Black Boomer Besties from Brooklyn
This is what the world needs now: two free-thinking “seasoned” Black women speaking their truth and inspiring others to do the same. Shaped by 45 years of friendship that began at the prestigious Brooklyn Technical High School through the Ivy League, medical school, marriages, divorces, triumphs, parenting queer children, life-threatening illness and many many amazing adventures. Each week, besties Leslie Osei-Tutu and Angella Fraser will push against boundaries in love, culture, careers, faith, politics and out-dated assumptions about women of a certain age. Remember, you’re never too old to change your mind…or your hair! (but more on that later :-)All views are our own and do not reflect the views of our institution/company. Information provided is not intended to serve as medical advice.
Black Boomer Besties from Brooklyn
An Intimate Exploration of Jamaican Ancestry
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
Discovering one's roots is like embarking on a treasure hunt, made even the more challenging when you are from a family of travelers, common in the Caribbean. Two sisters, Natalie Hinds-Scott and Colleen Hinds Rodgers, embarked on such a journey, unearthing fascinating stories of their family's rich heritage.
One side of the family, where oral history was plentiful, connected Costa Rica to Jamaica to the United States and back. On the other side, the sisters could never have imagined the perfectly aligned convergence that would lead to the former Mesopotamia Plantation in Westmoreland, Jamaica. Along the way, they would come to be embraced by newly discovered family from England and a white historian, who unknowingly, had been looking for them for decades.
Let’s stop here to avoid divulging any of the incredible plot twists of the extraordinary story. Enjoy, and your comments are welcome.
Who Are The Winrush Generation? A British Scandal Explained
Richard Dunn - A Tale of Two Plantations: Slave Life and Labor In Jamaica and Virginia
Visit Black Boomer Besties from Brooklyn website for behind-the-scenes extras.
Hey Nat, how are you? Hey Ann, listen. So welcome to a new episode of Black Boomer Besties from Brooklyn. I'm going to be both Leslie and Angela today, because Leslie is doing her doctoring right. You all know she's an anesthesiologist and she had every plan to be here, but her commitment to her patients has made it impossible for her to be here. So we are going to have this episode with her in spirit, because she was almost in tears when she realized that she wasn't going to be able to make it.
Speaker 1You are also looking at a beautiful person who has a pretty sizable part of my heart and has for all of her years. So I'm going to introduce her in a second, but I wanted to start with welcome to a new episode of Black Boomer Besties from Brooklyn. Brooklyn, because that's what we do. That's what we do. So I want to welcome Natalie Heinz-Scott. She is my first niece, so she, oh my gosh I already told her that my tissues are here because, natalie, whenever I am with her, physically or virtually, I get very emotional, because what I see in her is this little girl who I came to just adore as a human being, and when I see her I think about that. But then I think about her as this mother, wife, business person, someone who brings light into every room, someone who the family kind of flocks to for advice, for beautification, for inspiration. She's the first HBCU graduate in the family. You're not going to do your thing. You're not going to do your HBCU thing. You're not doing that, I'm not doing it for you, you don't know. Oh, she's a proud NCCU graduate and I've invited her here today because we, an episode or two ago, had a guest, pam Skinner, who shared stories of her family legacy.
Speaker 1She's an African American who is a classmate of mine from Brooklyn Tech, class of 80, kotec, and I thought about the stories that we have in our family, in my family, the immigrant experience and Natalie and her sister, colleen Heinz Rogers, who also could not be here today. She came down with some weird illness, her entire family, and so mommy duties, work duties she's also an entrepreneur has pulled her away. She may pop in, leslie may pop in, and if they ask to be admitted I will let them in. But they have been in the forefront of doing research on our family history.
Speaker 1Natalie is related to me through my eldest brother, clifford Heinz, and so she and Colleen have done research on their father's side of the family and their mother's side of the family and have unearthed just amazing stories. So I want to talk about those stories and I also would like her to talk about kind of how it all came together, some of the tips and tricks that she learned, some things that were challenges that can help people doing research outside of the United States. There is a wealth of information that's available for African families who were enslaved in the United States. It's a different story when you are trying to trace your family history in other parts of the world, and so I know not that it's not every part of the world that you have experience with, but I think that your experience and that of Colleen's in doing research in another country is going to be really informative for our audience. So with that I want to introduce my beloved Natalie Heinz-Scott. Take it away, nat.
Speaker 2Hi everybody. Well, for the longest time, Well, family history has always been a big part of our upbringing. Our grandmother, which is Angelus' mom, always told us stories, stories, Even my dad sharing stories from his grandparents and all of the things. On that side of the family, though, we had real historians, like my grandmother's sister who passed last year, who lived to be. What was she? 95, 94, 95?.
Speaker 1I'm going to do segues all the time. Everybody knows I do this. I'm going to come right back. First of all, let me just say this my grandparents, natalie's great grandparents, were Garveyites I grew up with. Yeah, there was a picture of Jesus, but there was also pictures of Marcus Garvey in the house that I grew up in in Jamaica, when I lived with my grandparents, and this came to mind because two of my grandparents four children were named. My uncle was named after Marcus Garvey and my aunt, on Amy that Natalie just mentioned, her name was Amy Jakes Barnes Ney Allen. So Amy Jakes, if you don't know, is the wife of Marcus Garvey. So we come from those kinds of people, very clear about their pride in being of African soil and so and understanding our history and being very clear about who we are and who we're not, and so, anyway, coming back, go ahead.
Speaker 2Right. But you're absolutely right and in that vein, amy had a lot of things that she shared with Colleen and myself. Colleen was the first one to delve in when she took that trip to Jamaica with you and you guys went to the records office. You were able to research some things, but on Amy, she was able to provide a picture of Papa's mother, which is my great great grandmother, a picture of one of his sisters, annette, which is your middle name, and grandma's middle name is after.
Speaker 1Jase's middle name too, oh wow.
Speaker 2All three of us.
Speaker 1I think mommy loved her.
Speaker 2And so that sort of information we would not have had even with as much research as we have done, you know.
Speaker 3Right, right.
Speaker 2Yeah, so we have a lot of info on that side of the family. Even Colleen was able to connect with some of the descendants that had gone to Costa Rica just through Facebook, because a lot of the Spanish speaking countries, you know, they keep the maiden name and then they add on the married name, and so she was able to trace that barn's name there and they knew about us, they knew who we were, they knew Uncle Mulvray, which is my grandmother's uncle.
Speaker 1Right, so my grandfather's brother, my grandfather's?
Speaker 2brother. He was his brother, right. And she said, oh, he was like the father to her and she's younger than us. So we're like, wow, oh my gosh. Wow yeah, longevity is also on our side, because Uncle Mulvray was what about 97? Or?
Speaker 1so when he passed, apparently in his late nineties, when he passed, yeah, another segue. So if you heard the episode where my sister was a guest she is an anthropologist, dr Gertrude Fraser, and she talked about one of the things she talked about is the fact that our family, and that of many Caribbean families, is that of leaf taking, as she called it. Right, we travel, right. So my grandfather's family is our Jamaicans, who travel to Costa Rica and live in Costa Rica. And so this uncle, uncle Mowry, that Natalie mentioned. He grew up in Costa Rica, right, I remember his gold tooth, yeah, but his brother being, was he the first or the last grandson, uncle Mowry?
Speaker 2was the only child of the Barnes that was born in Costa Rica. All of the rest were born in Jamaica. She would travel pregnant, have the children in Jamaica so that they would be considered British subjects and go back to Costa Rica. Right, right so so they were all raised in Costa Rica. Uncle Mowry was the only one born in Costa Rica.
Speaker 1Right, right, okay, perfect, and that is significant. What was mentioned about being British subjects as a result of being born in Jamaica, because it became one of the things that helped my grandfather in some trouble he got into in Cuba, and we'll talk about that later but the fact that he could claim himself as a British subject allowed him to be able to leave the country of his not of his free will, but to leave his country still breathing, that's right, so so, so that's significant.
Speaker 1And the other thing that I'll say about that before I bring you, allow you back in that is that when my family emigrated to emigrated from Jamaica to America in late 1970, we actually lived with Uncle Mowry and his wife and her sister, who were the Danes, and so yeah, and so, as you know, grandma traveled to Panama quite a few times and it was to visit them. Yes, because that was the connection and they became really really close and they cared for her until she was able to buy a house and bring her family up. I remember when we came up, our first night was spent at their house. Obviously, we went there when they're many times after, but we stayed at their house after coming from the airport and then we went to the house that the brownstone that bought in Brooklyn. So a lot of layers to this, that kind of give you the sense of how much moving around we do as a family and why this oral history is so important. It's so important. You know what I mean.
Speaker 2Absolutely.
Speaker 1And.
Speaker 2I really think, like your side of the family, like we're huge on oral history. Yeah yeah, everything was passed down orally, you know yeah, yeah, that's amazing.
Discovering Jamaican Ancestry
Speaker 1Okay, go back in. The tributary is finished. You were always kind of hearing about these stories and, on, amy was able to show you these pictures now. So now you have these visuals to kind of fill in the gaps, right? How else did you do your research and what did you uncover?
Speaker 2So Colleen, my sister, was very actively involved in that early on. And then you know, life happens, we take breaks, we get back into it. I remember the first time where I really was like Wow, I really want to know is after you and Colleen had gone to Jamaica and at the time the RGD Registered General Department in Jamaica, in Spanish town, you would pay them hourly and they would send you, email you, any certificates or anything that they found, like any of the research that they found, if you were not there.
Speaker 2Now they have that.
Speaker 1Yeah know that because when Colleen and I went down by the way, this was Colleen's idea. I take no credit for it. I just went along for this exciting trip of discovery with my amazing niece, who had done part of our master's program was at the university in Jamaica.
Speaker 1So yeah, we invited me down and we went and, as Nat said, we went to this, the records office in Spanish town, and at that time they assign you an archive is so I didn't even know they had this email thing going on after the right, so the same archivist that you are assigned.
Speaker 2If you pay for more hours upon your departure, you know they will then email. It probably take them about three months, but right. It's quicker than snail mail, still Now they have online system where you can actually pay. For the longest time, you either had to be there in person to pay them or send somebody. So she got some certificates emailed back to her and seeing that made me really excited. Oh my gosh, like this is a record, like, really like a real thing yeah and all of this is when we went.
Speaker 1It wasn't even on microfeature anything. They brought out these books.
Speaker 2Right, yes, and they still have the books.
Speaker 1Like and you see your great great grandparents names and where they were married and who was there and what their professions were, and you know the way that they distinguish, you know labor or things like that. We may have a view of what those words mean, but they gave a lot of context. Well, if they lived here, that means that they were the status. If they live there, right, or it's unusual for these two people to come together, all of those things Right. Folks in Jamaica, they really, really know their stuff. So, slow and steady, if you take that route, you will get the information because they take their, they take their, their expertise very seriously.
Speaker 2Right, so slow, but yes, but you know it gets done.
Speaker 1Just look, oh your role. This is your major. What do you expect? Take your time, eat your mango.
Speaker 3You know you're on the road and then you get it.
Speaker 2This was years ago, so last time I was at the records office was 2015. Okay, and since then they have started online thing you know, which I have not utilized yet, so it may be, you know, quicker or more efficient.
Speaker 1Right, right, okay, okay, awesome.
Speaker 2Right.
Speaker 3So let's write it.
Speaker 1Yeah, that sparked my interest.
Speaker 2So I'm like, okay, so we had so much information on my dad's side, which is your side of the family, I said really didn't have too much on my mom's side, only interviews my sister would have with all of my grandparents, you know, she would just jot down information and stuff like that. So I started my research journey. Then I signed up for Amazon, Amazon. Amazon everything right, but ancestry, ancestrycom, and attempted to research and a lot of brick walls on ancestry not get so far. How did you know?
Speaker 1it was a brick wall, like how did you just kind of really find?
Speaker 2information. So if I'm searching for a particular name, I may find, like, say, searching for my mother's father's name, I got information of when he traveled to the United States. Okay, like a ship, like the boarding, the information from the ship, yeah, from the ship, yeah, saying you know what he was on, where he was from. You know it may have had some detailed information. It did help me in a sense that I saw another person my mother's made a name is Rick guard. I saw another person, the same last name, listed on the list further down and I'm like, okay, they have to be related. I didn't recognize the name and as I dug further I'm like, oh, that's his brother, but we know that he has a brother named Georgie. This person was listed as Aubrey regard. Come to find his middle name is George Aubrey George regard People.
Speaker 1And that's the thing, people and on that's another was research. Is that a lot of?
Speaker 2times we don't know close relatives full names. You call somebody a name your whole life and come find out oh wow, that's not even their first name, like right.
Speaker 1Right, Right. I told Kai the other day that that uncle beat. Those name was Marcus right. I was like what Right, we all know him as a beat. Yes, that mommy told me is that they had a. Really my grandparents had a really close friend in Cuba name Albert.
Speaker 3Okay.
Speaker 1And for some reason they started to call Uncle Beto baby toe. Oh hey little Albert in a way. Yes, so I'm stuck, and so right now I know him as Marcus is only as a big woman I knew him as Marcus. So how would you have found if you saw Marcus?
Speaker 2Correct, I only know he was Marcus because his grandson is named for him. And so right right Right, his grandchildren growing up. You know we had interactions with them, but not because I knew. That's what we ever called them Right At all. So you know a lot of that you know, and just a lot of the Jamaican records. They just were not a lot of them.
Speaker 1Yeah, yeah, okay.
Speaker 2What I was looking for at the time. So I was able to find this site called Family Search so it's wwwfamilysearchorg and that, surprisingly, had so many digitized Jamaican records. Wow and that was like a godsend to my research.
Speaker 1How did you find that Like, how did you?
Speaker 2I don't remember if I just Googled like Jamaican genealogy or I would read a lot of whether it was blogs or watching shows about ancestry research and things like that, and I'm not quite sure how I stumbled across it.
Speaker 1I'm sure I Googled it because so we'll put that in the episode notes, guys. But yeah, thank you for your perseverance, because that kind of opened things like wide open for you. Yeah, it's addictive too, right.
Speaker 2So when you start, if you want to find these answers, you want to know, you know the answers, but then you get tired and then you might I might give it a rest for a month or two and then come back to it, and then, lo and behold, there's new information. Maybe new records have been digitized that were not available prior.
Speaker 3Yeah, so you know.
Speaker 2When I was researching my mom's family, I hit a roadblock when we got to the point where my grandfather's grandfather. We knew his name because he was listed on his children's birth certificates and such, but we could not find his birth certificate and I figured from the timeframe that he would have been born during slavery and I did not know how to go about if not for family search. I didn't know another way to go about finding those records.
Speaker 2Okay, I gave that a rest and I started from the top, going down right. So I started researching any English or Scottish men that were in the area with that last name. That is not a common last name. On the island right and on the island anyway, they say anybody with the same last name is related.
Speaker 1They always say that Somehow, and they are, and they are right.
Speaker 2And it's a small island. So yeah, pretty much. And so I found the name of an attorney called William Ridgard and it said that he was like overseer on several plantations in St Elizabeth and in Westmoreland for my mother's family's from Westmoreland. So I said, okay, this guy's gotta have something to do with something.
Speaker 3So I was able to research his information.
Speaker 2Of course, because he's British, everything is well documented. I could not find the exact connection to my great-great grandfather.
Speaker 1Okay, and what? Was his name. What was this person? Who's name that you?
Speaker 2were William Ridgard. William Ridgard was the Englishman. My two times great-grandfather was Richard Ridgard. Gotcha okay, now I had found in the meantime I had found records with William Ridgard having children with other enslaved people.
Speaker 3Right right.
Speaker 2And I was able to trace them down the line right to cousins cousins that my mom's cousin's children, who we had recently made contact with and gotten pretty close with, and we were all in on this research so I was able to connect them straight away.
Speaker 1Right, you have to tell. Yeah, that's not a summary statement, that's a whole nother story of that part of the research. Don't listen, don't leave anything out, natalie.
Speaker 2Well, a lot of these white men that were on these plantations, whether they were paid to create, procreate, to make more people to do more work, or whether they were in relationships I'm not sure. The record that I was able to find was his relationship with a young woman named Mary Marais, who was they had her listed as a 15 year old mulatto young woman who was on one of the plantations and he had a number of children with her. I was able to request his will online through National Archives from England and I was able to read it again. My two times grandfather was not listed in the will. The children that he had with this Jamaican young woman were listed in his will and through those children I was able to trace them down the line to who I know my cousins, you know, to my yes Right right, right, Again no trace of my particular ancestor that I was looking for.
Speaker 2Got you, so here enters well side note. So this is all going on simultaneous to this, so my sister and I okay we're gonna make a Facebook page called regard family tree. We're gonna ask the cousins that we know to come in and any information, any stories, family history pictures that they may have, and we just have this kind of home base where we can all just go to show our kids, add stories, add any information as it's updated.
Speaker 2I had little interest and right when I was thinking about, okay, I'm gonna take this down, I got a message from a young lady in England who was saying that her great grandfather's name was Phillip Rickard, you know. And she told me her whole story and I'm like I don't know, this was totally random, totally random. I don't never met you.
Speaker 1You are ready to give it up. You weren't even gonna let it just sit out there.
Speaker 2You were gonna let it down. It was worth my nerve that nobody was as interested as me.
Speaker 1I was really gonna say this Slow your roll, slow your roll. I was really thinking about it.
Speaker 2Yeah, we had a couple of cousins who had written things, posted pictures. And then here I get this message from a cousin named Louise who was in England and inquiring about her great grandfather. Her mother and herself wanted to learn about their great grandfather, if there was any information that we had or if we knew who he was. Fortunately I knew the name. I had never met the person because he was the same long before I was born but my mother. He was my mother's grandfather's brother, but they lived on the same road so she would go there every Sunday. She would be at his house with he and his wife and you know, he really took on the grandfather role. She says he was the one who explained to her what had happened to her grandfather. Her grandfather passed away young from a brain aneurysm, but he was the one that explained that to her and, you know, just took his time, just really planted seeds.
Speaker 2She loved him, she loved him. And so to hear her say Philip Riddgaard and I just know him as Uncle Phil just from all the stories my mom has heard we were able to connect the dots and her sister Kate reached out to me and we were really able to really forge a really strong bond. She's an aries too, so maybe that has something.
Speaker 1But you're just one of those people, nat. Your heart is so big and, like I mean, anyone looking at you right now can just feel your energy. You're so approachable, you're like you know all the things, I have my tissue. Did I mention I have my tissue, I have my tissue. So I mean really, because I'm sure that Kate, who I now know and you'll tell the story of that if you had a different by now you're feeling kind of you know this ain't working whatever, and I'm sure, and she is mixed. If you were to look at her, you have to kind of look with your eye quint. You have to show some kind of mix up business.
Speaker 2Yeah, so if I get to invite her, her mother is up to making the sense. You know, mixed up too, but you know, yes, right, yes so in Jamaica we would say, we would put royal, like when it's a.
Speaker 1Black person and a Chinese or Indian. It's a Cooley royal or a Chinese royal. I don't even know if that's still OK. I hope I'm not offending anyone, but that is the old term that we used to use when there was intermixing, as we would say. So OK. So Kate is now in the picture, correct, ok, and you and her get close.
Speaker 2She studies in England and she reached out. Like I said, we started emailing each other back and forth. Just so happened, our family had a trip planned to Jamaica that year that July. I believe you and your family were going to be there during that time frame. My dad was going to be there for something else. During that time frame, my mom, I stepdad, my sister, my nieces, my husband, myself, my children, were going to be there Just the time.
Speaker 3Yeah, literally.
Speaker 2I said to her you know, do you think you would want to come? I mean, that would be a great opportunity for you to get, for us to show you and for you to meet your family, as opposed to going on your own. You don't really have never been to Jamaica.
Speaker 3Right.
Speaker 2So she decided to come and we met her at the airport. We stayed together, she stayed with us and it's almost like your spirit just recognizes family. I mean we bonded so closely. We were just, I mean God absolutely orchestrated that. You know how everything worked out when one of my mom's cousin we call him Bobzie. I don't even know, I don't remember Bobzie. Oh, patrick is his real name, I'm sorry. Well, we call him Bobzie, right. So again, right, right, right. Yeah, bobzie was a driver for Judah, which is the Jamaican Transportation Authority. You know he drove a van for them, he picked us up from the airport and everything. And when she saw him she cried. She literally cried tears that he looked like her grandmother, so much you know, like she was in the presence of her long lost family and she literally was just like and I forgot to mention her grandmother, who was from Jamaica, went to England during Windrush in 1948. So it wasn't her 82.
Speaker 1Just a point of information Windrush, if you guys remember, when we had the conversation about the African-American family there were a lot of terms that Pam and Leslie were thrown around that I did not understand. They had to explain what camp menacingque and all this stuff to me. They were like oh, everybody knows that. No, everybody didn't know that. They had to explain. So I'm going to just take a moment to explain what Windrush is.
Speaker 1So during World War II the British invited people from the Caribbean to come to England to help them in the war effort. So they fought in the war, they were nurses, they were all the things they were probably given the menial tasks that were necessary. But they were critical to the war effort in World War II and so Windrush is the ship that most of them came over on. So they called this the Windrush generation. And you may have heard, in the last few years there was a big uproar in the British parliament because they were treating the descendants of these people who came and practically saved England's ass, because it was done in this fashion. They were saying that they were illegal Because they didn't come, they didn't give them citizenship and things like that. So their children, grandchildren were somewhere sent back to Jamaica. Had never, ever lived in Jamaica, were born in England and just cast aside in this way.
Speaker 1So I will put some links to all of that hubbub and discussed in the episode notes so you can do a little bit more research on that. But that is when Nat mentioned Windrush. That's what that was all about and that is how Kate's grandmother came to be my grandfather came to be in England, my grandfather was also in Jamaica.
Speaker 2Grandmother was a teacher in Jamaica, went to England and thought all her credentials would transfer over, but not so. So she had to I forgot what kind of job, but she had to do some manual labor jobs until she was able, yes, to get her British teaching certification, but in all of that she was never able to return to Jamaica. So she really had never even seen her parents since she left Jamaica. She was able to keep in contact, but not and at that time keeping contact means writing letters.
Speaker 2Yes, yes, yes or selling a seeming, maybe telegram, if something emergency happened. So her grandmother was 95 also and she passed away maybe a month before we were to go on this trip together, my grandmother was living in New Zealand with one of her aunties and they sent some of her ashes to Kate and Kate said she was going to bring her ashes to Jamaica to reunite her with her parents.
Speaker 1This doesn't become a made for TV movie.
Speaker 2I know If this doesn't become so.
Speaker 1That happened just before this trip was planned, yes, and then that, miraculously, kate had reached out, found you this big trip. We don't travel in that big a pack ever.
Speaker 2Right, right. I don't know that we've ever all been in. Jamaica at the same time.
Speaker 1Everybody was there.
Speaker 2We're all there literally. For different reasons. We didn't coordinate it together.
Speaker 1We didn't have to coordinate to God, be the glory I'm telling you. So Kate decides to come with her grandmother's ashes.
Speaker 2So she came. Before we got there, mommy had coordinated with some of her cousins Bobzie, another cousin, she's a pastor, her name is Irene Gordon, but we call her Auntie Rene, yes, and so Auntie Rene coordinated with the people who now lived on the land where Kate's great-grandparents lived and were buried to ask permission if we could enter the land, if we could explain to her what we wanted to do too, and the lady was very accommodating. Actually, she came outside during the ceremony with us too. We were able.
Speaker 1In Jamaica. We bury our family in our community. We usually have designated gravesites. It could be right next to your house. If you know ours on your grandmother's side, my mom, it was right next to Frieza property and that is where all the generations are buried. We don't take our dead elsewhere. We don't go to big cemeteries. Maybe in the cities in Kingston maybe they do that.
Speaker 2Maybe now more than then, but then absolutely.
Speaker 1And even the other day, people who. I know died in Jamaica on the grave site.
Speaker 2Right, that's true. My grandmother died in 2009. And he's buried on his property. He's buried right there.
Speaker 1So another very, very big difference with the culture here, and I don't know how it is in rural communities all over the United States, but I know that that is probably uncommon. And the other thing that I wanted to touch on that you said is that your family lived in this area and, if I remember, this area is very close to where the sugar plantation. Was that your family Absolutely the?
Speaker 2percentage of the plantations is where the majority of my family, my mother's family, still lives.
Speaker 3Wow.
Speaker 2Wow, yeah Well, a lot of them have now passed.
Speaker 3Right.
Speaker 2But lived up in spirit. That's where they're buried.
Speaker 1Yes, correct. Yeah, that's where they're buried, and Leslie had asked me at one point why they stayed there. And another point that I'll make is that, if you think about it, the transportation system in Jamaica isn't like it is here. Here you had the great migration and things like that that allowed people to move to different parts of the United States, but in Jamaica it wasn't the same situation where you could really get on a train on mass and travel. It's a small island, so you just kind of branch out into the area that you know, and so they lived 10 miles from where their ancestors were enslaved and brutalized. Yeah, wow.
Speaker 2Yeah, wow, as a matter of fact. Well, did I even get to that part yet?
Speaker 1Which one.
Speaker 3I'll get to that part. Wait, we're going to talk just a second.
Speaker 2The mess of a taming of plantation, where we were able to trace my mom's ancestors too, is now a national13ia, a park like a, like a how do I say it? Like they have a river, like an adventure park, not with a lot of rides and stuff, but like you, if you're there, you can like it's. Yeah, we just kind of recently found that out. I don't, it must be something new, because when we went to the land that was not there.
Speaker 3Right, right right.
Speaker 2Wow, I know that.
Speaker 1It has the same name. Actually, it has the same name.
Speaker 2It's still referred to as mesopotamia, yeah.
Speaker 1But not plantation, not like.
Speaker 3No, no, not plantation no not plantation no.
Speaker 1Well, I don't know it, but I know that it was common for canals to be brought into areas where there were plantations to help with the transportation of the cane and the products that came from cane. So maybe there are things like that.
Speaker 2Well, you know what? It's right near the Cabrita River. Okay, so that is you know.
Speaker 1I'm sure that. Yeah, wow, man Cate's head must have been exploded.
Speaker 2It was so much to take in. It was almost like the amount of love and gratitude and everything was just it's unexplainable, like it's almost if you weren't out there. There's not really a way to put it into words what the feeling and the vibe was like, because it just was unexplainable.
Speaker 2It's like you know she didn't know us from a can of paint and at one point I remember thinking, oh my gosh, what if she's crazy, like you know? And then I had to stop myself like okay, it's like the hundred of us and she's coming by herself. What if?
Speaker 3she thinks we're great.
Speaker 2You know, like of course, that quickly went out my head. Oh my gosh, right, and it was not easy. Oh my gosh. I mean, it just felt so incredibly genuine, authentic, just like life giving. I don't even know how to explain it. We were able to take her to the property where her great grandparents lived.
Speaker 3Yeah.
Speaker 2The gentleman who buried them was still alive. He was in his 90s, walking up and down. We were able to talk to him. He was able to show us the exact spot. The next door neighbor who also worked helping out her great grandmother in the house, ms Mucille. She was 96 and she was blind. But as soon as she talked to my mom and her daughter, some of her daughters were there that remembered mommy, that had grown up together and Ms Mucille.
Speaker 2And Ms Mucille was able to tell Kate about her grandmother and you know, feel her face, touch her hands, get pictures. It was just such a tell her stories about her grandmother's brother and how they used to dig yam together and how he was a doster, and different things that you just wouldn't get from you know, an ordinary visit. She was able to meet the son of her grandmother's best friend, which they knew the name of the grandmother's best friend. They just never knew who she was and so when he met her he's telling her all about you know different things. And we were able to relate her grandmother's ashes to rest on top of her parents.
Speaker 2My cousin, auntie Rene, said you know that was the first day it had rained in months. So that must be God trying to just solidify her grandmother with her parents and it was just undescribable it was. We had such a wonderful time. We stayed at Auntie Rene's house so she was able to stay in Westmoreland. We went to visit you at grandma's house other grandmother's other side of family house and we always just coincidentally.
Speaker 1Now we don't believe in coincidence, but my father's side of the family is also from Westmoreland, right, and Natalie's father, my first brother, is my mother's firstborn, not my father's firstborn right we never grew up with it.
Speaker 2We don't say that for anything, right? We don't do that.
Speaker 1We don't do that. My first brother, my eldest brother, the king is Natalie's father. So the fact that my mom actually moved when she left Jamaica I mean when she left America and moved back to Jamaica she moved back to Westmoreland where she had her youth and was a social welfare officer. So the fact that Lili, natalie's mom, who did not meet my brother in Jamaica, no, they met in Jamaica.
Speaker 2They met in the area in Jamaica.
Speaker 1They weren't dating in Jamaica. They just knew of each other.
Speaker 2Yeah, they were hanging out together. They were hanging out, ha ha, ha, ha ha you know it's funny because grandma Fritser, which is auntie's dad, which is technically not my biological grandfather but the only grandfather that I know and I've never told him anything other than that he would tell my sister and I stories about how, when he was working age I don't know how old that he remembers my mom participating in four-h club activities.
Speaker 1They were all into four-h. Yes, my mom, they were all into four-h.
Speaker 2And that's way before my parents met each other. That was so yes, Right.
Speaker 1Damn. Yeah, this is a lot. Yeah, yeah, oh, my God, this is a lot, a lot right.
Speaker 2It is who it is, yeah.
Speaker 1Yeah, but this is a small of the small. I mean, on another episode we'll talk about some discoveries that Mark, you know Uncle Mark had, because, yeah, it's just like incredible how this comes together. But anyway, we digress Come on back. Because there's another really juicy part of the story that you have to get to.
Speaker 2So come back from Jamaica and we're still now we're like really in go mode, like really wanting to connect the pieces of this research and all of these things. So I decided I was going to Google some more and just see what I could find and a book came up called the Tale of Two Plantations, by a gentleman called Richard Dunn. So I'm what's after, kate, and I'm like this book, because I was just searching by the name and our ancestor, our two times great grandfather, richard Riddgaard's name, came up on the Google, saying that he was in that book. So we're like we gotta get this book. So she orders hers, I order mine, she gets hers before me, she starts reading and she's like they had his name. I don't know if this is middle initial or something that was wrong. So she was wondering is this the right person or not? So in the meantime she decided to reach out to the publisher. She's gonna publish for me.
Speaker 3I hope you have a good one. I wish I got back to her.
Discovering Family History Through Research
Speaker 2Simultaneously. Now I see that there's a companion website that goes with this book. I love onto this companion website. And Richard Dunn. To be clear, he was a historian, he was an author, he was the head of the history department at Penn State, he worked at Harvard University all of the things he passed away in 2022, january 2022, at 93 years old. So he and this. So I found a companion website, search my ancestors name and pop. Here pops up the link between William Ridgard the Englishman it says Quadrone Richard Ridgard, my two times great grandfather. The son of William Rittgaard, attorney, and fanny Fisher, headmistress of the great house, they call it, and I'm like that's.
Speaker 2but now I'm like that's okay, I'm not even what's happening, nothing. I'm like I need to hear some voice, I need some audio, and so I call her and she's like what? Oh my gosh, this and that. So we're talking about it with this, and that she was waiting to hear back from the publisher at that point. But she did get an email back and With the mistake that she yes.
Speaker 2Richard Dunstead. Oh, he's sorry, he did make an error. It would be corrected in the next edition of the book that was released a day before that. I see that he's giving a lecture about 15 minutes from our home about the new book that was published. So I'm like Kate, when you hear back from him, tell him we're going to be at the lecture. We're going to be at the lecture.
Speaker 1So my mom, my sister, myself, At this point he doesn't know you exist. He just heard got this random email from Kate about this correction that corrects to make.
Speaker 2And then he comes to a little bit of background when she started corresponding with him.
Speaker 2Okay, got it, got it, got it, okay Another part of the mystery, which I don't even know if I had shared this at the time with, is Kate is named Andrea Levy. This is her mom's sister, daughter of her grandmother, same side of family. She was like a wonderful novelist in Britain, speaking on Caribbean experience or being a Black Brit, Caribbean first generation, all of the things, and she wrote several books, two of which were turned into movies, one called Small Island, one called the Long Song. He was familiar with her work and one of his good friends had used some of her writings to do research for a book that he was writing. We also met him that evening the McDonald's.
Speaker 1But Mr Dunne never knew that there was a connection between that person and this recent book.
Speaker 2No, it never knew he was doing some weird things.
Speaker 1What.
Speaker 2Yes, he never knew Andrea Levy personally either. He just knows the name. He's in the world of writing, right. So you kind of, and you're researching similar things. Yes, so in the meantime they don't know the exact family history, but these books that Kate's auntie, andrea, wrote were the first one. Small Island is kind of about the Windrush experience and coming from Jamaica and going I was able to get that movie. No, my husband works in IT. So however he has it, he has it right.
Speaker 1No one needs it. No one needs it I know.
Speaker 2I don't know if the long song came out actually on PBS after Andrea passed away in 20, when did she pass away? When did she pass away? I'm not sure, but Roughly Fairly recently, right, yeah, and maybe 2019 or so. Okay, In breast cancer she had been battling for about 15 years. She PBS showed her movie the Long Song. I was trying to get that for the longest time but BBC had that unlocked they were like no.
Speaker 2Okay, sorry, you know I watched it as a family on PBS. It was like a three or four night mini series and it really kind of echoed what she thought plantation, life and different things, you know and it really is kind of loosely based on our family, the information that she did not have at the time when she wrote the book or they made the movie.
Speaker 1Right, but oh my God.
Speaker 2Just aligned anyway, right, so that's on the sidebar, but the literature done at his lecture, and we're in touch with him since then. When he would come to Philadelphia from Massachusetts, he would stay with the McDonald's family. We met up for lunch with the whole family. Colleen couldn't go there, so when she traveled for work to Massachusetts she went to his home. She met his family. You know he had done 40 years of research and his book was published, I believe 2014 or 2015. And so it just culminated. He started his research in the 70s. We were born in the 70s. Like you know, this is God's orchestration, right? Because it would not have been available at any other time than the time that we were looking.
Speaker 1You found it. Yes, and so his all of his research came to this point and in book up there. Yes, and your research came this way and it book up here, yep.
Speaker 2And we were able to marry the two and he was able to know what happened to the descendants of the. So his book, a Tale of Two Plantations, was based on studying one plantation in Jamaica and one in Virginia, and just studying both plantations kept immaculate inventories and records. So he was able to really sketch a life based on the information that he was able to find, sketch the lives of hundreds of enslaved people and know the similarities or the differences based on the environment or anything.
Speaker 2And actually learning so much from even his research that the average life expectancy of an enslaved person in Jamaica was only seven years.
Speaker 3What.
Speaker 2Seven years, seven years.
Speaker 1So they were not trying to.
Speaker 2No, spare nothing.
Speaker 1Spare nothing, so they could work as long as, for as many years as possible. They were just what, and he?
Speaker 2wasn't trying to say that any one situation was better than the other because, of no, it's just different. But the men from the excruciating labor, a lot of the women from disease and malnutrition, and reproduction was on a downward slope, and whereas in Virginia it was on an upward slope. That's why even in the West Indies we had, however, many times more slaves than to the US.
Speaker 1Yes, yes, yeah.
Speaker 2We're closer, they would just go back and get more because of high Cruxivity overweight, so to speak. Yeah Damn. And he picked our ancestor to study because, as he referred to her, she was one of the more prolific mothers on the plantation, giving birth to 14 children, which was highly uncommon at that time in that environment.
Speaker 3Right right.
Speaker 1Yeah. Colleen had mentioned that a lot of the women, too, weren't even having their menses because, correct, they're malnutrition, malnutrition, yeah, yes all of the things right.
Speaker 2So it was, yeah. Yeah, we were able to piece that together. He was able to take us basically into the 1700s to find our four times great grandmother, named Minnie, who was of the Mesopotamia plantation in Westmoreland and she was born on the plantation. We know that because of terminology, Creole refers to a person of African descent but that is born on the island, Born okay. Okay, If they were born in Africa it would refer to them as African, but she was born on an island. But it did not at that point list her parents. Okay, but because he studied so many people on the plantation, he personally was able to kind of narrow down who he thought at least her mother could be and for her to end up in certain positions that she held at certain ages. He was able to tell that whoever her mother was was well respected.
Speaker 3And this, you know, like he was able to really things right?
Speaker 2Yes, because it's come to real life for us.
Speaker 1Yeah, and the way that they identified by whether it mulatto or Creole or Sambo or words like that. Yes, he could tell things based on that, correct. Who are we fathered them, you know? Yeah, those types of things.
Speaker 2Yes. So with many she had of the 14 children there was all different mixtures. Some were referred to as black and some were referred to as mulatto, some Sambo. Sambo is when a black person has a child with a mulatto person, a half black, half white person, so that child is three quarters black. They're considered Sambo in those writings and those records and that sort of thing. When they referred to my two times great grandfather they referred to him as Quadru Richard Ridgard. His mother was mulatto, his father was white, so he was one quarter black, hence Quadru. So it's yeah. And you see that in a lot of the older records, of course the records that are closer to slavery time time frame, you will see those things noted. Yeah.
Speaker 1Well, matt, you know I could keep going, but I have to be Leslie now and be time keeper. I promise her I would. This has been so educational and enlightening. I think you know being in America for as long as we have. You were born here. I moved here when I was eight or nine.
Speaker 1We hear a lot about the enslaved people and the descendants of the enslaved in America, but I think it's so informative to share some of what you have uncovered about this enslaved Africans who were taken to Jamaica in particular, the Caribbean in general. I think it's so informative and I'm sure that, as Leslie and I always say and we mean this because this podcast is here for the duration that we will revisit this. There's so many things that I would love if we had the time to unpack and just kind of maybe we'll bring Jassy in with her anthropological point of view and kind of tease at some of this, because a lot of her research and that of her former partner, dr Reginald Butler, was done in Virginia and so they may have a connection with Mr Dunn that we haven't even touched on.
Speaker 3It's yours, right yeah.
Speaker 1So, anyway, it's been lovely to spend this time with you, and Thanks Audrey, thanks Audrey. So, folks, this has been another episode of Black Boomer Besties from Brooklyn, brooklyn.
