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Archiver > CARIBBEAN > 2000-04 > 0954916766


From: Richard Bond< >
Subject: Re: [CARIBBEAN] Re: Surnames and Families - "FAMILY NAME"
Date: Wed, 5 Apr 2000 02:39:26 -0400 (EDT)


Heather,

You are actually taking a third position that has more in common with
mine I think than Dorothy and definitely more than Ernest. What you are
saying is that fathers almost always recognized their illegitimate
children. You are also saying that West Indians slaveholders were more
personally sensitive about having non relations sharing their name.

This is my impression and what I have been saying. Now not everyone felt
the same way I'll grant Dorothy but the general pattern is different
than in the States. Not every father with a European surname as family
name would have been white. A mulatto son of a European father when
themselves fathering children would pass on the name.

Around the time I was born there were four prominent white families of
three or more generations residence. If you look at the estate
records for 1800 when conditions were best for sugar and who the major
landowners were you'll find a top four. The white families were
descended from
1.) A dry goods jobber from Connecticut who arrived in the 1870s.
2.) The bookkeeping clerk for a landlord who sold out he arrived in the
1850s after slavery.
3.) A family which left for London in the 1780s but later sold land on a
sixty year mortgage which defaulted so a grandson with a job in Tortola
came back in the later 1800s.
4.) A minor landlord with persistent descendants
The descendants carrying the names of the
largest landlords as of 1800 are all black. The longest record for
ownership of property on St Croix is Tutein House in the fishing village
where the black descendants of a white who bought a house in 1814 still
own it.

The white descendants of the 1800 big four mostly cleared out. As the
legitimate children of families with declining fortunes they tended to
come out ahead. The sugar industry went through several cycles during
which European or American companies came in favoring their own
introduced employees or local whites. There were some colored families
who managed to keep an intermediate social position. There were loads of
cases where people ended up working for the white offspring their white
ancestors white servants.

ABOUT ME: My father was a white American US Government Civil Servant
married to a woman who was Afro Caribbean, East Indian and white. Dad
later taught Caribbean History at UVI. I identify most with my father
but my posting here is evidence of my sentimental attachment to the
other side as well.

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