Smalls in search of fortune

by CHARLES HARDING

SOMETIME AFTER the abolition of slavery, mid-19th century, two brothers from St Joseph with the surname 'Small' sailed from Barbados for Demerara in search of fortune, and perhaps fame, in the sprawling English-speaking South American country.

Although it is believed that they joined other West Indians prospecting for gold and diamonds in British Guiana's mineral-rich interior, there is a more recent school of thought that the two brothers might have responded to the British invitation to planters in Barbados to relocate and help cultivate and develop the South American country finally captured from the Dutch in 1815.

While little is known of their economic fortunes, it is certain that the two brothers married two Amerindian sisters and begat generations that have been contributing meaningfully to the social, cultural and economic development of Barbados and Guyana, North America, Europe, India and Puerto Rico.

A direct line of one of those Small brothers relocated from Georgetown to Barbados in the early 1950s, about 100 years after the two brothers settled in British Guiana, and that branch of the Small clan, three generations later, is still contributing to this country's socio-economic fortunes.

The Small brothers from St Joseph are only two of the several thousand Barbadians and Guyanese who have been moving to and from these two CARICOM countries, establishing bloodlines in a relationship that dates back to the early 18th century, a time when what is now the Cooperative Republic of Guyana was a Dutch Colony known as Dutch Guiana.

Slain Political Activist, Guyanese Dr Walter Rodney, in his essay on the movement of Barbadians to Guyana, identified three waves of immigration between 1825 and 1928 to British Guiana.

But Barbadians have been relocating to that country from as early as the 16th century when the earliest Portuguese and Dutch settlers occupied the small island of Fort Kyk-over-al, situated off Kartabu, at the confluence of the Cuyuni and Mazaruni Rivers.

Kyk-over-al, meaning "see over all", has been so named because it offers, from its position, an uninterrupted view of the Cuyuni, Mazaruni and Essequibo Rivers.

One anthropologist, Tikwis Begbie, an Australian, explains there are also ancestors associated with the Dutch West India Company or connected to the 1739 invitation that led many settlers from Barbados, Antigua and other West Indian islands, to establish themselves in the colonies of Berbice, Demerara and Essequibo, then under Dutch control.

It is also believed, according to available records, that more slaves were traded between Barbados and Guyana than elsewhere in the Caribbean, including St Vincent and Antigua, since more planters and Bridgetown merchants emigrated from this country to Demerara than to other Caribbean countries during the pre-emancipation era.

Alleyne, Archer, Austin, Barnes, Barnett, Bascom, Beckles, Blair, Bovell, Campbell, Clarke, Cox, Douglas, Dowding, Drayton, Gill, Grant, Griffith, Hazlewood, King, Leacock, Murray, Nurse and Pollard; Sealy, Smith, Storey, Thomas, Thornhill; Walcott, Walker, Williams, Winter and Young are among the names of those emigrating from Barbados, mainly planters and merchants, to Guyana from as early as the 18th and 19th centuries.

The planters and merchants travelled with their slaves, a number of whom earned their freedom in British Guiana before emancipations in 1838. Their surnames are still common in both Barbados and Guyana.

Others relocating from Barbados to Dutch and later British Guiana were British civil servants as well as Anglican clergy on transfer from Bridgetown to Georgetown, and those whose emigration resulted from marriages solemnised at Anglican churches in Barbados.

The Firebrace family is an interesting study of the movement of Barbadians to Guyana in those early years.

Firebrace was a dominant name in Barbados, beginning with that of John Firebrace, who was a merchant in Bridgetown (he died in 1693), and continued with William Firebrace, also a city merchant, who shut shop and relocated to Guyana while it was still a Dutch colony in the closing years of the 18th century.

According to family and other "official" records at the Barbados Museum, the name William Firebrace, including William Newton Firebrace, an indentured male born in St Michael on December 8, 1767, has been repeated several times during the 18th century.

One 'William Newton' was sold in Georgetown on October 21, 1805, and a William Newton Firebrace, listed as the son of William Firebrace of Barbados, became chief justice of Demerara.

Part 2 will be published in the MIDWEEK NATION.

* Charles Harding, a veteran Caribbean journalist, was born in Barbados of Barbadian and Guyanese parentage.

He was a founding member of THE NATION Publishing Company Limited.