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I have an extract from my Great Grandfather's diary that relates to the history of the Dill family of Bermuda. It starts with the arrival in Bermuda of two brothers, Lawrence and Gilbert Dill. Enjoy.
Before writing about the branch of the Dill family settled in Bermuda a few words as to the settlement and peopling of that place will tend to make clearer what is to follow about the family.
The Bermudas, or Somers Islands as they are sometimes called, were sighted and chartered by a Spanish navigator Juan Bermudez in 1515. The Spaniards, however, made no attempt at settlement.
In 1609 the “Sea Adventurer” flying the flag of Admiral Sir George Somers in charge of a colonizing squadron bound for Virginia was driven ashore on a reef off the Island and became a total loss. Immigrants and Ship’s company landed without casualty, remained ashore for nine months and then made their way to the Virginia Settlements, their original destination, in two pinnaces built on the Islands.
Settlement of the Islands was carried out during the next few years by a Chartered Company and in 1618 the Islands were surveyed and divided into eight parishes of 1250 acres each, and those were sub-divided into 50 shares of 25 acres each. Shares proportional to holdings of stocks in the Company were allotted to the adventurers and this survey and allotment forms the basis of the division of land in the Colony to this day.
The name Dill first occurs in the Colonial records some forty odd years after the settlement and as to their arrival here, I quote from family traditions which is to the following effect.
Two brothers, Gilbert Dill and Laurence Dill, were in a ship bound for Jamaica, then recently captured by the crew of the Commonwealth from Spain, the ship was either cast away on the reefs off Bermuda, or put in to that place en route, and the two brothers remained here.
It has been surmised that the two were under sentence of transportation to Jamaica, and this surmise is to some extent supported by two facts that among the earlier British Settlors of Jamaica were many political prisoners sent thither by the Commonwealth government, and also that during the Commonwealth’s rule in Bermuda, neither seems to have come into any prominence in the Colony, but that after the Restoration Laurence Dill took a fairly prominent place in local affairs.
About Gilbert Dill we know very little, in fact, his name is only once mentioned in the records, and that is as a member of the Grand Jury in 1656. It is probable that he either died without issue or moved on to some other Colony.
About Laurence Dill we know a good deal more; he is mentioned about 1664 as a witness for the Crown in the prosecution of certain “Quakers”, for brawling in Devonshire Parish Church during Divine Service. This brawling had a particular political significance also, as the Service was on a “day of fast and humiliation” appointed to be observed on the 30th. January, which is the anniversary of the martyrdom of King Charles I. This was the first time after the King’s execution that the anniversary had been in any way marked so these peasants kept their hats on. Dill remonstrated with them saying that it was not seemly to remain covered at the time of praying or prophesying, to which one of them replied “The prayers of the wicked are an abomination to the Lord”. I think for this recusancy each had an ear cropped.
Laurence later became a Member of the Colonial House of Assembly, and, later on, of the Council, and, I think, so continued until his death in 1691.
On the outbreak of the Dutch War he was appointed an examiner of ships approaching a section of the coast in the neighbourhood of his property. Later on, he is mentioned as being a leading agitator for the abrogation of the Charter of the Bermuda Company and, not a great while before his death, his name, and that of his eldest son, Abraham, appear amongst those who took the oath of Allegiance and Supremacy to William and Mary. In religion he seems to have been of the Church of England.
In the years succeeding 1662 he became at different times the purchaser of the freehold of six adjoining shares = 150 acres in Devonshire and Paget parishes and extending clear across the Island from North to South. He built or acquired with the land and occupied, a dwelling house (in his Will referred to as a “mansion house” as was customary at that period) in Devonshire, about a quarter of a mile from the ocean.
Some two months before his death, he executed his Will and thereby devised all his real estate to his eldest son, Abraham “and the heirs male of his body” and in default of such heirs to his second son, Joseph, and the heirs male of his body, and in default of such heirs to his third son (Samuel), his fourth son (Benjamin) and his fifth son (John) in successive Estates entailed in the male line.
We need only concern ourselves with the first two, as Abraham had male issue, and I can find no mention of the three younger sons in Colonial records. They probably moved to another Colony. The only two with whom we need concern ourselves are the eldest son, Abraham, the last of whose direct descendants died in 1895, and the second son, Joseph, whose descendants form the present family now living in Bermuda.
Laurence died in December 1691 and Abraham succeeded to the property. I have not been able to find a great deal about Abraham Dill in the Bermuda records. In his younger days he evidently followed the sea and, in his father’s lifetime, complaint by the Spanish authorities in the West Indies of his trading, which probably included a certain amount of pillaging, in what they claimed as waters in which they had monopolistic rights. This was not, however, regarded as an offence against English law, and no action seems to have been taken on the complaint. Later he was a Church warden of Devonshire Parish and one of a committee for rebuilding a portion of the parish Church, but he seems to have been a narrow minded Anglican, as, about the same period, his name appears among the subscribers to the building fund of the Presbyterian Church in Warwick, his subscription is expressed to have been given “from the great regard I have for those of “that persuasion”. He died about 1729 and under the entail established by the Will of Laurence Dill, was succeeded in the property by his eldest surviving son, Thomas.
A family tradition, in which I do not put much faith, states that Abraham’s widow, Elizabeth, reached the prodigious age of One hundred and twenty. Assessment lists of the parish show that she survived her husband a good many years but I do not believe she attained the age stated.
Another unverified family legend is that Thomas Dill had an elder brother who, during the lifetime of his father, met his death in the following manner. The house in which Abraham Dill lived, now known as “Devonshire House” had in front of it, where the verandah now stands, a square platform with steps leading up to it and surrounded by a parapet about waist high. On this parapet Abraham’s son, whose name I don’t think I have ever heard, was seated talking to a number of young people, amongst them a girl to whom he was betrothed, and in reply to some remark of his, this girl made as it to box his ears, he started back to avoid her playful blow, but in so doing overbalanced himself, fell backwards and broke his neck.
It is said that Thomas, the younger son, took the news of his brother’s death very philosophically, as, being apprenticed at that time to a shipwright, and hearing of the death of the heir apparent, he cast his adze away from him declaring that thereafter he would work no more.
Thomas Dill married Anne Love, the widow of James Love of the Island of St. Eustatius in the Dutch West Indies. Anne Love was originally Anne Spencer of a Cavalier family which had settled in Bermuda. James Love’s young widow returned to Bermuda accompanied by an infant daughter, Christiana Love, born in St. Eustatius in 1739. Mrs. Love not long after her arrival in Bermuda married Thomas Dill and some nineteen years later her daughter Christiana married John Dill, a grandson of Laurence’s second son, Joseph Dill, and mother and daughter thus became a connecting link between the elder and younger branches of the Dill family in Bermuda.
I have now in my possession the cradle of Christiana Love who was my great-great-grandmother, the family tradition is that no child rocked therein has ever died in infancy. I don’t know how far the tradition is borne out by fact.
I have also a child’s ring set with large and rather crudely cut emeralds and rubies given her by her god-father, the Governor of St. Eustatius.
There were two children of the marriage of Thomas Dill with the widow Love, a son named David and a daughter Anne, who married Dr. Henry Hinson, the second of four generations of medical men who all bore that name. The last of these died well within my recollections.
David Dill was for many years a schoolmaster and scrivener. He wrote a most beautiful hand and one or two records I have seen in his handwriting show that he was a master of his craft. In his later years, he was a J.P. in Devonshire Parish. During his tenure of the ancestral land, he barred the entail created by the Will of his great-grandfather Laurence, and conveyed the portion in Paget Parish to his brother-in-law, Hinson, a portion of this land is now, and has for many years past, been known as “Springfield”, how or when it got it, I do not know, but as it is the same as the name of the property near Ros-na-kil formerly held by the Irish branch of the family it seems worthy of note.
David Dill died in 1831 leaving a Will which was the subject of a good deal of litigation nearly half a century after his death. I shall refer to this later.
Some time prior to David Dill’s tenure of the property, as my father has told me, there is a legend about “Devonshire House” as the house on the property is now called. There was, as my father had the story, two Dill brothers, or as another family historian had it, a husband and wife, and whichever it was makes no difference to the yard, but it is said that each was crippled with rheumatism to such an extent that while one was upstairs and could not get down, the other was downstairs and could not get up, but a limited amount of social intercourse was maintained by their shaking hands with each other by means of their crutches.
David Dill had only one son, Laurence, who died in the lifetime of his father. I have never heard much about him, his name occurs in Jury lists in which he is described as a “Merchant”, and also in the Militia Roll of 1812. He married one Mary Harvey who survived him some years and bore him two children, William J.H. Dill who died of cholera in Kingston, Jamaica, married but without issue in 1851, and Sarah (Sally as she was always called) who died unmarried and intestate in 1895.
I’ve mentioned the litigation about the Will of David Dill; between the Will of his grand grandfather, Laurence, and his own, no devise of the property could, on account of the subsisting entail, take place, but this was, after the death of his son, barred by David who sometime after proceeded to draw his own Will, which as most lawyers agree is a very risky proceeding.
He first devised a life estate to his daughter Anne in the Dwelling House and also I think to two granddaughters Sallie Dill and Augustus Durham the use of certain rooms in the house for their joint lives, subject to these he devised the property to his grandson, William J.H. Dill, at that time a minor, and to this devise, he added these words:-
“if my said grandson shall die before attaining the age of twenty one years and without issue lawfully begotten then I devise my said land to my nephew Henry Josephus Hinson”.
William the grandson died twenty years after the testator having attained the age of twenty one but without issue. The question the Court had to decide was did the property pass to Dr. Hinson or not. For Hinson it was argued that the Will should not be read literally, that when the testator wrote “and” he meant “or” and that it was unlikely that the testator contemplated such an improbable event as his grandson dying under 21 and yet leaving issue. The Court, however, held otherwise and that the property vested in William on his attaining 21 and on his death without issue the freehold vested in Miss Sally as his heiress at law. Miss Sally shortly afterwards sold the property to Mr. T.D. Middleton and it is now owned by one Edward York.
Having disposed of the elder branch of the Dill family in Bermuda, let us now consider the branch, descended from Laurence Dill’s second son, Joseph, which still exists in the Colony.
To start with, we are rather embarrassed by the multitude of Joseph Dill’s with whom we have to deal. I find a Joseph Dill who was a member of the House of Assembly about 1708 and about a quarter of a century later I find another Joseph Dill, presumably his son, marry Mary Gilbert of “Orange Grove”, daughter and co-heiress with her sister, Martha, of Richard Gilbert, a privateersman who had amassed a good deal of money plundering Spaniards, whom we all regarded as fair game and lawful prey. But about the same period we also get a Joseph Dill from Bermuda settling in Charleston, South Carolina, and a branch of the family now narrowed to two married ladies and one spinster survives these. Who this Joseph Dill could have been I am not sure but I think he must have been a younger son of the elder branch.
Anyhow, the Joseph Dill who married Mary Gilbert was my grant-great-grant-grandfather and after his time there is more plain-sailing.
Like his father-in-law Mr. Gilbert, Joseph Dill followed the sea and on occasion did some privateering, several “letters of marque and reprisal” having been issued in respect of armed vessels, mostly sloop rigged, under his command, the names of two that I remember were the “Sally” and the “Jolly Bacchus”.
In his later years, he was a member of the House of Assembly and Justice of the Peace. He had three sons, Richard, John and Joseph, the first two both Master Mariners and they were both of them, my grand-great-grandfathers as the son of one (Thomas) and a daughter of the other (Martha) intermarried.
The third son, Joseph, was one of the few of the family who did not go to sea for a living, was a silversmith by trade, married a Miss Stones of Pembroke parish and founded a branch of the family resident in that parish which died out early in this century on the death of the survivor of two elderly spinster ladies.
Joseph Dill lived all his life at Orange Grove and was I think buried in the Gilbert private cemetery on the property. His death took place I think in the late 1780's.
His eldest son, Richard Dill, did not survive his father very long, his wife was of the Peniston family, and he had a large family. His eldest son was Richard Gilbert Dill who was a master shipwright and several Bermuda sloops were built after his design, notably the brig “Southampton” and “Frances Russell” and the Brigantine “Golden Rule”.
But I have gone ahead rather fast as I was writing of his father Richard. He also followed the sea and occupied an estate in Paget Parish now known as “Sunnylands” but whether as freeholder or tenant I am not sure. He was, so the tradition runs, most devoted to his wife and at the time of her death, people who attended her funeral were scandalized at the calm, almost callous, fashion in which he superintended all the arrangements, directing people where they could tie their horses etc. but after the obsequies were over, it was discovered that the poor man had gone completely off his head, he never recovered his reason, and soon followed his beloved spouse.
His son, Richard Gilbert Dill, whom I mentioned above, succeeded to Orange Grove, having the whole property, his great Aunt Martha Gilbert - who lived to a great age, having devised him her half share in the property. In addition to his reputation as a shipwright, he was also a Captain of Colonial Militia and I have now in my possession his gorget and epaulettes. He died at a very advanced age in 1849. He was for many years a member of the House of Assembly.
My father could remember him well and always referred to him as “Uncle Dill” or sometimes as “Uncle Buckles” the latter designation arising, I believe, from the size of the shoe buckles he was in the habit of wearing. Several stories are told of him, amongst others one that when he was on parade with his Company of Militia, he suddenly gave the unexpected order “Tree yourselves, Gentlemen, Colonel Jones’ Bull is loose”.
He married Maria Hill and his children were all daughters, Polly, Eliza, Sally, Diana and Fanny, the last named of whom was the only one to marry. Miss Polly and the married sister, Mrs. Tynes died well within my memory.
Before writing about the descendants of Richard Dill’s second son, Thomas, my great-grandfather, I will go back a generation and deal with Joseph’s second son John, mentioned five pages back. An intermarriage, also mentioned on the same page, took place between the two branches.
John Dill married Christiana Love (1742-1820) daughter of Anne Love (born Spencer), widow of James Love, and who married Thomas Dill of the elder branch of the family.
They had three sons, James Love Dill, m. Anne Vaughan and died without issue. Joseph John Dill who m. Frances Russell Woods and had three sons and two daughters, and a son Henry who died unmarried. John and Christiana Dill had daughters who married respectively into the Hill, Harriott and Watlington families but their third daughter, Martha, married her first cousin, Thomas Dill, my great-grandfather, in 1802.
Their eldest son, Richard John Dill, named after his two grandfathers, was born in the following year and a second son, Thomas Melville Dill, my grandfather on the 5th. November 1805, and touching his birth, the following story is told in the family.
Martha Dill, his mother, is said to have been, as was her mother, Christiana Love, before her, endowed to some extent with second sight. Her husband, Thomas Dill, had a few weeks before she was brought to bed sailed for a West Indian port in a vessel which he commanded. Shortly after being delivered of my grandfather, she was lying very exhausted and apparently only partly conscious, when she suddenly exclaimed very clearly “I have just seen my husband, all dripping wet”. Neither the vessel nor any of the ship’s company were ever heard of after they left Bermuda and it has always been supposed that Thomas Dill met his death on the night that his second son, Thomas Melville Dill, was born.
About Thomas Dill, I know very little save that he was a master mariner, a freemason and master of Atlantic Phoenix Lodge in 1804, an office which I had the honour of holding just a century later, and that he about the time he married, purchased from Thomas A. Darrell, a property in Devonshire, comprising a district now known as Dillsdale and a portion of which, now known as “Jolie Brise” is in the possession of my son, Thomas Newbold Dill.
I have Thomas Dill’s portrait in my possession which shows him as a rather long visaged gentleman in blue coat, brass buttons and white stock, with his hair in a queue and a smirk on his face.
Before considering our surviving branch of the family, it will, I think, be convenient to deal with the other branches which have been extinct; and I will first take the descendants of John and Christiana Love Dill. As I mentioned at the foot of p.27, Joseph John Dill married Frances Russell Wood, a daughter of Mr. Richard Wood of “Woodlands” Pembroke parish, a very enterprising Bermuda merchant. Joseph J. Dill, as he was always known as, was originally a writer in his employ and afterwards became his son-in-law and a junior partner. Mr. Wood was the leading spirit in forming a combination of Bermuda Merchants, about the end of the 18th. century, with a view to fighting American traders in business between the West Indies and Canadian and Maritime Provincial ports. This combination was known as “The Patriotic Company” and was represented in different ports as follows:
Quebec : Jeremiah Leacraft & Co.
St. John’s Newfoundland : John Dunscombe.
Halifax, N.S. : Saltus and Wainwright
Bermuda : Wood and Dill
Barbados : S.P. Musson, Son & Co.
Grenada : Wood and Dill
Trinidad : J.C. Newbold and Demerara Adolphus Perot.
What is very remarkable that the head of each of these firms was a native of Bermuda. Joseph J. Dill for the most part of his active business life handled the Grenada business. I have a letter from him in which he mentions that his brother Jimmy (James Love) had been captured by the French and taken to Fort Royal, Martinique and that he proposed to go over in a cartel under flag of truce to arrange about his exchange. His latter years he spent in Bermuda at “Pembroke Hall” dying there in 1848.
He had three sons and two daughters. The two elder sons carried on the Grenada business, their names were Lucius and Joseph and both died comparatively young and unmarried, as did also his youngest son Richard, who died in Bermuda in 1867. The pace of life in the West Indies was pretty rapid.
Of the two daughters, Margaret the elder died in the 1870's unmarried, the younger Frances Russell Dill married shortly after her sister’s death Thomas S. Reid, a worthy Scotsman from Fraserburgh, Aberdeenshire who, contrary to the family’s expectation made her an excellent husband and by his care materially increased her income which was already considerable. He died in 1907 and she survived until 1913 devising Pembroke Hall to me but leaving most of her fortune for the endowment of the Bermuda Cathedral and the Hospital.
Henry, the youngest son of John and Christiana Love Dill died unmarried during the second decade of the 19th. century.
Now to deal with the male children of Richard Dill, whose lines also have become extinct. Next to my great-grandfather Thomas was a son Joseph (not to be mixed up with his cousin Joseph J.). He also, almost needless to say, followed the sea. About the end of the 18th. and beginning of the 19th. century, he was a prisoner of war in the hands of the French at Fort St. Nicholas, Marseilles, and, strangely enough, I was stationed there for a short time in 1917. It is stated that the daughter of his Commandant of the Fort cast a favouring eye upon him and aided him in his escape presenting him with a ring which is still in possession of some relatives of the girl in Bermuda to whom he was engaged, Mary Ann Cox, and whom he married after his return. They had no children. He, at the time of his death in 1834, was a member of the House of Assembly and was possessed of lands in Devonshire known as “Savages” bounded on one side by “Orange Grove” in possession of his eldest brother, Richard Gilbert Dill. I have Joseph’s portrait in my possession, a plainer looking man and more pallid than his brother Thomas. Tho’ doubtless an able mariner, he seems to have had a problem spelling, as in a Codicil to his Will which was evidently self drawn, he devises a small piece of property “to my nephew, Thomas Melville Dill (my grandfather) “and his ears”.
The youngest son of Richard Dill was Benjamin who married and died some time before 1820, leaving a daughter Frances Esther Dill, who never married and died well within my recollection about 1893.
That disposes of all collateral branches and leaves me to deal with our more immediate family for three generations back.
Richard John Dill, lived in Bermuda and, an exception to the rule, stayed ashore in the employ of Wood and Dill, in whose employ his younger brother, Thomas Melville Dill, my grandfather, also was first as mate and afterwards as master. In 1834 the two brothers, Richard John (he was always called John) and Thomas, purchased, whilst she was still on the stocks of her builder, the brigantine “Otter”. T.M. Dill commanded her and she was worked with fair success for the next eight years, voyaging between the West Indies and the ports of Charlotte, Baltimore, Halifax and St. John’s Newfoundland.
On two occasions she got advantageous charters as a transport for troops and it was on one of these occasions that Captain T.M. Dill met a subaltern of artillery named Marcus Dill. He could at that time trace any relationship. In 1843 Captain Dill remained in Bermuda to superintend the fitting up of another vessel the “Penguin” brigantine which he and his wife’s uncle, Captain Newbold had recently purchased, and sent the “Otter” on a voyage to Halifax. Richard John Dill went as supercargo, on the voyage he fell overboard, he was picked up by the ship’s boat but died of heart failure after he was back on board. He had married Susannah Robinson and left two daughters and a son surviving. The daughters, Susan Dill (1837-1871 died unmarried, Frances Robinson Dill (my “Aunt Fanny”) (1840-1912) married G.S. Foggo of Belhaven, Devonshire, was left a very young widow. She was my godmother and always a great friend to both my wife and myself. Except for my parents I always felt closer to her than anyone else.
The son, named after his father, Richard John Dill (1843-1867) went into Dill Wood & Co.’s (as the firm was now called) office in Grenada with his cousin, Lucius, got fever there and died on the voyage to Bermuda, the third in direct succession in his family to be buried at sea.
My grandfather in 1836, two years after he took command of the “Otter” married Harriet Valk Smith, only daughter of George and Mary Smith, whose maiden name was Newbold. George Smith was, I think, a South Carolinian by birth but commanded a Bermuda ship. He died in his daughters’ infancy and she was brought up by her widowed mother in Newbold Place, where she now lives. My father, Thomas Newbold Smith was born 6th. November 1837 and a second son, George, 19th. April 1840.
Captain T.M. Dill, after his brother’s death, sold the “Otter” and continued in the “Penguin”. He had to a great extent, the responsibility of both families on him, and adverting for a moment to the psychic faculty which every descendant of Christiana Love Dill is supposed to have, shortly before his brother’s death, he dreamed that he had five children and within a few weeks he had his own two and his brother’s three to look after. If a coincidence, it was remarkable enough.
Captain Dill continued in charge of the “Penguin” doing pretty much the same work as in the “Otter”, but with an occasional voyage to London when cargo offered, until the year 1852, when he left her to take command of the newly launched clipper barque “Sir George F. Seymour”, she was mainly employed in the trade between the Port of London and the West Indies. Captain Dill had a fourth share in her, it was a good time to own ships, the Crimean War broke out not long after and freights soared, the “Seymour” about that time obtained an advantageous charter for Constantinople. In the midst of this Captain Dill and his wife, more especially, received a terrific blow from the death (16th. November 1856) of their younger son, George, a promising boy of 16 who died of Yellow Fever. I don’t think my grandmother ever fully recovered.
In 1860, Captain Dill and others built the barque “Cedrine” somewhat larger than the “Seymour” and he relinquished the command of the latter vessel for her, but his luck was out, a paying charter was secured for the “Cedrine” to transport some 200 convicts from Bermuda to Portsmouth. She made a very rapid maiden voyage to the Channel, and there in very thick weather she went ashore in Briglistone Bay, Isle of Wight, and became a total loss, which was not altogether covered by insurance.
Apropos of the loss of the “Cedrine” the following rather curious tale is told. My grandfather had for some years been trying to arrange for the purchase of a property, known as “Roseneath” in Bermuda. Negotiations had been under way for some years but the title was complicated and not rendered simpler by the owners, Jennings, having changed their names to Windt, and it was not until 1857 that the deeds finally passed. The land was covered with cedar and the “Cedrine” was built entirely from the timber from this land. Old wise ears shook their heads saying that the land was unlucky, but Captain Dill persisted, and, when the barque was lost on her maiden voyage, the wise old birds all said “I told you so”. Whether he believed them or not, the fact remains that when he built his next maritime venture, the barque “Lady Milne” he would not allow a stick from the Roseneath property to be put into her.
In 1864 T.M. Dill and his partners, T. Newbold and J.H. Trimingham launched the “Lady Milne” and three or four very successful voyages in the London - West Indies route were made.
In the Spring of 1866, she cleared from Bermuda for St. Vincent and there loaded sugar for London. It was to be my grandfather’s last voyage in command. He was in his 61st. year, was a Member of the Legislature, his wife was not strong and husband determined to stay ashore. So anxious was he about ---- Dill’s health that he wrote my father from St. Vincent that unless the steam packet brought better news of her, he would let Darrell, his mate, take the barque to London, and himself return to Bermuda. The mail, however, brought the assuring news and he remained in the ship. The next letter from him, posted in London, had been written aboard the “Lady Milne” when she was being towed up the Thames to the West India Docks, in it he writes “the River Pilot has just come aboard and tells me that there are some cases of cholera around about the Docks, but don’t be alarmed, I shall take every care of myself. “ Yet a few days later, he took the disease and died 29th. August 1866. He lies buried in the Tower Hamlets Cemetery. My father, Thomas Newbold Dill, (1837 - 1910) was educated in Bermuda and at Hobart College, Geneva, New York State, in his boyhood he made several voyages with his father in the “Penguin” and “Seymour” to London, Halifax, the West Indies, New York and Baltimore. He was a clerk and accountant for some years with Mr. James H. Trimingham who was so much associated in shipping ventures with Captain Dill.
After his father’s death, he devoted himself a great deal to the public affairs of the Colony. On 6th. December 1866 he married my mother, Mary Lea Smith (1847 - 1930) daughter of a Bermuda merchant - doing business in Barbados at the time of her birth. I was their only son born in 1876. My father was very active in public affairs, J.P. Member of the Assembly and later of the Council, Assistant Justice of the Court of General Assize, and for five years Mayor of Hamilton.
Before he was sixty years old, he was stricken with a creeping paralysis under which first his physical and later his mental faculties became gradually dormant. He died on Good Friday (25th. march) 1910, having lived to see me married and one grand-daughter and three grand-sons, Tommy, Bayard and Laurence.
My mother survived him for just over twenty years, tho’ never after middle life, very strong. She remained alert and active until the day before her departure. She lived to see two great grandchildren my daughter Ruth’s two children. She departed this life 9th. May 1930.
Now just a word about myself - born 23.12. 86, m. 15.10.02.
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