The tram on Marine Square crossing Henry Street.

The young ladies of St. Joseph’s Convent circa 1880s. The convent admitted girls from various backgrounds  including those from distinguished coloured families  such as the Philip of Philipine Estate, the Romain,  Rosseau and Dick families of the Naparimas.

St. Joseph’s Convent circa 1880s was the home   the d’Heureaux family of 18 Kent Street.

By the Port-of-Spain Corporation Ordinance, No. 24 of 1914, (now Chap. 224 of the Revised Edition of the Laws of Trinidad and Tobago), Port-of-Spain is constituted a Municipal “City,” and its inhabitants are declared to be a body corporate under the title of The Mayor, Aldermen and Citizens of the City of Port-of-Spain.”

This group, comprising members of the City Council in the 1930s,  include at least six ex-mayors of Port-of-Spain:  Enrique Prada (front row in dark suit. On his left is Audrey Jeffers),  Garnet McCarthy (front row, third from right, white suit),  Gaston Johnson (front row, second from right),  George Cabral (second row, second from left),  T.P. Achong (second row, third from left),  Captain Andrew Cipriani (second row, extreme right),  Victor Gormandy (tall man far right).  Among others shown here are:  A.P.T. Ambard, Charles Lastique, Murchison Rigsby,  Leo Pujadas, H.A. de Freitas, and L.B. Thomas.

Independence Square, formerly Marine Square, looking west.  To the left is Broadway; the building on the corner became  The Royal Bank of Canada; on the right is the foot of Frederick Street.

The Red House was once two buildings,  joined by an arch which led on to lower Prince Street,  now named Sackville Street.

The residence of the Warners, later the Queen’s Park Hotel,  and today the BP building.

The original Royal Bank of Canada building.

Frederick Street looking south from just below Hart Street.

Port-of-Spain from the Harbourmaster’s tower, now gone.  It shows the area reclaimed from the foot of St. Vincent going west,  where the Twin Towers are now. At right is the  St. Vincent wharf before it was reclaimed from the sea.  The building on the corner is the Alston’s building, now ANSA McAL.

St. Vincent Wharf

The corner of Chacon Street and Marine Square (today Independence Square,)  looking north towards Trinity Cathedral.

The Transfer Station on the corner of Park Street and Frederick Street.  This was where you transferred from one tram to another.

Plan of Port-of-Spain, indicating the Port, or Puntilla, in the area of Besson Street  and the first three Government Houses in the town as well as some  other government buildings of Puerto d’Espagna.

Ajoupas in the Piarco area in the 1930s.  This is what the streets of Puerto d’Espagna  could have looked like in the 1780s.

This building was erected after 1808  on the site of a Government House that was  used by both Governors Chacon and Picton.  It was demolished in the 1960s.

Government House on Belmont Hill, middle building.  Painting by Peter Shim from a contemporary watercolour.

16th–18th Century

1540s
Sugar cane comes to Trinidad
Sugar cane is introduced in Trinidad circa 1542 by Spanish residents, but only for their own sugar and rum production. For the next 230 years, sugar plays no major economic role.

Tobago’s sugar plantations are developed to a high degree much earlier than Trinidad’s.
In the 1780s, French migration to Trinidad begins after Roume de St. Laurent, a French Creole from Grenada, visits Trinidad. As a result, the Spanish government issues the Cedula of Population of 1783,  which gives crown land concessions to Catholic settlers. French planters from the other islands with their African slaves develop sugar and cotton plantations in Trinidad. In 1797, the British capture Trinidad from the Spanish crown, and the island remains in British hands until Independence in 1962.

1780s
Sugar flourishes in Trinidad and Tobago

St. Hilaire Begorrat, a French planter, introduces the Otaheite cane to Trinidad.

In 1782, a Frenchman by the name of St. Hilaire Begorrat introduces the Otaheite variety of cane, which flourishes in Trinidad. The sugar industry starts in the Port of Spain area.

The first sugar mill is erected in 1787 by a Frenchman, Picot de la Peyrouse, where Lapeyrouse Cemetery is today. Sugar becomes the leading export good and continues to be so, until 1897 when cocoa takes over.

Slave in the sugar (Richard Bridgens, 1820s)

Slaves planting and harvesting sugar cane (Richard Bridgens, 1820s)

Hogsheads, very large barrels, were used to ship rum, sugar and molasses abroad.

In 1799, Trinidad produces 2,700 tons of sugar. By 1808, there are 272 sugar mills operating, of which 257 are animal-driven and round in shape, producing 9,500 tons of sugar. Through a process of rationalisation, the number of mills dwindles to 101 by 1882, producing 53,000 tons of sugar.

Left: Transporting cane to the mill (Richard Bridgens, 1820s) Right: Technical drawing of a mill (Bryan Edwards, 1780s)

The technology of sugar manufacturing changes over time. In the industrial revolution of the 19th century, technological advancements like the vaccum pan and centrifuges lead to more centralisation in sugar manufacturing. Smaller factories become uneconomical.
In 1872, the first central sugar factory, Ste. Madeleine, is completed.

In Tobago, the sugar economy ends in the 1890s due to the collapse of the British firm Gillespie & Co. of London.

Top left: Windmill at Lowlands estate, Tobago. Top right: Muscovado factory with hand-fed conveyor belt. Below: 1960s modern sugar factory.

Left: Interior of a boiling house, Trinidad, 1820s. Right: Interior of a boiling house, Tobago, circa 1880s.

Population and crop statistics of the late 18th century. (From: History of Trinidad by Lionel Mordaunt Fraser)

19th Century

1807
Abolition of the Slave Trade
The abolition of slavery changes the sugar industry permanently. Most of the former slaves abandon the plantations and either migrate to the towns seeking employment or settle on crown lands to grow food crops. A few skilled Africans remain on the plantations, mainly in the sugar factories which require the services of carpenters, masons, boiler-men, carters and factory operators. The African presence on the estates continues, although in diminished numbers.

1838
Emancipation of the Slaves
In 1834, slavery is abolished throughout the British Empire. For another four years, the former slaves are being kept as paid "apprentices" on the plantations, and in 1838 they are given full freedom.

From the 1840s onwards, Trinidad sugar comes under increasing competitive pressure in the UK markets. Reasons for this are a) the abolition of slavery in the British Empire, but not in other territories such as Cuba or Brazil, b) the abolition of import duties from non-British sugar and c) the displacement of cane sugar by beet sugar from the European continent.

Two of Trinidad’s early sugar barons  Left: James Eccles, father of William Eccles and Rosina Burnley. Right: William Burnley, 1780–1850, an American, settles in Trinidad in 1798 and becomes the largest planation owner in Trinidad.

1845
Beginning of Indian Immigration
In 1845, the first ship with indentured workers from India reaches Trinidad. The new arrivals are quarantined on Nelson Island and thence allotted the sugar estate on which to work for a period of five years (women for three years). Until the end of indentureship in 1917, approximately 144,000 people come from India. Many choose to stay after their indentureship contracts are over and found families in their new home country.

Population growth between 1782 and 1810 (from The History of Trinidad by Lionel Mordaunt Fraser)

1840s-60s
Portuguese and Chinese immigration
In 1846, sugar planters privately charter a ship to bring 219 Madeiran immigrant labourers to Trinidad. They are put to work on the more rigorous but better-paying sugar estates, but the harsh conditions of tropical sugar plantations prove to be too much for them. Some leave for the cocoa estates while others abandon plantation labour altogether and turn to petty shopkeeping. Other ships arrive later in 1846 and in 1847. The Portuguese are not compelled by law to indenture themselves and Madeira does not prove to be a viable source of labour. After 1847, Portuguese immigration is no longer considered a solution to the planters’ predicament and the Madeirans are followed by two groups of Asian indentured labourers—the Chinese and the Indians.

Between 1851 and 1969, 2,645 people from China arrive. The majority of the Chinese immigrants are male, and tend towards commerce rather than agricultural labour. This, combined with the high cost of transport, leads the Colonial Government to discontinue Chinese immigration. At right is the partial passenger list of the “Fortitude”, the first ship to bring Chinese immigrants to Trinidad in 1806.







1870-1895
Investment in Sugar Factories
Between 1870 and 1895, £339,000 is invested by the Colonial Company (later Usine St. Madeleine) in its machinery and transport facilities in Trinidad and British Guiana. To this figure is to be added the original cost of the Trinidad factory, Usine Ste. Madeleine,  £213,000.
One small estate, Palmiste, between 1883 and 1894 spends £52,600 in modernising its factory and transport facilities. These investments reduce the production cost of sugar from £8 to £3.
However, not enough investment in the scientific knowledge about cane cultivation is made into the cane farming community, which by the 1920s supplies 40% of canes to the factories. Houses and buildings fall into disrepair: a huge omission on the supply side of the sugar making process.

The cane cutter by Michel Jean Cazabon. Cazabon, one of the earliest recorders of Trinidad’s visual history, captured what may well be the earliest image of an cane cutter in this water colour rendered in the 1850s or 60s.

1882
Beginning of cane farming
Sir Neville Lubbock, Chairman of the West India Committee and a Director of the New Colonial Company Ltd. (later Usine Ste Madeleine), hits upon the idea of having workers on the sugar estates grow canes on idle lands of the sugar company. In 1882, eight men accept parcels of abandoned lands and become Trinidad’s first cane farmers.

Preparing land for cultivation.

20th Century

1937
Brechin Castle starts
In 1937 the English Company of Tate & Lyle purchases a number of small estates in Central Trinidad and sets up their headquarters at Brechin Castle in Couva. As a large international conglomerate Tate & Lyle soon becomes dominant on the landscape, absorbing most of the smaller sugar factories.

Between 1920 and 1927, over 9,000 Indians are repatriated. The total agricultural population is about 96,000. The development of the oil industry and road building begins to increase pressure on the supply of labour.

Aerial shot of Brechin Castle sugar factory in the 1950s.

1920s
From ox-cart to tractor
The 60 hp Caterpillar tractor, imported by Charles Massy since 1924, starts to be deployed in the cane fields for ploughing and grading.
Manure is vital for the fertilisation of cane fields, and sugar companies continue to have large herds of cattle and goats. Additional income from meat and dairy adds to the companies’ bottom line. Mules, horses and donkeys continue to be used for carting and manure. In all, tens of thousands of animals are kept by the sugar companies (in 1955: more than 130,000 animals).

In the 1910s, the Indian water buffalo and the zebu were received from India.

1930s
Trade Unionism
The 1930s are years of considerable turbulence in the colony. Workers in sugar and in oil revolt against low wages and poor working conditions in both these industries. The sugar workers are led by Adrian Cola Rienzi (Krishna Deonarine), a young lawyer from San Fernando. In November 1937, the All Trinidad Sugar Estates and Factory Workers Trade Union is formed, led by Rienzi. Union representation sees considerable improvement in the lives of the sugar and oil workers. Union leaders succeeding Rienzi include Anthony Geoffroy, Bhadase Maraj, Basdeo Panday and Rudranath Indarsingh.




1939-45
World War II
During the Second World War a major section of the work-force is siphoned away from sugar to the better-paying US bases at Chaguaramas and Waller Field. This exodus from the plantations creates shortfalls in sugar production and is a serious blow to sugar manufacture. Production picks up once again after the War and Tate & Lyle becomes a major player in the international sugar market.

This map shows the migration of the sugar industry southward. Up to the time of Emancipation in 1838, sugar cultivation is concentrated mainly in Northern Trinidad, from Diego Martin in the North West to the valleys of the Northern Range going East as far as Toco. The second half of the 19th century sees the decline of the sugar industry in Trinidad. The Sugar Duties Acts from 1846 equalizes the tariff on all sugars imported into Britain, which means that cheaper slave-grown sugar from Cuba, Haiti or Brazil can now compete with that produced by Trinidad, Tobago or Jamaica where labour costs are much higher. In other colonies like India labour costs are also much lower than the Caribbean. In addition European nations are producing beet sugar which now becomes a fierce competitor of Caribbean cane sugar. Plantations in Tobago are reduced into closure as are sugar estates in Northern and North Eastern Trinidad, and in Mayaro. Cultivation shifts to the fertile plains of Caroni and Naparima, well serviced by train lines, where it remains until the final closure of the industry in 2003. (Map from C.Y. Shepard, 1929)

1950s-1975
Tate & Lyle
During the 1950s Tate & Lyle are able to purchase as big an establishment as Usine Ste. Madeleine, making Tate & Lyle the colony’s and later nation’s largest producer of sugar, molasses, rum and bagasse. In 1966, Tate & Lyle owned the following holdings in Trinidad:
• Caroni Limited (70.59% - Sugar production)
• Caribbean Molasses Company (Trinidad ) Ltd. (Molasses purchase, transport, storage and distribution)
• Unital (Trinidad) Limited (Import and export agents for Caroni Limited, 70.59%)

Graph at left:
Crop season lasts from January to June, Trinidad’s dry season. For the sugar factory, it is important that a steady stream of harvested canes is fed into its machinery. However, Easter always means a big dip in production, and May coincides with the traditional marriage season of Indians! That also impacts on the man hours being devoted to the harvest. (Graph from C.Y. Shepard, 1929)






1962-75
Rising Nationalism

Indian sugar workers participate in demonstrations staged by the trade unions in the 1970s.

The post-war era is a period of heightened nationalism when Trinidadians and Tobagonians seek independence as well as ownership of their resources. Independence comes in 1962 but both sugar and oil remain under foreign control with little sign of changing. This state of affairs is largely responsible for the Black Power uprising of February 1970. At the end of this uprising the government is forced to make changes in the direction of a greater share in the national economy. One result of this change is the government’s purchase of Tate & Lyle’s Caroni Limited holdings headquartered at Brechin Castle in 1975 under the name Caroni (1975) Limited.












1918-2003
Caroni Distillery
The Caroni Distillery is established in 1918. In 1975, it becomes part of the Government Holdings of Caroni (1975) Limited’s rum division called Rum Distillers Limited. In 2001, Government sells its 49% holding to Angostura. A year later, with the impending closure of the sugar industry in Trinidad and Tobago, Caroni Distillery loses its ready source of local molasses and is closed. Today, Angostura remains the only distillery in the country and has to import its molasses for rum production. Like our sugar, it comes mainly from Guyana.

Caroni Distillery

1975-2003
The death of the Sugar Industry

Figures showing how pay rises in the 1970s contribute to a steady loss in the sugar industry, eventually contributing to its demise.

As a national company, Caroni (1975) Ltd continues to produce its traditional brands of sugar, rum, molasses and bagasse. In an effort to diversify, new programmes are introduced such as shrimp farming at Orange Grove, livestock rearing at Morne Jaloux and Rio Claro and citrus cultivation at El Reposo and Tableland. But these initiatives do not succeed, mainly because the management structure remains unchanged and decline is the inevitable result. Higher wages in oil continue to attract the best-trained technicians away from the sugar industry, and the newly established Point Lisas Industrial Estate, adjacent to Brechin Castle, contributes to this talent drain.

The sugar industry dies a slow but sure death. In 2003 Caroni (1975) Ltd is closed, thus ending the long history of sugar in Trinidad and Tobago. There are sad consequences of this closure. Some 20,000 workers suddenly are unemployed, leading to social displacement in the plains of Caroni and Naparima. The established way of life of the cane farmers comes to an end and considerable re-adjustment has to be made. Roads and traces in the sugar areas are handed over to the County Councils which are ill-equipped to take on these responsibilities. The many recreation centres which had been maintained by the sugar company fall into disrepair and are, like the factory itself and indeed Sevilla House, vandalised. At the same time some 75,000 acres of sugar lands are made available to the State for its own purposes. A good deal of these lands is later devoted to housing estates.
Thus ends the era of sugar cultivation in the history of Trinidad and Tobago.

Written by: Bridget Brereton
From: Book of Trinidad by Gérard A. Besson and Bridget Brereton,378f



Immigrants from India were not the only people to enter the society in the decades after Emancipation, though they were by far the most numerous. From Asia also came a small but important stream of Chinese immigrants. As early as 1806, a small  number of men from China had been settled in the island, but significant Chinese immigration really, began after Emancipation. Between 1853 and 1866, about 2,500 Chinese, mostly men, arrived to work on the estates as indentured labourers under the same terms as the Indians. 1866 marks the end of indentured Chinese immigration because in that year the Chinese government insisted on a free return passage, which would have been prohibitively costly; but it does not, of course, mark the end of Chinese immigration to Trinidad. After 1866, they arrived in small numbers as voluntary, ‘free’ immigrants; some came via British Guiana where a larger Chinese community had been established.
The Lee Lum dynasty, for example, was established here when John Lee Lum arrived in 1912 at the age of 20. After the Chinese revolution in 1911, immigration picked up and was quite high between the 1920’s and the late 1940’s, a turbulent era of China’s modern history. Thus Trinidad’s Chinese population had increased from 1,334 in 1921 to 8,361 in 1960. Many of the post-1911 immigrants came via Hong Kong or even the United States and arrived knowing some English and familiar to some extent with Western ways.

S. Hochoy

V.I.T. Hochoy

S. Atteck

S. Lee Lum

Few of the early Chinese immigrants remained on the estates for long. Most of them became shopkeepers, market gardeners or butchers. Many married Creole women and adopted Christianity. The post-1911 immigrants, coming in larger numbers, were probably better able to hold on to some of their cultural and family traits as a sizable Chinese community was gradually established. Above all, the Chinese established themselves as rural and village shopkeepers, along with their Portuguese rivals. By the 1940’s, important trading terms had been established by Chinese families, such as the Lee Lums and the Scotts.

Chinese Oyster Vendor of the 1880s. Photo: U.W.I. Library

Culturally, the Chinese language (in its two major forms, Hakka from North China and Cantonese from the South) survived among the Trinidad Chinese community, and in fact, the 1940’s saw an effort to revive the language and the culture. The Communist takeover in 1949, however, severed virtually all links between China and the Caribbean Chinese so that the language dwindled until, today, few of the young Chinese in Trinidad can speak it. The demise of Chinese religions in Trinidad was even swifter:—by 1960 virtually no Chinese-Trinidadian practised Buddhism or Confucianism. The vast majority were fully integrated into the Christian Churches, especially the Roman Catholic church. Traditional Chinese culture is rapidly disappearing among the community, and it is perhaps only in the field of food preparation that it has made a profound impact on the wider society.
Yet Trinidad’s Chinese community has produced outstanding figures such as Eugene Chen who served as Foreign Minister in Sun-Yat-Sen’s Government in China, Solomon Hochoy, first local Governor and first Governor-General of the nation, the artist Carlisle Chang, and Carnival bandleaders Stephen and Elsie Lee Heung. Prominent especially as businessmen and professionals, the Chinese community seems to exercise an influence out of all proportion to its numerical strength.

Sources: D. Wood, Trinidad in Transition.
T. Millette, The Chinese in Trinidad.






The date of the introduction of Chinese immigrants into the island is given by Joseph as 12 October, 1806, that being the day on which the ship Fortitude anchored in our harbour. He gives the information that the men were Tartars and not accustomed to working in the fields, and that only one woman was among the number; the total being 193. He accounts for the absence of women from the fact that they would be unsuitable as field workers from the restricted size of their feet. He further stated that, with the exception of about 23, the whole number returned by the same ship Fortitude.

H. Lu Affat

R. Austin

C.D. Fung-Fatt

C.M. Fung

C.H. George

C.E. Huggins

D.R. Huggins

K.M. Lee

P.A.S. Ling

C.M.C. Ling

U.L. Look Yan

R.L. Low

Above: The Chinese Council, Queens Park West. Originally the home of Packer Hutchinson. It was acquired by several members of the Chinese community in Trinidad to serve as a cultural centre and Council after the collapse of the Chang Kai-Shek Government in China. It fell into disuse and was eventually demolished. It is now a vacant lot. Photograph—I.P. George.

Tobago, a prize of war for the great powers of Europe during the 17th and 18th centuries, was originally peopled by the fierce Caribs.

Possessed by Spain from the 15th century, Tobago was contested over by the Netherlands, the Duchy of Courland, England and France, passing eventually into English hands at the beginning of the 19th century.
The Duchy of Courland, which is now the Republic of Latvia situated on the Baltic Sea, had lain claim to Tobago by virtue of its Duke, Jacobus, who had been granted the island by his godfather James I of England. This claim was to be later enhanced when Charles I transferred to the Duke all claims to the island, which were previously given by royal privilege to the Earl of Warwick.

At left: Duke Jacobus (James), born 1610, died 1681.  He was the founder of the colonial power of the Duchy of Courland. At right: The Coat of Arms of the Duchy of Courland

Duke Jacobus, energetic and ambitious, made several attempts to colonise Tobago, some of which were temporarily successful. Courland, whose population at the time hardly exceeded half a million, had a strong sea-faring tradition and a considerable navy.

In the spring of 1642, Duke Jacobus dispatched a party of settlers with orders to establish a colony on the northern shores of the island of Tobago at a place they called Great Courland Bay.

Greater and smaller Courland Bays on the Leeward coast of Tobago. There were several Amerindian encampments in this area.

Early map of Tobago, circa 1640. The inset is the area of Courland Bay.

They were reported to be most fortunate with their relationships with the Caribs, who usually made it a ritual of disposing of unwelcome guests by eating them. With the clearing of the land and the planting of crops, the settlement thrived and Fort Jacobus was built, containing within its walls the First Lutheran Church in the Western World.

A plan of Fort Jacobus showing the Little Lutheran Church, said to be the first to be established in the New World. Within its walls were dwellings for soldiers and a house for the governor. An Amerindian Village was close by.

In 1654 two Dutch merchants, the brothers Adrian and Cornelius Lampsins, dispatched a number of persons to settle Tobago. They established themselves on the other side of the island and co-existed quite peacefully with the Courlanders for many years, although, at first, neither knew of the existence of the other. Both colonies engaged in agricultural pursuits, cultivating pepper and spices of various types and tobacco, which was becoming very popular in Europe, to the extent where the very name of the island, which might have been Bella Forma or perhaps Concepción or Assunción, was forgotten and it was to become known as Tobacco or later Tobago.

The battleship "Die Pax" (46 guns) arrived at Tobago in September 1656 with 120 Latvians colonists on board.

Three Couranian ships of the 17th century at anchor in Great Courland Bay. On the land, the settlement can be seen with figures of people working in the field.  Top right: The reverse of a medal showing a typical Couronian ship, a symbol of the Duchy’s growing sea power.

James I who claimed Tobago for England in 1608.

By the Treaty of London, in 1604, James had agreed to respect Spanish sovereignty only over those territories already effectively occupied by Spain. He is said to have granted Tobago to his godson, Duke Jacobus of Courland, in 1610. The ruling family of Courland was closely related to the Stuart dynasty.

A Lutheran Church was built within the walls of Fort Jacobus in the early years of the settlement.  It is reputed to have been the first in the New World.

With the fall of the Duchy of Courland in 1658 to the Swedes, who took the Duke prisoner, there was much confusion on the island, and some deprivation as no vessels arrived to supply the Couronian settlement. As a consequence, the Dutch were able to take control, when the Courlanders, in great distress, surrendered to them the garrison at Great Courland.

Charles II of England. In 1664, shortly after his return to the throne, Charles re-granted Tobago to the Duke of Courland, probably in acknowledgement of the Duke's support during his exile.

Over the next decade the French, the Dutch and the English contested violently for this most beautiful island in the far western sea, but Courland’s claim was not put to rest, for in 1680, another attempt was made to colonise the island. This too was without success.

Sir Ralph Abercromby

Sir Thomas Picton

He buckled on his helmet coming down the flight of wooden stairs, and entered the atrium just as Alejandro, his squire, was bringing in his black Arab charger ‘Champion’. Skittish, he danced lightly sideways, tossing his handsome head, making castanet sounds on the limestone floor. From the distance came shouts and calls above the general noise. Earlier, there had been shots fired.

He swung his long, thin legs over the side-stepping horse and settled himself. His saber of the best Andalusian steel made familiar and comforting noises at his side. Already, the heat was rising in his tight-fitting, closely buttoned gray and gold uniform, a uniform which defined him as Rear Admiral of the Spanish navy.
The gold and blue enamel decorations proclaimed him a Knight of the Order of Calatrava, an ancient and noble order that more than three centuries before had absorbed the remnants of the Knights of the Temple of Solomon, who were stationed in Spain when their order was destroyed abroad by both pope and king.
In his middle-thirties, he was intelligent, well educated and competent, and had brought many advancements to this colony. He was presently presiding over a dangerous, possibly explosive affair. Lt. Col. Don Matias de Letamardi and Lt. Col. Don Miguel Herrera awaited the governor’s pleasure outside what would be later called the Charlotte Street gate of the old Government House in Port of Spain. Both were well mounted and armed. Opposite, a troop of the governor’s bodyguard was drawn up with lances held at ease. A colour party, displaying the imperial and regimental colours as well as the governor’s personal ensign, was already present on the Plaza de la Marina, opposite to the foot of the Calle Santa Anna, now Charlotte Street.

The last Spanish governor of Trinidad is remembered  by the national flower, the "Chaconia", and by Chacon Street in Port of Spain  that still bears his name. He arrived in Trinidad on the 1st September, 1784,  as the the 38th governor in a succession that covered a period  of some 250 years of Spanish rule.

A document signed by Chacón said to be his passport or accreditation papers.

Inspired by the notions contained in “The Rights of Man”, the Free Blacks and People of Colour, mulattoes, in the region along with other Republican minded people, including a quantity of the formerly enslaved, were happy to receive Victor Hugues, a rabid Jacobin republican. He introduced the guillotine to the French colonies as well as other maxims of the French Revolution and orchestrated uprisings in Grenada St. Lucia and St Vincent. All this resulted in a massive dislocation of thousands of persons, royalist and republican alike, both black and white, free and formerly enslaved Africans from the neighbouring islands, causing many of these to come to Spanish Trinidad, some with their money and slaves, others with the ideology of the French Revolution.
This movement of people into Trinidad was facilitated by Chacón’s lack of military strength in the colony, which diminished his authority considerably.
The sequence of events that would eventually lead to the invasion of Trinidad by the British had its origins in what increasingly became an English blockade of the island. Trinidad was flooded by foreigners as the result of what was taking place in the region. Many who would have slipped away, were forced to stay.

French soldiers served with the British Army in the conquest of Trinidad. This was during the time of the French Revolution, when many French officers joined the British Army in the Caribbean.

The Admiral Governor had very few resources, hardly any troops, no fortification, and a shortage of heavy masonry. There were no jails, no barracks or armory magazine. In fact, he was left to the goodwill of the public, and this public was made up of individuals from other nations, with the fewest of them actually being Spaniards. As a consequence, the people were disunited by mutual discords through different traditions. They were rivals by constitution and enemies amongst themselves. There was about the place a sense of fermentation.
Many of those with republican sentiments - both French and African - had encountered the English on the high seas. It became an inevitability that something would arise to trigger a disaster. Already, there was random violence some days prior. Two men, both French, had been killed; several negroes had been gravely wounded.
The following week, a British squadron had entered the Gulf of Paria. Spain was not at war with England as the result of a short lived truce. The squadron dispersed a flock of republican privateers, sinking some of their dilapidated craft in Chaguaramas Bay. The English sailors later came into Port of Spain.

The bar belonging to an Irishwoman was crowded with French seamen, some of whom had lost everything. One thing led to another, and a brawl ensued. Captain George Vaughan of the British Frigate ‘Alarm’ came on the scene, and with sword drawn made a way through the crowd, stabbing a Frenchman. The English sailors were mobbed and fled to a nearby house. The mob began to take apart the house, and Captain Vaughan fired his pistols.
The governor, disturbed from his dinner, made hasty preparations to send patrols to close off streets. People in town, ever awaiting any sign that could trigger wholescale looting, seized the opportunity to break open an arsenal and steal as many guns as they could. It was not until midnight that the town was pacified and the English captain and his men were safely back on their ships. Events, however, were far from over.

Peru Estate, owned by the Devenish Family, where the British landed in 1797, now called Invaders Bay. Watercolour by Captain Wilson, 1837

By morning, it was clear that the British were going to come ashore. The slaves from the nearby estates had come into town at the time of the disturbance. The tricolour cockade, which they regarded as a symbol of liberty, was worn by several, and others were persuaded to wear it.
Chacón acted quickly. He had several slaves whipped publicly on the spot, thus dampening the spreading libertine spirits. French republican sentiment worked like a magnet on the free coloured classes and the slaves. The slaves wanted freedom, the free blacks and coloured needed equality with the whites. The island teetered on the brink of civil war.
Captain Vaughan put ashore a company of Royal Marines and a party of drummers, and with flags flying and with an expectant crowd growing larger by the minute, they set out to meet the republican French, who had gathered on the western edge of the dry riverbed of the Rio Santa Anna.
(The river in those days crossed what is now Park Street, traveled down Frederick Street, crossed Woodford Square and made its way to the sea.)

Governor Chacón had acted just in time, for as the opposing sides were about to hurl themselves at each other, his bugler sounded his call and his standard bearers preceded his slender column into the dry riverbed (which, many years later, would bear his name as Chacón Street). Silence fell about him as the call echoed away.
Ignoring the rabble, the governor addressed the English captain, asking him the significance of his actions. Vaughan answered that he had come armed for his own protection. The governor had then to make him realise with various reproaches and reasoning the impropriety and violence of his transgression without regard to the fact that the two countries, Spain and England, were not at war. He left him a choice of two alternatives: either he may be disarmed and return in column with the assurance that he would be allowed to go without harm, or that he could put himself at the head of his troops and may begin hostilities whenever he may like, in which case the Governor would reply to him.

The Spanish fleet on fire, blockaded by the British Fleet in Chaguaramas Bay in 1797.

The sun, now directly overhead, hammered a ferocious heat onto the bolder-strewn riverbed. Above, a hawk circled, and a star blazed for a moment in the blue. No one noticed. The thin red line of British withdrew. Don José Maria Chacón sat erect upon ‘Champion’. The republican French, the free blacks and the runaway slaves hooted and shouted bad remarks. Captain Vaughan later committed suicide. The British government used the incident as one of several reasons to start a war with Spain - which they won. Trinidad fell to the English in 1797. Don José Maria Chacón, last Spanish governor of Trinidad, disgraced for the loss of a Spanish island in the Caribbean, returned to Spain to eventually die almost anonymously, his story untold, his history virtually forgotten. Except here in Trinidad where he is remembered by the street in Port of Spain that bares his name and the National Flower of Trinidad & Tobago, the Chaconia.

Plan of redoubt built in 1730 to defend the western approaches of the town of Puerto de los Hispanioles under the Spanish Governor Augustin de Arrendonda

Over the centuries, there has been much speculation concerning the governor’s relationship with a local lady who is remembered in some old Trinidadian families as Maria Teresa, possibly also known as Maria Teresa Beauvais. There is also that Don José Chacón might have married in Trinidad an Irish lady by the name of Dorothy Lyndsey during his last years in Trinidad has been suggested.

An entry in the Espasa-Calpe encyclopaedia, published in Madrid, reads: "Chacón, Ignacio. Spanish General, born in the island of Trinidad of the Windward Islands, and died in Madrid in 1855."

If Ignacio Chacón was born in 1785 (earliest possible date if he was the governor’s son being the year after José Chacón took up office), he would have been 70 years old when he died. If he was born in 1797 (unlikely), he would have been 58. Anything within this range would have been a healthy life span in those days. Would he, then, have been José’s son?
If so, Chacón had more children than tradition allows for, and one must have gone back to Spain with him. (Note that Spanish society was not as colour-conscious as British and French society, so if Ignacio was not white, it would not have hindered his advancement. Further, José Chacón did have friends at Court — that’s obviously why St. Hilaire Bégorrat, a French planter who was in support of a faction intent on defaming Chacon instructed the Spanish prosecutor to place his attack on Chacón directly in the hands of the king.) Later on, the entry states that Ignacio became a field marshal, gentleman of the bedchamber and secretary to the king.

That Don José Chacón had other children in Trinidad with his pardoner, Marie Teresa is a tradition maintained by several Trinidadians, and amongst these are the Jobity, Diaz, Walker, des Iles and Hodgkinson extended families in whose possession a few relics of his survive.

The Chaconia.

"A creole cocktail of political thriller, historical romance and dashing picaresque replete with pirates and lost gold, corrupt financiers, ravishing coquettes, rabid revolutionaries and future emperors (Dessalines, Naploeon), Roume invites us to consider modernity in the New World, or what Besson frequently refers to as “the nightmare nest of slavery”. In dramatic fashion Roume examines the entanglement of Europe and the Caribbean on the cusp of the Haitian Revolution, the crossroads where the spirits of outmoded European feudalism and nascent capitalism, Enlightenment libertarianism and universalism collided with and contested the magical realism of an Afro-Creole worldview uneasily yet expediently allied with the ambitions of the offspring of the entanglement – the conflicted mulattoes.”

"Roume ‘works’ as a story from beginning to end, always moving and exciting, always unveiling inner truths about the Trinidadian or Caribbean spirit but also about the human spirit. It is never sensational, not even when you’re describing the horrors of the French Revolution. You ‘explain’ Trinidad better than any author I’ve read, although ‘explaining’ Trinidad is not your main goal. (Or is it?)
Most impressive to me is how you are able to display everywhere in your account such a keen sense of the virtue of restraint and subtlety.  I kept waiting for excess but never found it, not even once. The ‘poetical’ passages and touches are always deeply moving, and plausible, too. The whole thing is stunning.”

"Philippe Roume de Saint Laurent—who was he? Was he one of Trinidad’s heroes? He’s been called the “coloniser” of the island; he had a lot to do with the 1783 Cedula of Population and the subsequent waves of French migration here, which did indeed “populate” the island and open it up to plantation development….This long, sprawling novel reads like an epic romance, even though the basic facts about Roume’s career are accurate. There’s piracy in the Caribbean, hidden treasure (buried in a cave in Gasparee), revolution and war in France and Saint Domingue/Haiti, intrigues, villainies, manhunts and plots…. Besson’s exciting and lushly written novel gives us a romantic and fascinating view of Trinidad, France and the Caribbean during the era of Revolution—the best and the worst of times, as Dickens famously wrote at the start of his A Tale of Two Cities.”

ISBN: 978-976-8244-21-5
530 pages
Softcover / Kindle

Click here to purchase the book on Kindle and as a paperback on Amazon
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Cocoa estate. Watercolour © Peter Shim. Reproduced with the kind permission of the artist.

Historical and Statistical View of the Island of Trinidad  
This excerpt by Daniel Hart was written in 1890  

COCOA
The principal articles of produce exported are sugar, cocoa, coffee, rum, molasses, and cotton. Indigo is also exported, but not raised in the island; it is brought from Venezuela for exportation, but in 1783, there were plantations and manufacturers of the article established  in the island. The number of sugar estates does not exceed from 152 to 155, and those of cocoa and coffee, 700. The total extent of land under cultivation is as follows:—canes, 36,739 acres; cocoa and coffee, 14,238 acres; provisions, 9,914 acres; pasture, 7,356 acres. Total, 67,247 acres.
The correct name of the cocoa is ‘cacao’. The cultivation of cocoa, with the exception of a small quantity grown in the island of Grenada, is peculiar as an article of British production to Trinidad. With the exception just mentioned, Trinidad is the only colony throughout the wide extent of the British Colonial Empire producing the materials for this wholesome and palatable beverage. In 1827, the number of cocoa trees amounted to 3,091,945, and the quantity exported that year was 3,696,144, valued according to official returns at £57,851. The value of each tree being then taken at two dollars, or eight shillings and four-pence.
After 1827, a sudden depression in the price of the article reduced the cocoa proprietors, at once and without warning, from a state of affluence to one of comparative—nay, in many cases, real—destitution. For the last ten years, however, the article has maintained a fair and remunerative price. The culture of cocoa is the only one of our Tropical productions at all adapted to the constitution of Europeans. The cocoa tree itself of some 20 feet in height, and affording a grateful shade from the blaze of the sun, is again shaded in its turn by the bois immortel, whose protecting services have justly obtained for it among the South Americans the appellation of La Madre del Cacao. The weeding of the soil, picking of the pods, husking them, and carrying the produce to the drying house; in short, the whole of the agricultural operations and all but the last stage of the manufacturing process is carried on under this impervious and ever verdant canopy; the air gently agitated and refreshed by the river or mountain stream, upon whose vegas or banks these plantations are invariably established.
Here, and here only, the European may measure his strength with the descendants of the Africans and derive direct from the soil without the intervention of the latter, the subsistence which in every other kind of agricultural pursuits seems denied him by his own physical exertions. Under the double shade of the cocoa tree and the Madre del Cacao, the European feels himself as in his native climate. By official returns made in 1842, there were 182 small plantations having from 100 to 500 trees; 147 having from 500 to 1,000 trees, and 268 having from 1,000 to 5,000 trees; 55 having from 5,000 to 10,000 trees; 29 having from 10,000 to 20,000 trees; 28 having from 20,000 to 50,000 trees, and I above 50,000, making a total of 710. Upon a general average, each cocoa tree ought to yield annually two and a half pounds net of cocoa. The distance at which cocoa is planted in this island differs from four to five varas. I have taken the latter as the basis of my calculations. At that distance, there are about 800 trees in a quarrée, which is the old Spanish measurement of 3.1-5 English acres.
Consequently, 40,000 trees occupy fifty quarrées, and the average yield bring something near 2 ½ lbs. per tree, 22 fanegas per 1,000 trees, and $12 (with few exceptions) to be the highest price obtained in the market in 1865. Pruning is an essential operation. Five years would be sufficient to intervene between the pruning; and on an estate of 40,000 trees, I would do it by using the knife to 8,000 trees only in one year, and continue at such rate until the whole shall have been pruned-to re-commence again by the first 8,000 trees. Forty-eight dollars is put down to be expended in that operation, not that the whole of that amount would be expended (for the pruning should be light), but because in that sum is included the cleaning of trees from moss, parasites, ants, and guatepajaro—a work which, though strongly recommended to both men and women (for on many estates picking is performed by women) employed in picking pods, it is, nevertheless, very imperfectly done, or not done at all.
Hence, at the proper season, which is immediately after the December crop, say, in March and April, a skilful gang should be employed to trim and clean the 8,000 trees apportioned for the season. The expenses and net revenue of cocoa estates are subject to  variation, according to extent and locality:—an estate of 30,000 trees requiring almost the same establishment as one of 40 or 50,000—hence the increase or decrease of the net revenue and cost per bag of cocoa on different estates. The amount paid for cutlassing 100 trees varies from 30 to 60 cents. Some estates in the quarter of Maracas, not having labourers located on the property, are in the habit of cutlassing their estates by ‘gallapa’, a system much preferred by small proprietors, though it raises the expense to the ruinous amount of $1 20 per 100 trees. The 2 ½ lbs. that I have put down as the yield which each tree in the present imperfect state of cultivation can produce; but I am quite certain that with increased care and attention, a cocoa tree at 13 feet apart can be made to yield double that quantity. As a proof, on the estate of Mr. Victoriano Gomez, in the Ward of Maracas, there are 200 trees planted at 22 feet apart that yielded 6 lbs. per tree.
A quarrée planted at that distance holds 288 trees, giving a total of 2,128 lbs. At 13 feet, a quarrée, as already stated, contains 800 trees, at 2 ½ lbs. per tree gives 2,000 lbs—a difference of 128 lbs. in favour of wide planting. But is wide planting more profitable? The following particulars will show. Cocoa planted at 22 feet apart require 139 quarrées for 40,000 trees, at 6 lbs. per tree would give 24,000 lbs.; 139 quarrées planted at 13 feet apart would contain 111,400 trees, which, at 2 ½ lbs. per tree is 278,000 lbs.; planted at 22 feet in 50 quarrées there are 14,400 at 6 lbs. is 86,400; at 13 feet, there are 40,000 trees, which, at 2 ½ lbs. will give 100,000 lbs. Difference in favour of narrow planting in 50 quarrées, 13,000 lbs. or 123 ½ fanegas, which, at $12, would give a total profit of $1,480. In addition to the foregoing remarks, it is necessary to state, that on every well-regulated cocoa estate, there should be a nursery of cocoa trees of the best quality, in order to supply ‘fallos’ or missing trees. The following is a statement of the expenses of a cocoa estate of 40,000 trees, and cost per fanega (110 lbs.) or bag:—
It is worthy of remark that a cocoa estate by the planting of provisions and the raising of Stock ought to considerably tend to decrease the expenses above given, because the labourers are only required to pick twice in the year:—June and December. Each estate of the size herein given should also be provided with 8 or 10 good donkeys for crooking, and 25 good steady labourers would be sufficient to carry on the working of an estate of 40,000 trees. It is necessary, however, to state that for the last 3 or 4 years cocoa has been disposed of in the London Market from 65s., 70s., 80s., 90s. and as high as 110s. per cwt., nor has it been under nine dollars in the Trinidad Market. Indeed as much as 13 dollars the fanega (110 lbs.) has been paid, hence the net annual income should be much more than is herein given. There is however, a want of energy on the part of the cocoa planters in regard to planting provisions and the rear of stock. It is, at the same time, just to remark that they labour under great difficulties in the way of procuring labourers. A Negro can live for 24 hours on a sugar cane. Hence, he would rather work on a sugar estate for one shilling a day than for two shillings on a cocoa estate. In former years when the price of cocoa was low, little or no attention was paid to the cultivation; the increase of price has, however, acted as a real stimulus to the planters of the article, and greater attention is now paid both to the cultivation and to the curing and preparing of the article.
The largest cocoa estate in the island is the ‘La Pastora’, situated in the Ward of Santa Cruz, and belonging to Mr. H. Borde. On this estate there are 50,000 trees, but this estate, like others, in 1837 (a year also that the cocoa planter laboured under very great disadvantages for the want of labour) only yielded a crop of 70,200 lbs. In the year 1727, the cocoa trees were greatly injured by the severity of the north wind—a disaster which the priests represented as a judgement upon the inhabitants for their enormity in refusing the payment of tithes. Alcedo relates this ridiculous story—‘The production of the greatest value in this island’, he says, ‘is the cocoa which from its fine quality, is everywhere in request, in preference to that of Caracas, and the crops were even bought up before they were gathered, so that the person to whom they belonged refused to pay their tenths to the clergy, and strange to say, that, as it should seem, Heaven in chastisement of their covetousness had entirely deprived them of this means of emolument in as much as, since the year 1727, the whole of their crop have turned out fruitless and barren, with the exception of one that belonged to a certain man named Robles, who had continued to pay his tithes and whose estate is the only one in which that production is now furnished.’ Unfortunately for the theory of the monks, and the faith of Alcedo, the crops of cocoa have been, and I hope they ever will be, exuberant since Trinidad has been cultivated, as the tables of exports herein given fully proves. It is worthy of remark that the ‘Robles’ mentioned by Alcedo was the father of Christoval de Robles, who inherited from his father the San Antonio and Santa Catalina estates in the Ward of Santa Cruz.

A lovely old cocoa tree (from: http://sweetriot.com/riot/cacao-fun/cacao-story/)

Cocoa, the Golden Bean
Cocoa and the Second Frontier (1870-1920)
by Bridget Brereton
from: The Book of Trinidad

Trinidad was first opened up for plantation development and large-scale settlement in the 1780’s with the influx of French speaking immigrants after the Cedula for Population of 1783 was promulgated. (There were 1,093 European French people in Trinidad and 2,925 French speaking Afro/French people in Trinidad in 1797. The total 'Free' population was 7, 536, enslaved Africans 28,000) The first phase of rapid development—the first frontier—was dominated by the expansion of sugar production and could be said to have lasted from the 1780’s to the 1820’s. Yet, even by the 1830’s, Trinidad was still an undeveloped country. Vast amounts of potentially fertile land were still untouched by human enterprise. In 1838, only some 43,000 acres were cultivated out of a total acreage of 1.25 million. Much of the island was still in the hands of the Crown and under its original forest cover. Only a fairly narrow band of territory stretching west to east from Chaguaramas to Arima and north to south from Port of Spain to San Fernando was extensively settled and cultivated. The southern half of the island, the north coast and its hills and valleys, the whole of the east coast and much of Central Trinidad were virtually untouched and unpopulated. Trinidad was still a frontier colony by the middle decades of the nineteenth century. (In 1838, at emancipation, the population was:
Whites………………………………………..4,326

The second phase of internal colonisation of the island began around 1870 and was associated above all with the expansion of cocoa, though later on (after 1910) the development of the oil industry was also important especially for the southern half of the island. But it was cocoa which dominated the second frontier; settlement and population followed the cocoa trees into the newly opened up districts.
Cocoa is indigenous to the New World—it was the Aztecs’ chocolate, Moctezuma’s favourite drink—and it had always been cultivated in Spanish Trinidad. By around 1850, it was quite insignificant as an export crop. Its take-off into a period of rapid expansion can be dated to around 1870. As eating chocolate, and cocoa as a beverage, became items of mass consumption in the industrialised countries, demand for cocoa in Europe and North America expanded tremendously; this was the most important single reason for the expansion of cocoa in Trinidad.
Locally, the opening up of Crown lands through a change of government policy in the late 1860’s and the gradual improvement of internal communications after 1870 (roads, railways, bridges) had the effect of removing serious obstacles to the progress of settlement and cultivation. Capital, labour, and some land became available in the years between 1884 and 1903 because of the sugar depression in that period. For instance, workers retrenched by the sugar estates might enter cocoa as wage labourers or as peasant growers, money received through sale of small, marginal sugar estates to big firms could be invested in the establishment of cocoa plantations, and in some cases, abandoned sugar land could be switched to cocoa. Since the establishment of a modest cocoa estate did not require a massive outlay of capital (unlike sugar), many local families could mobilise their personal resources and finance the gradual building-up of a cocoa property.
While the market situation remained favourable, therefore, and it did right up to 1920, all the ingredients for a rapid expansion of production were present. Exports had averaged 8 million lbs. a year in 1871-80; by the decade 1911-20 they averaged 56.3 million, a seven-fold increase. By the turn of the century, cocoa had overtaken sugar as Trinidad’s most valuable export; King Sugar had been dethroned.
The new King Cocoa, during his short ascendancy, profoundly influenced many aspects of Trinidad’s social and economic development. Previously inaccessible areas which had been barely populated at all were opened up  to cultivation and settlement, especially the valleys of the northern range, the country between Sangre Grande and the east coast, and parts of central Trinidad and the deep south. New villages sprang into life, with their churches and chapels, schools, lodges and friendly societies, post offices and warden’s offices, markets and shops. Old towns like Arima took on a new lease of life as cocoa marketing centres. The population spread out from the original centres of settlement along the Eastern Main Road to Arima and from Port of Spain to San Fernando. People of all races were involved in this movement:—the Creole blacks, the peons who had been the first pioneers of cocoa, the African and West Indian immigrants, the ex-indentured after 1870.
Cocoa, however, was never exclusively an estate crop. Thousands of peasants of all races cultivated the cocoa trees as contractors (raising trees on land belonging to estates) and as small producers on their own land. Cocoa contributed very significantly to the growth and prosperity of Trinidad’s peasantry, and these small farmers created new settlements and new social and cultural institutions all over the country. To take just one example:—parang and the culture associated with it are inseparable from the cocoa peasantry. As cocoa prospered, some of the profits filtered down to the labourers and small producers, and many of them were able to educate their children, contributing to the growth of the middle class and the general spread of literacy and modernisation.
King Cocoa fell, in his turn, in the 1920’s and 1930’s; but not before he had played a key role in opening up the island, strengthening its economy and enriching its social and cultural development.

San Juan Estate, Gran Couva. Country residence of Francis Agostini, ca. 1900. Illustrated by Peter Shim from a photograph by Hélène Farfan. © Paria Publishing Co. Ltd.

Excerpt from the List of Trinidad Cocoa Estates 
in C.B. Franklin’s Year Book 1916

Arima Ward Union
Mon Repos, La ReunionHrs L. Centeno
L’Espérance, Verdant Vale         “
Willow Vale,Trinidad Cocoa and Coffee Co. Ltd.
St. Patrick, La Razón,“
San Mateo, Cedar Hill“
Mount PleasantHrs. de Lapeyrouse
El RetiroHrs. De Martini
Mon PlaisirF.J. Le Blanc
La Compensación S. De Gannes
San José         “
Buena VistaHrs. Jules Cipriani
La Victoria, Belle VueWm. E. Foster
ProspectJ.S. McDavid
OropunaH. Machado
San AntonioA.M. Tinoco
San JoséA. Harry
TorrecillaM.S. Strickland
Santa RosaHrs. C.G. Seheult
Sin Verquenza, HermitageF.A. Neubauer
La RessourceRobt. J. Miller
Mausica & TrianonHrs. C. Cleaver
Valley ValeF.W. Meyer
San Francisco, Orange HillC. Leotaud
El Ricon, San Felipe“
Mon ReposC.O. & L. Robertson
La RetraîteL. Hamel-Smith
S. Carlos de CaigualWest Indian
St. PatienceTrustees
Agua SantaC. Blasini
St. AdelaideL.A. Riley
Spring Bank, El SocorroGordon Grant & Co.
La Solidad, Prosperidad“
Sta. Isabella, La Soledad“
Santa CruxS. Bercon
FelipéC. Pamphile
San CarlosC. Stollmeyer
CandelariaL.A. Sellier
ExperanzaA.D. Brown
Santa CruzJos. N. Maingot
San AntonioHeirs of Garcia
Santa Maria, Glencora, PerseveranceF.A. Neubauer
Piedmonte, La FertilitéPaul Caracciolo
El Carmen, Monte Cristo“
Jouvence, Santa BarbaraHrs. of Hospedales
El Combata, La ConcepcionH.J. Delisle
La HorquetaHrs. Joa. Ribeiro
Belle VueJ.R. Metivier
JouvenceP. Stevens
San RafaelA. Angeron
Los ArmadillosC. Faustino
Sta. CatalinaThos. Lacon
Santa Rosalia, San GregorioManuel Luces
San Rafael         “
ProsperiteHrs. C. de Verteuil
HaveringW. Carpenter
LaventilleHeirs of Llanos
Monte CristoPaul Caracciolo
San JoseM.J. Roach
L’AgnesiaDr. R.C. Bennett
New ProvidenceG. de Verteuil
La CruzP.R. Pierre
La SoledadCarmona
El Regalo, La CoronaA. Giuseppe
La IndiaM.A. Vignale
La EsmeraldaGeorge F. Huggins
ArizonaH. Monceaux
San Bartolo, ProvidenceH.K. Viera
Murray’s ValeHenry E. Murray
Santa MariaHy. Court
New Providence, Val de CacaoAlb. H. Cipriani
La RomanciaDr. A.H. Burt
La MarounaHeirs of J. Payne
C. StollmeyerSan Juan J.A. Aquie
ParadiseC. Luces
Santa Maria, SpringW.S.E. Barnardo
Dios Me AyudesA. de Matas
La Ventura, Good HopeAlfred Mendes
La ProvidenciaM.D. Smith
El Carmen, San AntonioHeirs C. Lange
La Concepcion, San Juan“
El CarmenA.V. Stollmeyer
ProspectMadoo Lala
Santa RosaChas. Cleaver
Spring HillF.W. Meyer
La Prospérité, San AntonioN. Cowlessar
San AntonioT. de Soublette
MeltonR. Hamlyn Nott
BrothersF. Léotaud
El CedroM. Quesnel
NaranjoHrs. J.A. Rapsey
San Frederico & La VioletaC.O. & L.N. Robertson
La TrinidadS. Thannoo
Mon Bonheur, ProvidenceG.R. Alston & Co.
San ExpeditoA. Albert
Mt. HopeH. Josse Delisle
San SalvadorA.C. de Verteuil
PerseveranceC. de Verteuil & J D’Abadie
La ConformidadA. Gómez
Buena VistaM. Martinez
La GloriaJos. de Verteuil
St. AnnP. Pampellonne
ProsperidadA. de Verteuil
TalparoT.H. Warner
SpringW.E.S. Barnardo
Santa Ignalis, Santa BarbaraC.A. Pollonais
Spring & ArmonicaHrs. Edgard Borde



CEDROS WARD UNION
Annandale, Buenos Ayres, St. MichaelL.F. Ambard
La Ressource, ProvidenciaWest Indian Estate Co.
Sta. Barbara, El Pilar         “
Bon Aventure, Santa Isabella         “
L’Union, La Stella and Buena VistaEdwin Clapham
St. JosephMrs. Solano
San FranciscoHrs. Mejias
VillanuevaMalze Bros.
ErinG.F. Huggins
El Perial, San José and El CocalCarmen Anduze
La VictoriaG.F. Huggins
Good HopeDonatien Gervais
Sta. MariaA.S. Kernahan
DenmarkChs. Ker (Trustee)
EnterpriseGeo. Grant
S. JohnA. Attin
IndustryThe Industry Est. Corporation of N.Y.
Monte CristoL. Tanwing & Sona
PenburyE.C. Skinner
El PuertoP. Collington

COUVA & CHAGUANAS WARD UNION
CocolocoJ.B. Todd
MontroseDr. A.P. Lange
Rich VilleA.B. Richards
EdnavaleGeo. Bancroft
EdinburghHrs. S. Henderson
EsmeraldaGordon, Grant & Co.
Sta. EmiliaHrs. of Joyce Ltd.
La ProvidenciaFritz L. Boos
HenksdaleHrs. Hendrickson
FélicitéSmith Bros. & Co.
SouvenirA.V.M. Thavenot
St. MarieHrs. de Boissière
Roupell ParkDan McD. Hart
Bon AventureHrs. C. Robertson
St. JulesJas. Stewart
MurrayvaleOnnarey & Robertson
Eva’s HopeHeirs Langton
WaterlooKleinworth, Sons & Co.
Pays Perdu, S. MadeleineJ.R. Tom
MålagaHeirs H. Stone
St. MargaretJ.W. Fletcher
Sta. Philippa, HillandaleW. Mills
Orange FieldBeatrix A. Lange
La Soledad & Sta. IsabellaE.W. Savary
Uquire, Las Lomas & EliboxE.L. Agostini
PalmisteMiss Léotaud
TcarridonumCarr Brothers
Mes Voeux & Bon AccordHeirs of Smith and Langton
Friendship HallBlack and McLeod
St. Charles & EsperanzaHeirs Hoadley
Verdant ValeHeirs Penco
PhilippineHrs. L. Preau
BalmainJ.P. Bain
La RosaliaJ.A. Ortiz
Belle VueBoodhin
PekingNuma Nathaniel
WilliamsNuseban
Good LuckSatuarine
EnareeBeddoo Bhagat
Sitar-i-HindE.M. Madoo
HopeE.V. Downey
CarolinaAgostini and McLelland
ProspectF. Isaac
PerseveranceJ.E. Bonneterre
Don JoséF.A. Gómez
The Hope & St. LukeDyett & Grant
Bon Aventure & Mon PlaisirHeirs W.C. Dyett
St. Vale, Lee ValeC.P. Lee
L’ArgenvilleDr. A.B. Duprey

DIEGO MARIN & ST. ANN’S WARD UNION
La Chaguaramas & Mt. HazardChaguaramas Estates, Limited
Crystal StreamHeirs of J. Dickson
Fond Palmiste & St. SophieJ.C. Benlisa
St. LucienCroney & Co.
RichplainEnroll & A. Artfield
Les Fontaines, La Ressource, BagatelleMichael P. Maillard
Cedar HillF. & J.A. Jones
Hermitage, EsperanzaAnna Lange
La PuertaDr. J.L. Senior
Tucker ValleyT’dad Ltd. & Finance
Haleland ParkCo.,  Ltd.
MokaW.G. Gordon
Val de OroJ.C. Benlisa
Mon Espoir, Cascabelle & VineyardTrinidad Produce Company
Belle VueL.E. Bernard
River and CascadeTrinidad Government
Mt. CarmelPitman & de Suze
San Diego & VictoriaGeorge G. Brown
La RessourceCatherine R. Rist
La RessourceJean Isidore
San CarlosW.T. Campbell
PerseveranceL.S. Disney
St. EmeliaL.D. Alcazar
Mon ReposEdgar Borde
CovigneE. Hamel-Smith
St. John & Grand FondMadeleine Joseph
JamsonJ.A. Brown
La FromageMrs. C Fitzwilliam
Mount CatherineLouis Julien
La OfertaAndré de Verteuil
La Sagesse, Zig ZagHrs. J.E. Coryat
Santa Barbara, Prospéridad         “
Santa Carolina, La Madeleine         “
La Pastora, TranquilidadJ. Ribeiro
Maracas BayHrs. de Lapeyrouse
Paradis Terrestre, Mon ReposJ. Penco
Perd Mon Temps         “
San AntonioSir J. Needham
SoconuscoWilsons, Limited
El CastilloS. Bissessar
San PatricioFrançois Tomasi
El CarmenHenrietta Kavanagh
La Soledad (Guanal)J.S. de Bermudez
ConcordiaMarie Duprey
Brasso TocoJ.C. Poyer
North Laventille MorvantGordon Grant & Co. Ltd.
South LaventilleEarl of Dundonald
Beau SéjourJ.A. Antoni
San MiguelEmma Dreyfus
San Antonio & El CorosalJoaquim Webster
ProvidenceLouis de Gannes
San CarlosMrs. Jul. Borde
L’EugenieG. Ferrari
UnionF. D’Heureux
Belle AirHeirs of B. Mussio
HermitageArthur Cipriani
La Regalada, San Rafael, El GuamalC.F. Stollmeyer
La DeseadaC.C. Stollmeyer
Mon Valmont, La FortunéeA.V. Stollmeyer
Clydesdale, El Ordo & Sta. Ann’s         “
St. Luce & Mon DesirMrs. C. de Verteuil
La SoledadSmith Bros. & Co.
El Socorro, ConcordF. Herrera
Barataria & AranjuezHrs. J.A. Rapsey
CoblentzCarlos Rovedas
La TrinidadSolomon Dreyfus
Belle FleurEd. Manuel    
Ste. MarieH.F. Figeroux
La UltimaJos. J. Ribeiro
Champs FleursM.M. Gransaull
BrothersvilleJones Bros.

LA BREA & OROPOUCHE WARD UNION
Alta GraciaAlbert A. Sobrion
PatnaBoodhoosing
NelsonJ.J. McLeod
La IndiaPartap
S. Martin & S. PhilipHrs. of Allum
Santa MariaT. Geddes Grant
PerseveranceC.C. Stollmeyer
El Socorro & El KolaW.C. Robertson & Others
Canton & Santa CeciliaGeo F. Huggins
EsperanzaMrs. Felix Smith
San Francisco & Good IntentA.M. & R.A. Low
AdventureJ.B. & S. Waith
La FortunéeDe Wolf & Mathison
El CampoBeatrice Huggins
PluckTennant’s Est. Ltd.
Common & KingslandShadrach Medford
La Siparia, La TranquilidadTrinidad Properties Ltd.
KimberleyGeo. Blake
CuraJohn Bleasdell
La PastoraSmith Bros. & Co.
St. Mary, ParadisePierre Bartlett
La Virgin y Tierra LindaAlbert Mendes
Eureka and CuraE.D. Clarke
OtaheiteHrs. Clem. Lange
Boa VenturaHrs. Joaq. Ribeiro
La Fortunée, Clifton HillUnited Brit. Oilfields
St. ValentineHarold Fahey

MANZANILLA WARD UNION
La JosephinaF.A. Neubauer
Sta. EstellaGeneral Pacheco
WindermereCroney & Co.
S. José de ComparoL.P. Pierre
St. JosephMrs. O. de Gannes
La Concordia, San AntonioC. Allard
La UnionE. Hernandez
BrooklynPercival Stevens
BarcelonaJ.B. Robinson
Non Pareil, St. Marie & Santa RitaE.A. Robinson
ConcordA.P. Maingot
El ReposoHrs. C. F. Sellier
St. PrivatDr. de Gannes
Santa RitaGeo. Jonson
ErrolvaleThomas Lyder
PerseveranceGeorge McLean
St. ElizabethHenry A. Reid
El PalmitoA. Protheroe
St. JosephJ. Riley
Mt. TaldonB. Romney
La MascotteR. Vignales
St. JohnJohn F. Wallen
Sta. ClaraJ. Jacelon
Santa AnnaMs. C. Kirton
St. PatrickHeirs of Logan
MontroseE. Damian
WilliamsvilleGeorge Williams
El RecuerdoMurray and Wake
May VegaDr. C. F. Lassalle

TACARIGUA & BLANCHISSEUSE Ward Union
GlensideCommdr. W.H. Coombs, R.N.
Charles ValeS. Augustin
RedemptionHrs. B. de Lamarre
St. MichaelResal Maharaj
Mount St. BenedictMayuel de Caigny
TraffordMarie Holler
TumbasonDr. L Lota
Las CabecerrasJos. Lota
Santa Barbara, San PedroJ.F. Alonzo
Santa IsabellaJ.M. Blanc
MamoralMrs. L. Johnstone
Magdaline, St. AntoineF.A.Neubauer
La Guadeloupe, St. Ignes“
El Socorro, La Pastora“
La Rosina, El Manacal“
Concordia, La Florida, AvondaleWindward Islands Estates Co. Inc
San VincenteJoseph Gomez
La VéronicaMary L. O’Connor
El SocorroMargaret Rapsey
San JoséRobert de Freitas
HomburgW. Holler
San JoséM.A. Prieto
La ReconaissanceC.J. La Coste
WardourBridget Jardine
Mon DeisrBerenice Garcia
Santa Basilio, La SoledadManoel Alonzo
Mundo Nuevo, ValenciaMax Reimer
La pastoraGordon, Grant & Co. Ltd.
AlgaraboHeirs of J. Philip
La SoledadE. Lezama
Montserrat, San Francisco, La DeseadaJ.P Zepero
La RealistaMrs. M.E. Olivieri
Des Consue, La Florida, La VictoriaWilsons Ltd.
San FranciscoGeo. B. Geoffroy
Santa Ignes, San JoachimHeirs Nakid
Tierra NuevaHeirs C. Leotaud
Cautira, Guamal, Hope Well, San Pedro“
DestinG. De Silva
San DomingoJosepfita de Léon
La SoledadHrs. Of de la Rosa
Gonzales, San IsidoroAllan McD. Horne
TraffordMarie Holler
RedemptionEdward Mohipath
Santa RitaJos. Reyes
La SoledadHeirs Reyes
Maracas Valley, San PedroCadbury Brothers
Santa Barbara, La SombadouraV.L. Wehekind
San Pedro del ValleJ.B. Garner
OrtinolaTennants Est. Ltd.
Santa RitaD. Betancourt
La Providencia, La FortunaA.A. Matas
BickhamHeirs of Wharf
San LorenzoFred Herrera
La Victoria, La CarolaCaroline Borberg
Belle VueDhanoolall
GuiriaHrs J.V. de León
La SoledadE. Gonzales
El RetiroHeirs T.B. Meja
Buena Vista, San MiguelM.J. de Silva
San Antonio, San Juan, Santa BarbaraSimon B. Pierre
CalcuttaCadamee
El Reposo, EsperanzaHrs. S. Castillo
El DiscursoG.T. Brash
La LuciaE. Gabaira
St. JenaXavier Hardy
ProvidenceMargaret Hunter
San Juan, RosaliaEdm. Kelly
El GuamoC.A. Morrison
Santa LuciaHrs. José Votor
CanaanBennysingh and Rampersadsingh
La Belle ViewHrs. Chinibas
St. Ann’sRev. Dr. Maingot
El Choro, St. HelenaVictor Adrien
Laurel HillJuliana Bonair
La SoledadA.A. De Matas
St. Catherine, La FloridaF. De Matas
El Broyo, Santa Margarita         “
La Merced, San PedroCadbury Brothers
San MiguelA.T. Eligon
La Soledad, Williams FieldFred Herrera
LoreteA.V.C. Gomez

Toco Ward Union
El Carmen, El Calvario, La SoledadW.G. Gordon
La Maravilla, Santa Barbara, St. John“
El Toco, Mon Plaisir, Belle Vue“
Susannah, Santa Teresa, St. Luke“
Aragua, St. Pasqual, San Philipe“
Cascabel, La Jalousie, Esperanza“
Woodford Valley“
CumanaTheresa Campbell
Sans SouciM.A. Bowen
La SoledadG.R. Alston & Co.
Buenos AyresF.G. Scott
St. Antonio, St. Laurent, La SoledadSamuel Hosang
La Ardita, La Anicetta“
San Antonio, Belle Vue, San IsidoreL.J. Gransaull
La Palmiste, La Providence“
La JuanitaE. Paisley
MalgretoutMrs. M. Gransaull
AdventureElizabeth A. Hosang
Diamond Field, Orphan, La VictoriaThomas Hosang
Nola Fana, California, Esperanza“
La Prosperité, Belle VueA. Besson
Poor Man’s ProgressMcBurnie

This exhibition, mounted at Fort San Andres in Port of Spain, is dedicated to the memory of John Newel Lewis, architect and artist who devoted himself to the recording and illustrating of the 19th century buildings of the city. 

The Spanish Fort San Andres in Port of Spain was once part of the defence of the town. The cannons pointing at the sea bear silent witness to those exciting years.

During these times of the Coronavirus pandemic, when schools in Trinidad and Tobago and all over the world are closed, we would like to take teachers and students on a virtual tour of the Museum of the City of Port of Spain, which was located at Fort San Andres and is currently (as has been for a while) closed to the public. 

You can double-click on the images and enlarge them, and download them for the information contained in them. We hope that you will take the virtual tour and get a lot of information about our capital, our home city, the city of our ancestors! The text that accompanies the visuals on this blog post will act as your "virtual tour guide".



The Museum was commissioned by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism in 2003, and opened by then  Minister of Culture the Honourable Pennelope Beckles and Mayor of Port of Spain, His Worship Murchison Brown. It is dedicated to the memory of architect John Newel Lewis HBM, who made himself deserved by his involvement in the carnival arts and the documentation of the architectural influences of Port of Spain. The National Museum led by then curator Vel Lewis oversaw the project. The content and design was conceptualised by Gérard A. Besson HBM, D.Litt (h.c.), using images from the Paria Publishing Archives. The three-dimensional objects in the display cases were drawn from the collection of the National Museum. Some were sourced with the kind assistance of Ross Bynoe of Yesteryear Antiques. We also received spontaneous donations by from a wide cross section of people for the exhibits. The building of the exhibits was done by Peter Sorzano of Signs & Designs Ltd. and his team, with contributions from Peter Tardieu.

The exterior of Fort San Andres with cannons and City Gate in the background.

So let's take the tour of the Museum of the City of Port of Spain!

The entrance area of the Museum.

We first show you the entrance of the Museum, a long corridor with a window in it that allows you to get a first glance into the exhibition itself. "History is a window! A window into our past that offers a view of the future."

The "Negro Figuranti" that accompany the visitor into the exhibit are coloured drawings by Richard Bridgens, done in the 1830s  in Trinidad of Trinidadians.

The composite Map/Timeline in the entrance area of the museum is based on illustrations by John Newel Lewis. It shows the migration of peoples to Port of Spain and their built heritage over the last 500 years.

An interior of the Museum

Turning the corner, you are finding yourself in a pleasant atmosphere. The high ceilings and tall windows of the Museum let in light and air, and the hardwood floor gleams with shafts of light. The large, colourful panels hang suspended from the ceiling on invisible wires, and allow you to walk around them and discover what's on the obverse and reverse of them. Many exhibition boxes of three-dimensional, historical objects and curiosities add to an overall atmosphere of being in a place where history was made.

Part 1: Pre-Columbian & Spanish Trinidad

The first panel talks about a time before the Spanish presence in the Caribbean. The area where Port of Spain now stands was known as "Conquerabia" or "Place of the Silk Cotton Trees". It was inhabited by the First People who came and went between the South American mainland and the island chain. This panel gives some impressions of how they lived.

Cultural artefacts of the First People

The display box of cultural artefacts of the First People shows pre-Columbian pottery shards, a stone tool, and a woven basket. Did you know that the First People had developed a weaving technique that allowed them to even carry water in a basket?

From 1498 to 1797, Trinidad was a Spanish colony. The panel "The Conquistadors" gives a timeline of the earliest Spanish Governors, Renaissance men who saw themselves as discoverers, adventurers, privateers and navigators, in short, as "Conquistadors" in search of "El Dorado". And while gold was never found in Trinidad, pearls were, which, together with the capture and sale of tribal people by the Spanish as slaves, formed the first economy of Trinidad.

If you want to read the text on the panels, double-click on the image!

Don Antonio Sedeño was the first of the Spanish Governors of Trinidad. On this panel, you can see a Dutch chart showing the islands of Trinidad and of Tobago, a sketch done by John Newel Lewis of what Don Antonio's fort  may have looked like, and an engraving of pearl fishing in the Gulf of Paria in the 16th century.

Puerto de España in the late Spanish and early English period, the 1790s, was a hub for the burgeoning plantation economy of the island. This panel shows a number of illustrations of life in Trinidad in the early 1800s. The Spanish presence in Trinidad has continued to the present. It is remembered in the name of our capital city & in  San Fernando, various places, towns and villages, food and festivals and most importantly in the Spanish family names that have proudly survived for more than six hundred years.

 2: European planters,  Free Blacks & People of Colour, the majority of whom were French speaking, start arriving in Spanish Trinidad from 1783.

Trinidad's population in 1783:

The French presence in a very sparsely populated Spanish Trinidad began in 1783 when on the behest of Grenada-born Philippe Roume de St. Laurent, the Spanish Government granted a "Cedula for Population". It invited Catholics from anywhere in the world to come to Trinidad and receive there land grants based on the quantity of enslaved people they  brought into the island. This Cedula is, de facto, Trinidad's first constitution, as it sets out the legal and economic framework that determined how the colony would be governed.  A unique document for its time, it guaranteed, under Spanish law, that Free Black people and free mixed race people, who also brought with them enslaved Africans, would have the same rights and privileges as the European settlers.  Since in those years, many of the formerly French islands in the Caribbean had been ceded as prizes of war to the British the people of those islands, Grenada, Tobago, Dominica,  St Vincent and later St Lucia, were mainly Catholic, French speaking-Antillean people, both white and free black and mixed race people, came and received lands in Trinidad, which was then still largely covered in virgin jungle. The influence of these French speaking people shaped and coloured the cultural and economic life of Trinidad & Tobago for well over 150 years.

The Cedula for Population of 1783 gave social and economic opportunities to Free Blacks and People of Colour that other places did not. The majority of them being Catholic & French acculturated settled in Port of Spain, & in the Naparimas. They became the basis for the original middle class of Trinidad. They gave to the island a distinct French Antillean flavour & culture that was to last well into the 20th century. In those early years newspapers were in French & English and so too was trade as were Court room proceedings!

With the French Revolution breaking out in 1789, and "Madame Guillotine" also finding its way to the French Antilles, the influx of French people into Trinidad increased. Port of Spain became quite a volatile melting pot, comprising French aristocratic families who escaped the Guillotine, black and white republican revolutionaries, some from as far away as Haiti, runaway slaves, deserters of foreign wars, and many other people as listed on this panel who had resisted slavery & imperialism. The roots of a culture of resistance were laid in those years.

Some  of the European-descended French who came to Port of Spain under the terms of the Cedula belonged to the nobility of Europe. One of them, the Valleton de Boissière family, are featured on this panel. From this French family came merchants, planters, legislators, highly decorated soldiers, a world famous author, medical doctors and an illustrious son of the soil, Dr. Eric Eustace Williams, the first prime minister of an independent Trinidad and Tobago.

This  grave stone once formed part of a de Boissière tomb in a private cemetery in Debe Road, Maraval.

The Memorial of the Name. 

An exhibition mounted at Sevilla House, Brechin Castle, in memory all who toiled in the sugar estates of Trinidad. 

During these times of the Coronavirus pandemic, when schools in Trinidad and Tobago and all over the world are closed, we would like to take teachers and students on a virtual tour of the Museum of the Sugar Industry of Trinidad and Tobago, which was located at Sevilla House, Brechin Castle, in Couva and is currently (as has been for a while) closed to the public. 

Entrance to the Sugar Museum

This very large entrance panel is actually a Word Cloud, fashioned from some of the family names of East Indian indentured labourers who came to Trinidad in the mid-19th century. Double-click on the image to enlarge so you can read those names.

Trinidad once had an extensive railway system, of which nothing remains today but a few disused bridges.

To the right of the door you can see an infographic of a snapshot of the agricultural and livestock sector of Trinidad in the mid-1950s, just before Independence. It will surprise the visitor that just a few decades ago, Trinidad and Tobago had such flourishing agriculture, with hundreds of thousands of animals, millions of chickens, and massive production of all sorts of crops. (Double-click to enlarge and read).

Trinidad's entire society was geared to nourish, maintain and sustain agriculture, employing hundreds of thousand, feeding the colony, and creating crops for export.

Double-click on the images to enlarge and read them!

Room 1: "Woman in the Cane"

Details of the "Floating Panels" reflecting the tiled floor.

Details of the "Floating Panels" reflecting the tiled floor.

The exhibits featuring women on various sugar estates around the country are "sound-wave" shaped, symbolising the clanging sound of the estate bell that dictated the rhythm of life in the cane.

Detail of the Champs Elysées (Maraval) sugar estate panel in the installation.

Champs Elysées estate was the residence and property of Jean Valleton de Boissière in Port of Spain. The panel shows  a scene from Champs Elysées flanked by portraits of women, all drawn by Richard Bridgens in the 1820s. Bridgens is the only source of authentic, contemporary images of people of African descent in Trinidad and Tobago during the times of slavery.

Rose Hill estate in east Port of Spain was the residence and property of Edward Jackson, giving names to Rose Hill Road and Jackson Place.

Detail of the Peschier (Port-of-Spain) sugar estate panel in the installation.

1807-2020 Two Hundred and Thirteen Years on the Road to Freedom:

The Abolition of the Slave Trade in Trinidad & Tobago

Two exhibitions at the National Museum and Art Gallery, Port of Spain, in 2007

The National Museum in Port of Spain

During these times of the Coronavirus pandemic, when schools in Trinidad and Tobago and all over the world are closed, we would like to take teachers, students and parents on a virtual tour of the Museum of the Abolition of Slavery and Emancipation in Trinidad and Tobago, which were temporary exhibitions at the National Museum and Art Gallery, Port of Spain, in 2007. They were mounted to commemorate the bi-centennial anniversary of the abolition of the slave trade in the British Empire (1807) and the emancipation of the enslaved (1838). The exhibition was opened on March 27, 2007 and ran until April 8, under the aegis of the Ministry of Community Development, Culture and Gender Affairs in collaboration with the Committee for the Commemoration of the Bicentenary of the Abolition of the Slave Trade.
The second exhibit, "Emancipation in Trinidad", was mounted later that year to commemorate the emancipation of the enslaved in Trinidad and Tobago in 1838.
The exhibits were coordinated by the Curator of the National Museum, Mr. Vel Lewis. They were conceptualised and built by Gérard Besson with items and images from the collection of the National Museum, augmented by materials from Paria Publishing's archives. Prof. Bridget Brereton assisted with the research and writing of the captions, and held a public lecture at the Museum on 3 August, 2007.

The poster for the exhibition, showing the entrance to Champs Elysées estate in Maraval, then a plantation belonging to Jean Valleton de Boissière, a slave trader (on horseback, being pointed at accusingly by an enslaved man). It was illustrated by an anti slavery activist, possibly Richard Bridgens.

Non-African Slaves in the Caribbean

Two Hundred and Thirteen Years on the Road to Freedom in Trinidad & Tobago

What Port of Spain looked like from the sea in the early 19th century (lithograph of the 1820s by Richard Bridgens)

What San Fernando looked like from the seain the early 19th century (porcelain lid in the National Museum Collection)

Trinidad, as compared to Tobago, was a late starter in the plantation economies of the Caribbean. Tobago had an early start in the plantation economies of the New World. It was partially settled by the Courlanders, today's Baltic States, and the Dutch in the 17th century. It was contested by the French in the 18th and finally captured by the British in the 19th century, changing hands back and forth among these European powers. During this period, slaves were continuously brought to Tobago from stations on the West Coast of Africa by the various European powers.
There were times when Tobago was abandoned, and described as a “desert island”. Nevertheless, Tobago continued to produce sugar well into the 19th century, as the various relics of the sugar industry may to this day be glimpsed in the abandoned windmills and waterwheels, and the rusting steam-powered crushing plants.

Main Street, Scarborough, Tobago, circa 1825. Possibly a slave ship is anchored in the Bay. Illustration by Captain Wilson (Tom Cambridge Collection)

Views of the exhibition:  display cases and objects

Storage Jar This large earthenware jar, made in England, probably dates from the 1800s, and would have been used on a sugar estate for the storage of rum, molasses, or sugar. It is one of the few objects made of this material to have survived from the period of slavery, and as such may be seen as the central exhibit of this exposition.

Trinidad's Cedula for Population of 1783

Trinidad became a Spanish colony in 1498. Not seen as being of strategic importance to Spain, it was neglected until it was decided, by the Spanish Government, in the late 18th century, to introduce a population to Trinidad. The catalyst for this significant event was Philippe Roume de St. Laurent, a Grenadian of French descent. He obtained a Royal Cedula for the Population of Trinidad from the Spanish Crown on the 4th November, 1783, and was responsible for its propagation throughout the Caribbean region.
This decree granted free lands to foreign settlers in Trinidad. Among its stipulations was that the settlers be Roman Catholics and subjects of nations allied to Spain. As a result, French, Irish, German, Italian and English families arrived in Trinidad.
The Cedula of 1783 was remarkable for its time, in that it sought to accommodate by giving Civil Rights to those Black and mixed race people of the Caribbean who, for a variety of reasons, were not enslaved.
This would make Trinidad unique, in that from the inception of the Cedula for Population, the majority of "Free People" in Trinidad were of a mixture of Africans and of people who were of African and European descent.

Amongst the several Articles of the Cedula there are two that are of particular relevance to this exhibition:

Art. III. To each white person, either sex, shall be granted four fanegas and two sevenths of land (equal to ten quarrees French measure, or thirty-two acres English measure) and half the above quantity for every negro or mulatto slave that such white person or persons shall import with them, making such a division of the land, that each shall partake of the good, bad and indifferent. And these distributions shall be recorded in a vellum book of population, specifying the name of each inhabitant, the date of his admission, the number of individuals of his family, his quality and rank; and every such inhabitant shall have an authentic copy from said book for the parcel of land alloted to him, which shall serve as a title to his property in the same.

Art. IV. The free negroes and mulattoes who shall come to settle in the said island, in quality of inhabitants and chief of families, shall have half the quantity of land granted to the whites, and if they bring with them slaves, being their own property, the quantity of land granted to them shall be increased in proportion to the number of said slaves, and to the land granted to said negroes and mulattoes, this is, one half of the quantity granted to the slaves of whites; and their titles for lands shall be equally legal and granted in the same manner as to whites.

Population figures of Trinidad from 1782 to 1810

Population statistics Trinidad 1782 – 1810 (double-click to enlarge)

Trinidad Slave Census of 1813 and other population numbers

Total number of African slaves in Trinidad in 1813 was 25,696. Of these 11,633 were Creole slaves, that is, born on the estates or in the households of their owners. These can be broken down thus: 7,088 born in Trinidad, 2,576 from British Colonies, 1,593 from French Colonies, and 376 from other places. (Source, B. W. Higman, Slave Populations of the British Caribbean 1807–1834. )

Number of slaves freed in Trinidad in 1834.

The starting point of the Middle Passage was the sale of Africans by other Africans. Here, the King of Dahomey presides over his court, with Europeans slave traders looking on. (From: Archibald Dalzel, The History of Dahomy, 1793, as reproduced in From Columbus to Castro, Eric Williams)

The Beginnings of the Slave Trade in Africa

There had been a slave trade in West Africa for centuries before the coming of the Europeans. South of the Sahara, in the vast grasslands known as the Sudan, great empires had grown up in medieval times (circa 12th to 15th century). These states had long raided the forest areas for slaves, who were then transported across the desert for sale in the markets of Morocco.
But the Sudan had been falling increasing into chaos and decline since 1590, and soon the flow of slaves was moving south and west to the ocean rather than north into the desert. Throughout the 18th century, the harbours of the West African coastline reaching from Senegal to Angola, were annually infested with European ships seeking to purchase slaves.
The trade was well organised, and the Europeans did not capture slaves themselves as a rule. Rather, the latter were captured far into the interior of the African continent in great slave raiding wars, then sold through a series of African middlemen down to the coast, where Europeans acquired them from local chiefs in exchange for goods in demand in Africa, such as guns, copper, iron ware, rum and textiles.
The great and increasing demand for sugar in Europe had in turn created an insatiable demand for slave labour in the West Indies among other places in the New World, where sugar cane was grown.  Millions of Africans were captured in tribal wars or kidnapped from their villages, sometimes branded, and sold or exchanged for trade goods  and shipped across the ocean to be worked to death on the plantations of the New World.

St. Hilaire Begorrat introduced the Otaheite cane to Trinidad.

Slave markets - Both Europeans and Free Black and Free Mixed Race people sold and bought enslaved Africans at Fort San Andres,  close to today's City Gate in Port of Spain.

"To be sold at the Fort: A black girl, the property of H. Debe, eleven years of age, who is extremely handy, works at her needle tolerably, and speaks English perfectly well, is of an excellent temper and willing disposition. Inquire of Mr. Owen, Carib Street, San Fernando." (An advertisement in a local paper)

Poster advertising slaves in 1829.

Poster advertising slaves prior to the abolition of the slave trade (as they are being sold from a slave ship

The Turtle Shell Turtles generally have lifespans comparable with those of human beings, and some individuals are known to have lived longer than 150 years. Because of this, they symbolise longevity in some cultures. In Guyanese folklore, they are referred to as “Old Creole”. The turtle has both an endoskeleton and an exoskeleton. The first turtles already existed in the era of the dinosaurs, some 200 million years ago. This turtle shell of a fully mature creature formed part of the original Royal Victoria Institute’s Natural History collection (now the National Museum). The animal whose shell came to the Museum in the early 20th century may as such have been alive when there was still slavery in Trinidad.

A page from the account by James Fraser of Trinidad, describing the anxiety about the abolition of the slave trade amongst the planters in Trinidad (double-click to enlarge)

Many and various arguments were raised by the West Indian planters against the abolition of the slave trade. This book, written by a gentleman of Jamaica, was addressed to a friend in London, but was intended as a criticism directed against the Reverend Clarkson, who, in association with Wilberforce, was promoting the abolition of the slave trade and ultimately the emancipation of the slaves (double-click to enlarge)

Resistance against British Ordinances to Ameliorate the Condition of the Slaves

The British Colonial Government, under political pressure from the Anti-Slavery Party in England, decreed after the abolition of the slave trade a series of Ordinances to improve the position of the slaves. These Ordinances were first enacted in Trinidad, not in other Crown Colonies like British Guiana, because Trinidad was deemed an “experimental colony”.
The slave-owners were alarmed and vehemently opposed these new laws, which sought to suppress the still ongoing smuggling and trade of slaves, and to secure an improvement in their civic status (i.e. they could bear witness in court, corporal punishment was banned or restricted, fixed work hours were set for them, and they could buy their own freedom).
What the slave-owners of course feared most was that their absolute authority over the slaves was undermined by these Ordinances, and in many ways they simply refused to comply with them. Many of them had experienced the slave uprisings in Haiti and Grenada, when a wholesale slaughter of European men, women and children had cost the lives of their families and friends. Also, because the plantation economy had begun just recently in Trinidad, many planters had not yet realized a return on their investment and were heavily indebted. And third, slavery had simply become a way of life over many generations, and the slave-owners could not imagine another way to exist.

The Personalities on both sides of the Movement for the Abolition of the Slave Trade and of Slavery

Pro Abolition: The British Anti-Slavery Movement of the late 18th century

In the 1780s, the antislavery society in England grew in numbers. Public meetings were held all over the country and support increased. William Wilberforce, compelled by his strong Christian faith, became the leader of a parliamentary campaign of the Committee for the Abolition of the Slave Trade. Thomas Clarkson took a leading part in the affairs of the Committee, and was given the responsibility for collecting information to support the abolition of the slave trade. As Wilberforce continued to bring the issue of the slave trade before Parliament, Clarkson continued to travel and write. Between them, Clarkson and Wilberforce were responsible for generating and sustaining a national movement which mobilised public opinion as never before.

In 1791, Wilberforce introduced a bill in the House of Commons to abolish the slave trade, saying “As we have been great in crime, let us be early in repentance”. The bill did not pass. England then went to war with Napoleon. Delay followed delay until at last the great day dame. Sixteen long years after Wilberforce had moved the first bill, in 1807, the English parliament voted to abolish the slave trade. As members cheered, William Wilberforce was seen with tears streaming down his face. 

William Wilberforce (24 August 1759 – 29 July 1833) British politician, philanthropist, and abolitionist who led the parliamentary campaign against the slave trade.

Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton, 1st Baronet (7 April 1786 – 19 February 1845) was a English Member of Parliament, brewer, abolitionist and social reformer. He took over as leader of the abolition movement in the British House of Commons after William Wilberforce retired in 1825. His efforts paid off in 1833 when slavery was officially abolished in the United Kingdom.

Page from the Journal of John Newton

John Newton (1725–1807) was a slave trader from 1750–54 but later became a priest and an abolitionist. In 1788, he published a pamphlet on the slave trade and in 1790 gave evidence before a Committee of the House of Commons. It was a sermon preached by Newton which led to Wilberforce being interested in the abolition movement. (Jackdaw No. 12)

Page from the Journal of Slave Trader John Newton (double-click to enlarge)

The Exhibition's entrance

The Slave Family

African-born slaves tended to marry fellow Africans, only 10% of African men had Creole wives. While family units headed by a male were quite common, the majority of the slave children lived with their mothers, especially in the large urban slave population.
The formation of stable families was not possible if slaves belonged to different owners, and was often interrupted by the high mortality rate in the slave population. Between 1816–1834, the slave population declined from 25,287 to 17,539 persons, or 32%, due to deaths outnumbering births.

An African musical instrument called a Marimba.

View of the Exhibition

View of exhibits on display

1830s: Daaga and Jonas Mohammed Bath

These are the stories of two Africans in the West Indies in the 1830s, who did not resign themselves to the system, but sought to take their fate into their own hands and make a change. One of them ended in tragedy, the other was eminently successful in bettering the lot of his fellow Africans.

Jonas Mohammed Bath – Mandingo Society Leader

In 1804 or 05, a Mandingo slave arrived in Trinidad who was a Muslim Imam in West Africa. He bought his freedom and began to form a community of Muslim ex-slaves who pooled their resources to purchase the freedom of fellow Mandingos.
In the 1830s, this group of about 140 lived in a community in Port of Spain, and were involved in money-lending, trade and planting. They owned cocoa estates and houses,  and even slaves – non-Mandingo Africans, just as they would have done in the Senegambia.
Bath’s community retained their African identity and Muslim religion, and they were determined to go back to Africa. They petitioned the Governor and the British government, but Bath died in 1838. But a few members of his community succeeded and were repatriated to Benin and the Senegambia. Most of them, however, remained in Port of Spain and were joined by other Mandingos and Muslims amongst the freed Africans who arrived at these shores.

Daaga – Freed African and Mutineer

After 1807, the British Navy enforced the law which abolished the shipping of Africans for the purpose of selling them as slaves on the Atlantic Ocean, by hunting down slavers on the high seas. Those surviving the capture were liberated and distributed amongst the British colonies as free labourers. Several of the freed African men were drafted into the West India Regiments and became often became outstanding soldiers.
An exception was Daaga, a remarkably tall man of 6 feet 6 inches in height, who stated that he had been an adopted prince of the Pawpaw tribe, and that he himself had captured many Yoruba slaves and sold to Portuguese slavers before a plot of treason had brought him to Trinidad as a freed African. He was given the name of Donald Stewart upon arrival in Trinidad, drafted into the 1st West India Regiment, trained as a soldier and stationed in St. Joseph.
On 8th June, 1837, Daaga became the leader of a mutiny amongst the African soldiers of the Regiment, setting houses and barracks on fire and singing African war songs. While Daaga himself was overwhelmed and detained, an armed group of mutineers were making for the East, where they met dispatches of the local militia. In a melee outside Arima, five mutineers were killed, six wounded, and three taken prisoners. The others fled.
Daaga, together with two other ringleaders, were tried and convicted to death by firing squad, a sentence that was carried out on 16th August, 1837.

Carting sugarcane on the Rose Hill Plantation Port of Spain in the 1820s. Edward Jackson, an Englishman, was the proprietor of this estate. It was situated in East Port of Spain. It is possible that this house was at the foot of Gloster Lodge Road, although it is also said that it stood at the top of Piccadilly Street overlooking Park Street. Jackson Place and Rose Hill are place names that remember the period.

Sir Thomas Picton

Lieutenant-General Sir Thomas Picton, Colonel Picton, as he was then, first British Governor of Trinidad, from 1797–1803, was to administer the island in the period immediately after the British conquest. The plantation economy, operated by slave labour, was was developing rapidly, to some extent against the inclination of the British Government, who wanted it to be a “model colony”. Colonel Picton, however, was strongly influenced by the French planter society of the day, in particular St.Hilaire Begorat who had been alarmed by both the slave uprisings in Haiti and other islands in the Caribbean, and by the fall of French Ancient Regime. In addition to this, the island being the recipient of thousands of immigrants, radicalised by the events in both the Caribbean at large and the Venezuelan mainland, made Trinidad a difficult place to govern. It was said that Picton ran the island in the manner in which he ran his regiment.
Under Picton’s successor, Colonel Thomas Hislop, harsh reprisals on a reputed slave insurrection were undertaken in 1805. Many slaves lost their lives, some slaves were executed, others were mutilated and deported, setting the tone for the slave society which was to last until Emancipation in 1838.

The Torture of Luisa Calderon Colonel Picton ordered the torture of Luisa Calderon, a young woman of Port of Spain, accused of larceny, at the Royal Gaol in Port of Spain.  This episode was an example of the medieval penal culture of the day, part of the Spanish laws which Picton under orders of Sir Ralph Abercromby, his superior officer, continued to uphold in the now British colony. At right, holding two keys, is Vallot the Gaoler. On his right is his slave, Porto Rico, who is executing the torture. One of the gentlemen on the left is St. Hilaire Begorrat, the chief magistrate at the time, a plantation and slave owner in the Diego Martin area. The presence of two members of the Illustrious Cabildo at the scene, the Spanish governing body at the time, indicates that this is government-condoned torture.

A Slave in Chains Illustration of an anti-slavery publication of 1827.

Thomas Clarkson (front) (28 March 1760 – 26 September 1846), abolitionist,  became a leading campaigner against the slave trade in the British Empire, with William Wilberforce (back).

Iron Ladle This utensil was used in the sugar factory to remove any solid objects like leaves, insects or other from the liquid molasses.

Voices against the Abolition of Slavery

Another voice, that of self-interest, was the voice of planters and merchants in the West Indies and in England, particularly in the port city of Liverpool. They held a important stake in the slave trade, and set themselves against its destruction.

Liverpool Members of Parliament (MPs), merchants and their anti-abolitionist supporters worked together to oppose the abolition of the slave trade. They presented their case on the basis of the damage which abolition would cause to the national and local economy. They also tried to present responses to the humanitarian arguments against the slave trade. Slavery, they argued, was not only an aspect of the natural order of things but it was also vital for the colonies.

They said that it brought wealth to Liverpool and ‘happiness to the slaves’. Such was the belief of local merchants and politicians in the slave trade that John Tarleton, MP for Seaford, spent over three hours in 1788 trying to convince the Prime Minister William Pitt (1759-1806) that the abolition of the slave trade would bring ‘total ruin’ to Liverpool. 

William Burnley, Trinidad’s first millionaire, an American planter with a British background, established Orange Grove estate in Trinidad in the early 19th century.  He was the largest slave owner on the island at the time of emancipation, and agitated strongly against the emancipation of the enslaved.

An anti-abolitionist cartoon, probably drawn by Richard Bridgens, which depicts the fate of the planter interest in the event of the emancipation of the enslaved. From the left, European importers would have to pay duties to the emancipated, and the African would be king (seated figure with orb in his hand), while with fiddle and drum, European woman (on balcony) would be seduced into loose and lascivious behaviour.

A title deed, signed by Sir Ralph Woodford, Bart., Governor of Trinidad 1813-1828, for lands in Diego Martin owned by St. Hilaire Begorrat. St. Hilaire Begorrat, a Frenchman from Martinique, played a very active part in the early administration of Trinidad. A land owner, who was reputed to have introduced the Otaheite cane into Trinidad, he virtually controlled the quarter of Diego Martin for most of his active life. As a slave owner, he was infamous for his cruelty, but he is also remembered for his support and indeed close attachment to slaves whom he encouraged to sing an early form of calypso. His principal henchman was Gros Jean, who is said to be among our earliest calypsonians. St. Hilaire Begorrat built a plantation house directly above a group of caves on the western foothills of his Diego Martin estate. Remembered by some of the older inhabitants as “Begorrat’s caves”, these are said to have been variously torture chambers, the site of his orgies, the haunting place of the spirits of the dead, but might well have been the holding bays for slaves smuggled illegally into Trinidad to be re-sold as contraband after the abolition of the slave trade in 1807.

Closeup of the Deed

Joseph Marryat, a British businessman with investments in Trinidad, represented the island’s planter and commercial interest unofficially in London, conveying the views and suggestions of the planters to the colonial office. The planters in Trinidad sought to prevent or to postpone the abolition of the slave trade, their argument being that Trinidad, unlike the older colonies such as Tobago, Barbados and Jamaica, had only very recently been established with a plantation-based economy (from 1783). Inasmuch as land had up until recently been granted to planters, the trade in slaves from Africa should be continued so as to allow them to realise a return on their sizeable investments.

A Proclamation regarding the registration of slaves during the Governorship of Sir Ralph Woodford in Trinidad.

Slave Returns from Tobago

Twenty-seven years after the abolition of the slave trade throughout the British Empire, the Emancipation of slaves was granted by the British government. It was decided that the sum of £ 20 million be paid to slave owners as a compensation for the loss of their property in human beings and for the dislocation that this would inevitably cause.
The money paid out to slave owners was viewed by them as grossly insufficient, especially in Trinidad, where planters had relatively recently commenced the cultivation of estates, the vast majority coming to the island from 1783. But no important person or group, not even the abolitionists, recommended compensating the slaves in such a manner that upon achieving freedom, they would be given something so as to re-commence their lives. 
Below are two returns from Tobago, where the number of former slaves on an estate and their estimated value in each class or division of labour was filled out and passed on to the authorities with the view of receiving money for the slaves freed (double-click to enlarge).

Exhibition case with a Tobago Slave Return and the Emancipation Cententary Booklet. The Freed Africans of the 1850s & 1860s

After the abolition of the slave trade in the British Empire in 1807, the trade continued in many other territories in the New World, namely the Spanish, French and Portuguese colonies and the United States. The British Navy patrolled the Atlantic and the Caribbean Sea and freed the African survivors
from slave ships. Some of them were brought to Trinidad and Tobago where they settled, and today, a  many Trinbagonians of African descent are in fact descended from these Freed Africans.

The National Museum's collection encompasses a collection of prints from the Illustrated London News, which tell the story and show the pitiful condition of the Africans rescued from slavers. The story is that in April 1857 — long after the slave trade and indeed slavery itself was abolished in the British Empire – a British naval vessel captured the slave ship "Zeldina" and brought it to Port Royal in Jamaica. On board were the 370 survivors of the approximately 500 Africans who had been boarded in Cabinda (Angola) approximately 46 days earlier. The London Illustrated News describes their condition as follows:

"The poor captives were in a wretched condition – all of them naked; and the greater part seemed to have been half starved. They were packed closely together, and covered with dirt and vermin . . . . The slave-schooner had two decks and between them the captives were packed in such a manner that they had scarcely room to move. During each day of the voyage they sat in a painful posture, 18 inches only being allowed for each to turn in . . . in a deck room of 30 feet in length . . . [they were] brought up in platoons once every day to get a small portion of fresh air . ." 

Here are the images:

Liberated Africans being held at Port Royal, Jamaica (1857, London Illustrated News)

A group of Africans rescued from the Zeldina (1857, London Illustrated News)

Drawing of how children were packed into the slaver (1857, London Illustrated News)

Drawing of children in the "sleeping position" aboard a slaver (1857, London Illustrated News)

The slaver "Zeldina" whence the Africans were rescued in 1857 (London Illustrated News)

An Eyewitness’ Account of Emancipation Day

Main Street, Scarborough, Tobago

Andrew Macpherson

Tobago Methodist Church Pembroke

Ann Kege

Family on the way to the market

Ann Wilhemina Darling

Anne Robinson

Entrance to King's Camp Government House Hill