My Grandmother was born in British Honduras in 1858. Her father was a young Scottish lawyer attached to the Supreme Court in Belize and her mother the daughter of an English couple who had arrived to take up a government appointment and then made the colony their home
Granny’s life was to be very unusual but also very sad. Both her parents died when she was very young. Granny and her two brothers were sent by their maternal aunt in a sailing ship to Scotland, Granny to her father’s sister, the boys to an uncle. Her aunt was married to a well-to-do businessman and had eleven children of her own, so Granny grew up with her eleven cousins. I loved her anecdotes about annoying the governess by sitting down suddenly and bouncing up her crinoline. Later she attended finishing school in Germany, which turned out to be very fortunate as her fluency in German was to come in very useful later on.
Being a very independent young woman when she grew up Granny decided to return to Belize, where she lodged with the Presbyterian Minister and his wife, playing the organ in the Kirk to earn her keep, and opened a Dame School.
Romance now entered Granny’s life. At a ball at Government House, she met a young German businessman who had recently arrived in the Colony. It was love at first sight and it must have seemed wonderful to my Grandfather that Granny was able to speak his language. They married and had seven children but sadly two little girls died in infancy. Granny also lost a bright little five-year-old son, who suffered from congenital rickets. My grandparents took him to specialists in Germany but there was no available treatment. Granny was devastated.
By this time her two eldest children were at boarding school in Minnesota while my Mother and her older brother Max were growing up in Belize. Max was a highly intelligent, mischievous little boy. My Mother was just as naughty. Granny was a great disciplinarian and I used to love hearing about all the scrapes those two got into, often in small boats, and how they managed to escape the consequences.
Time passed. My Mother’s older sister married a young Scot and produced four grandchildren but not long after that my Grandfather died suddenly from angina – another terrible blow for Granny.
In due course my Uncle Ernest married as did my Mother. Uncle Ernest carried on the family business in Belize but my father was in the Colonial Service and he and my Mother were posted to Trinidad. Max, after graduating from university as a Mining Engineer came home and married the younger sister of Aunt Gladys’s husband. After honeymooning at St. George’s Caye the couple left for Wyoming where Max had a job awaiting him. Six weeks later Max was killed in an explosion.. He had been greatly loved by everyone and what Granny must have suffered is unimaginable.
I remember her as bright, interested in everything and always supportive and affectionate to me. She revelled in my modest achievements and was convinced that I was “the best” in every possible way.
For all of us who grew up in Belize our happiest memories are always about the Caye and Granny loved it too. Every year we spent the month of May on the island. First thing in the morning the hired motorboat would arrive at our wharf. Men from my uncle’s lunmberyard would carry all our possessions up from the house to be loaded on board. These included everything from bedding and clothes to a month’s food supplies, not to mention crates of clucking chickens and quacking ducks and of course our parrot in his large cage.
Lastly and most memorably would come Granny, borne aloft by two lunmbermen in a small basketwork chair escorted by the maid and the cook. Finally, with everything and everyone safely aboard, I would row my skiff round and tie her to the stern, the engine would start and we would be off.
Granny lived to be 94, alert and interested to the very end. A true pioneer.
By Barbara Harris
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