Some of the wider changes that have occurred across the island are mirrored in the land. There is no trace of Waterland Hall, the great sugar plantation from which Plumgrove was carved. Because real estate is now more valuable than cane land, its endless fields of sugar cane have largely been replaced by residential districts. The plantation, too, is a different place. Within the span of a few decades, most of its acreage has been converted from the cultivation of sugar to a modern housing development built for middle-income Barbadians; the little wooden houses that once perched so precariously on their coral blocks have now been replaced by sturdy stone dwellings.
Instead of a sleepy backwater, the modern Plumgrove is never silent. Indeed, no property in contemporary Barbados could ever be. The land hums with incessant activity: engines starting, tractors rolling, nails hitting plywood as houses are being constructed. This perpetual babble almost overwhelms the perennial soundtrack of the plantation: the strangely soothing and sad noise of the cane. Sitting here now—with cane behind me and the development in front of me, the main road and its busy stream of cars just out of sight—Plumgrove’s great house still provides the perfect vantage point to feel both the rural isolation of the plantation and the busyness of modern Barbadian life. The plantation house is fated to be converted to condominiums, but perhaps, however sad, its demolition is fitting: a way of finally laying the ghost of the plantation system to rest.
So today, I return to Plumgrove, the focus of some of my earliest, most vivid memories: being enfolded in my grandmother’s warm and perfumed arms, eating roast pork and plantain round the large wooden dining table, and at night looking out of the windows at the rustling cane, which swayed like an army of stick-like shadows against the starlit night.
I can never simply regard this place casually. For me, this land is haunted. It is a haven for restless souls for whom not even death has provided any respite. These spectres disturb the air, waiting for me to face and name them, as all our ghosts do. Every time I visit it, Plumgrove catches my heart so intensely that I’m left dizzy by the force of emotion. The house and the land that surrounds it are peopled with memories that are so clear that they disturb my sense of reality. I am immediately carried back to my childhood self: jumping from hot paving stones onto cool green grass, chasing my brother and sister around the garden, or hiding behind gigantic tamarind trees, trying to catch fireflies in the starlit Caribbean night.
Plumgrove has been for me a place of refuge and a place of profound sadness. It has always been central to the mythology of my maternal family, the Ashbys; but it is also, I now see, a place of loss and death and endings. When I was a child this place was a strange and wonderful playground; as an adult, I can almost taste the aura of unhappiness that surrounds it. I can sense the spirits of my ancestors here—George Ashby, Robert Cooper, Mary Anne, John Stephen, and all the names I will never know—who strived and suffered on this island. So the plantation house our family still owns stands as a monument to things lost: not just my youth, my sense of belonging, my Caribbean self, but also my predecessors, their hopes, dreams, and despair. When I visit Plumgrove I am assailed by existential questions. Where do I belong? Who am I? And I realize that the sights and sounds and smells of this place have permeated my thoughts and shaped my personality in ways that will last a lifetime—just as my ancestors’ plantation experiences did theirs.
If George Ashby’s story began with a journey, it would end with the eternal enigma that is arrival. Every migration—voluntary or forced—is a dangerous gamble, initiating a series of events that cannot be anticipated or even fully understood. When he embarked for the New World in the seventeenth century, no one, least of all George Ashby himself, could have anticipated how his descendants would mutate and multiply, spreading virtually across the globe. In an era when we are undergoing our own great migration, with millions of people on the move in search of opportunity, perhaps we can learn something from the past. Somewhere in all of our family stories is a “George Ashby,” and we are all the descendants of migrants—those resilient souls making the best of history’s terrible twists of fate, or those brave opportunists taking a chance on the future and striking out to forge a life for themselves in a new world.
Notes
B. ARCH. BARBADOS ARCHIVES, BLACK ROCK, BRIDGETOWN, BARBADOS
BDA BARBADOS ARCHIVES
JBHMS JOURNAL OF THE BARBADOS MUSEUM AND HISTORICAL SOCIETY
PRO PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE, KEW, LONDON
CHAPTER 1
1 the late 1630s: There is no record of George Ashby’s outward journey, so this is an approximate date only, calculated on the basis of land sale patterns.
2 “a will-o’-the-wisp”: Bridenbaugh and Bridenbaugh 1972: 18.
3 “so momentous a development”: Arciniegas 2004: 3.
4 “wedded to their native Soile”: Bridenbaugh 1968: 396.
5 “non-separating puritans”: Bridenbaugh 1968: 401.
6 “the typical Sunday service”: Bridenbaugh 1968: 402.
7 “Get thee out of thy country”: Genesis 12:1–2, quoted in Bridenbaugh 1968: 402
8 “If hee have any graine”: Smith 2006: vol. 2, 125.
9 “Thus was the king’s coffers”: Hill 1972: 29.
10 “probably amongst the most terrible years”: Peter Bowden, quoted in Thirske 1967: 621.
11 “last scene of my life”: Ligon 1657: i.
12 “pearls and other such riches”: This and the following extracts from Richard Eden are quoted in Sale 1992: 254.
13 “a succulent maiden”: Sale 1992: 258.
14 “Licence my roving hands”: Donne, Elegie XIX “To His Mistress Going to Bed,” quoted in Sale 1992: 258.
15 “He wondered that your lordship”: Shakespeare, Two Gentlemen of Verona, I.ii.4–9, quoted in Davis 1887: 20.
16 “the Wild West”: Dunn 1972: 9.
17 “provinces of El Dorado”: Naipaul 1970: 93.
18 “to educate the public”: Bridenbaugh 1968: 400.
19 “Bee not too much in love with that countrie”: Richard Eburne, quoted in Bridenbaugh 1968: 401. 16 “varnishing their owne actions”: Bridenbaugh 1968: 403.
20 “The West Indian Colonist of the Seventeenth Century”: Jaeffreson 1878: 35.
21 “Before you come be careful to be strongly instructed”: Anderson 1991: 53.
22 “having tasted much of God’s mercy”: Bridenbaugh 1968: 6.
CHAPTER 2
1 “in a very small room”: Coad, quoted in Bridenbaugh and Bridenbaugh 1972: 113.
2 “operation and the several faces that watery Element puts on”: Ligon 1657: 1.
3 “a prosperous gale”: Colt, quoted in Harlow 1925: 50.
4 “The living fed upon the dead”: Bridenbaugh 1968: 8.
5 “Our ship was so pestered”: Bridenbaugh 1968: 8.
6 “had well nigh putt an end to this my Journall”: Colt, quoted in Harlow 1925: 78.
7 “Death is better”: Colt, quoted in Harlow 1925: 79.
8 “a long sleeved shirt”: Colt, quoted in Harlow 1925: 99.
9 “a competency”: Anderson 1991: 123.
10 “sometimes rough with mighty mountains”: Richard Mather, quoted in Anderson 1991: 80.
11 “our greatest bullocks”: Colt, quoted in Harlow 1925: 107.
12 “One might almost believe that the puny sun”: W.B.W. 1789: 131.
13 “Surely the Journey is as great”: Colt, quoted in Harlow 1925: 62.
14 “There is no place so void and empty”: Ligon 1657: 28.
15 “sixpence throwne down”: Colt, quoted in Harlow 1925: 63.
16 “the woman with childe”: Colt, quoted in Harlow 1925: 64.
17 “more healthful than any of hir neighbours”: Colt, quoted in Harlow 1924: 43.
18 “The nearer we came”: Ligon 1657: 30.
19 “Their main oversight”: Ligon 1657: 37.
20 “Sir William Tufton had Severe Measure”: Davis 1887: 53.
CHAPTER 3
&nb
sp; 1 “growne over with trees”: Father Andrew White, quoted in Gragg 2003: 14.
2 “the woods were so thick”: Ligon 1657: 37.
3 “It was as if the whole Atlantic ocean”: W.B.W. 1789: 132.
4 Richard Ligon was beguiled by the plants: Ligon 1657: 107.
5 “the Prince of all fruits”: Gragg 2003: 20.
6 “find you sleeping”: Ligon 1657: 62.
7 “a scorching island”: Gragg 2003: 16.
8 “as ordinary as taverns and tippling houses”: Gately 2001: 48.
9 “all these spectacles”: Paul Hentzner, quoted in Gately 2001: 47.
10 “In our time the use of tobacco”: Francis Bacon, quoted in Gately 2001: 50.
11 “very ill-conditioned”: John Winthrop, quoted in Beckles 1990: 44.
12 “Anyone who has seen them bent double”: Davies 1666: 180.
13 When a shipload of Frenchmen: Pares 1960: 18.
14 “a plantation in this place is worth nothing”: Beckles 1996: 574.
15 “21 lashes on the bare back”: Beckles 1990: 41.
16 “great damage to their master”: Beckles 1990: 44.
17 “sell their servants to one another”: Ligon 1657: 59.
18 “the urge to try something noble”: This and the following extracts come from von Uchteritz 1969: 91–94.
19 “Truly I have seen such cruelty”: Ligon 1657: 51.
20 “The masters are obliged to support them”: Biet, quoted in Handler 1967: 66. 48 “there hardly passes a year but they make one or two irruptions”: Charles de Rochefort, quoted in Bridenbaugh and Bridenbaugh 1972: 172.
21 “agreeable, and not repugnant unto reason”: Phillips 1990: 423.
22 “the twentieth part of all profits”: Phillips 1990: 423.
23 “a drunken, vindictive tyrant”: Gragg 1996–97: 4.
24 “such great drunkards”: Thomas Verney, quoted in Gragg 2003: 71.
25 “They settle their differences by fist fighting”: Biet, quoted in Handler 1967: 68.
26 “tough guys”: Pares 1960: 15.
27 “This Island is the Dunghill”: Henry Whistler, quoted in Firth 1900: 146.
28 “it is enough to believe that there is a God”: Captain Holdip, quoted in Gragg 2003: 80.
29 “who live in pride, drunkenesse”: Rous 1656: 1–8.
30 “The hard labour and want of victuals”: Ligon 1657: 60.
31 “new men, for few or none of them that first set foot there”: Ligon 1657: 54.
32 “girls for sale”: Pares 1960: 6.
33 “The soldiers of the London garrison visited various brothels”: Gragg 2003: 167.
34 “a Baud brought ouer puts on a demur comportment”: Whistler 1900: 146.
35 “roofs so low, as for the most part”: Ligon 1657: 59.
36 “ill dyet they keep, and drinking”: Ligon 1657: 31.
37 “We have felt his heavy hand in wrath”: Richard Vines, quoted in Puckrein 1984: 192.
38 “Their sufferings being grown to a great height”: Ligon 1657: 66.
CHAPTER 4
1 “the production of sugar is immense in this province”: Marco Polo, quoted in Aykroyd 1967: 11.
2 “They died like fish in a bucket”: Aykroyd 1967: 20.
3 “People the colour of the very night”: Schwartz 2004: 37.
4 “At the time we landed on this island”: This and the following extract from Ligon 1657: 119–20.
5 “tyrant and murderer; and a public and implacable enemy”: This and the following extracts from historylearningsite.co.uk/CharlesI_execution.htm.
6 with cries of “God and the Cause!”: Davis 1887: 113.
7 “They did not see why they should not repair their fortunes”: Davis 1887: 150.
8 “that devout Zealot of the deeds of the devil”: Davis 1887: 147.
9 “the profits of the said Estates to be disposed of by his Lordship”: Davis 1887: 150.
10 “There must have been mounting in hot haste”: Davis 1887: 209.
11 “Despite those Loose and scandalous papers with much Industry”: Davis 1887: 147.
CHAPTER 5
1 “wee shall be soe thinned of Christian people”: Parker 2011: 147.
2 “If any Africans were carried away”: Aykroyd 1967: 18.
3 “the men are very well timbered”: This and the next extract from Ligon 1657: 73.
4 “intrinsically treacherous”: These extracts from Ligon 1657: 75.
5 “go onto the next life without its head”: Ligon 1657: 73.
6 “a new scale and intensity”: Eltis, quoted in Beckles 2002: 13.
7 “the most magnificent drama”: DuBois, quoted in Rediker 1997: 5.
8 “In the meanwhile, a burning Iron”: William Bosman, quoted in Hartman 2007: 80.
9 “hold anything good in store for them”: Paul Isert, quoted in Hartman 2007: 114.
10 “instruments of woe”: Rediker 1997: 154.
11 “all the while oppressed and weighed down by grief”: This and the following extracts from Equiano 1797: 53–54.
12 “carried to these white people’s country”: Equiano 1797: 57.
CHAPTER 6
1 “the most important surviving piece of legislation”: Dunn 1972: 239.
2 “a heathenish, brutish, uncertain and dangerous”: Marshall 2009.
3 “liberal Code”: Franklin Knight, quoted in Beckles 2002: 64.
4 “Whereas the Plantations and Estates of this Island”: Phillips 1990: 427.
5 “many enormities were committed”: Marshall 2009.
6 “straight from the ship like horses at a market”: Ligon 1657: 68.
7 “moment of rupture”: Rediker 1997: 153.
8 “One dreadful shriek assaults”: James Field Stanfield, quoted in Rediker 1997: 153.
9 “I can assure you”: John Pinney, quoted in Pares 1950: 121.
10 “It is unnecessary I flatter myself”: John Pinney, quoted in Pares 1950: 121.
11 “Slaves differed from other human beings”: Patterson 1982: 5.
12 “were cannibals who were capturing them”: Equiano 1791: 54.
13 “apt to die out of pure grief”: This and the following extract from Davies 1666: 20.
14 “The English take very little care of their slaves”: Labat 1957: 168.
CHAPTER 7
1 “was accompanied to his ship”: Handler 1967: 69.
2 “seasoned with sweet Herbs finely minc’d”: Ligon 1657: 56.
3 “the richest and most splendid of all early West Indian Grandees”: Craton 1991: 330.
4 “excellent Juice is of much more importance”: Tryon 2009: 94.
5 “the more inconsiderable of the Inhabitants”: Davies 1666: 198.
6 “the nursery for planting other places”: Bridenbaugh 1968: 101.
7 “They are a perfect medley or hotch potch”: Quoted in Watson 1997: 91.
8 “Carolina opened possibilities”: Dunn 1972: 114.
9 “Barbados played a unique role”: Hottens 1982: iv.
CHAPTER 8
1 “a notably lethal crossroads”: D. Phillip Morgan in Nussbaum 2003: 58.
2 “A few hours’ command of the sea”: Pares 1950: 45.
3 “Suerly the Deuill”: Colt 1925: 73.
4 “international cockpit”: Arciniegas 2004: 216.
5 the Foreign Legion of the Caribbean: Arciniegas 2004: 178.
6 they created a style of fighting that had not been seen before: Arciniegas 2004: 194.
7 “When a buccaneer is going to sea”: Exquemelin, quoted in Lewis 2006: 83.
8 “hang them from their genitals”: Exquemelin, quoted in Lewis 2006: 65.
9 “not to call on him in the manner”: Exquemelin, quoted in Lewis 2006: 56.
10 “They are very bad subjects”: Jean Baptiste Ducasse, quoted in Latimer 2009: 109.
11 “If you roast me today”: Beckles 1990: 49.
12 George Ashby’s will: B. Arch. RB6:13, 3 Oct. 1672, proved 1676.
14 “Like the terraced cane fields”: Dunn 1969: 77.
15 “The houses on the plantations are much better built”: Labat 1957: 171.
16 “splendid Planters, who for Sumptuous Houses”: Dunn 1969: 58.
17 “the largest trade in the New World”: Labat 1957: 163.
18 Barbados received between 2,000 and 3,000 negroes: Davies, cited in Dunn 1969: 72.
19 “One of the great Burdens of our Lives”: Littleton, quoted in Dunn 1969: 73.
20 “Thus sunny Barbados”: Dunn 1969: 75.
CHAPTER 9
1 “Barbadian character”: Watson, quoted in Jemmott and Carter 1993: 37.
2 “perfectly ravished”: Warren 2001: 6.
3 “The Earth in parts is extremely rich”: Warren 2001: 8.
4 “were the principal cause of the rapid movement”: Abbé Raynal, quoted in Aykroyd 1967: 31.
5 “Sugar, sugar, eh!”: Aykroyd 1967: 44.
6 “seemed to be much in a desponding way”: Ragatz 1928: 113.
7 “without any question”: Schama 1989: 57.
8 “The strongest colours could not paint”: Kippis 1784: 5.
9 “The whole face of the country”: Admiral Rodney, quoted in Ludlum 1963: 140–42.
10 “the economic position of Barbados was still poor”: Ragatz 1928: 21.
11 “Children, in these West-India islands”: Greene 2001: 143.
12 “high theatre”: Hochschild 2005: 50.
13 “the first great political book tour”: Hochschild 2005: 169.
14 “the prejudices which had been hastily taken up”: The Rev. John Duke, quoted in Handler 2005: 59.
Sugar in the Blood Page 38