "I'm afraid you've got a bad egg, Mr. Jones"

The Curate: "Oh no, My Lord, I assure you! Parts of it are excellent"

Sadly, Rodney had to get rid of all his Punch books due to an infestation of insects which ate their way through the books. To use an old Jamaican expression: "Chi-chi nyam it"

A Month in the Country

One of the pleasures that I looked forward to each summer holiday was going to spend a few weeks at Duncans, Trelawny, with my Uncle Rodney and Aunt Marjorie. They lived at a house on a hill, not far from Duncans, called "Friendship". My uncle, Rodney Smedmore, was a sugar technologist who had worked at various sugar estates in Jamaica. Some time after he got married he went to work for Arnold Muschett at Georgia and Vale Royal Estates in Trelawny.

Arnold Muschett was born St. Elizabeth in 1882 and married Amy Houchen in 1909. Although they had no children they were both very involved in several charitable bequests for the children of the area including several scholarships, and they donated 25 acres of land for the erection of a school in Wakefield. My thanks to Donald Lindo for the photo and information about Mr. Muschett.

According to Inez Knibb Sibley's book, Dictionary of Place-Names in Jamaica (Kingston: Institue of Jamaica, 1978), Vale Royal in Trelawny consisted of a number of small estates including Georgia, as well as others that I'm not familiar with.

This old postcard of Vale Royal Estate probably dates from between 1910 and 1913. Uncle Rodney would also go quite often to Long Pond Estate, as well as Vale Royal and Georgia. The Great House at Georgia was very beautiful and we would often go to visit the Muschetts there.

My memories of how I actually travelled to Trelawny from St. Andrew are somewhat vague. Sometimes we went by car when Uncle Rodney came up to town to fetch me and we would drive the route from Kingston through Spanish Town and Bog Walk (over the scary Flat Bridge),

on to Linstead and Ewarton, over Mount Diablo... a steep, winding, narrow road over the mountain... then down through the green pastures of St. Ann through Moneague and Walkers Wood, towards Ocho Rios, then along the coast road through St. Ann's Bay, Runaway Bay, Rio Bueno,and then to Duncans. From there we climbed a hill on a marl road which eventually took us to "Friendship".

Once or twice, though, I would travel by train, probably accompanied by my mother. We would board the train in Kingston at the railway station

and then begin the exciting trip going through places with strange and exotic names -- Balaclava ... Maggotty ... Catadupa ... Montpelier ... Anchovy ... ending up at the station in Montego Bay. The train would probably have looked something like this:

Olive Senior, in her excellent book, The Encyclopedia of Jamaican Heritage (Red Hills: Twin Guinep, 2003), reports that early travel on the train one way from Kingston to Montego Bay could take an entire day. I know that we always packed a lunch! By 1952 diesel rail service was instituted and the round trip between Kingston and Montego Bay could be done in a day. In September 1957 a horrendous accident on the railway line at Kendal caused the deaths of 175 people with 400 people injured. You can read about it at the Jamaica Gleaner's Pieces of the Past. Rail service was ended in 1992, after running for 150 years.

More often than not, however, we would travel by car. Going over Mount Diablo was the highlight of the trip. Since one could not see around the hairpin bends it was necessary to blow the horn loudly at every curve. All along the way we would pass vendors selling fruit

and we would stop to buy oranges and mangoes in season. I remember that my poor mother suffered terribly from car sickness and we had to stop a few times along the route when she felt ill.

But at last we would arrive at "Friendship" and the holiday would begin. Next time I'll write about what it was like to be in "the country" ... so different from my life at 5 Holborn Road.