News of The Abacos
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Loyalists Out
of The Past Mr. Roswell Sawyer, lifelong resident, seafood businessman and former Chairman of the Green Turtle Town Committee was pleased to greet us on our recent visit to the beautiful northern Abaco islet. His friend, David Bethel, was also on hand at the ferry dock when our Bolo ferry came in. It was a lovely Bahamian Spring day a bright and warming sun and fresh, cool breezes with the smell of salt water seasoning them. We had come over from Treasure Cay after a half-hour drive from Marsh Harbour to have a short tour of the Schooner Gallery & Albert Lowe Museum the oldest historical museum in the Bahamas, and the neighbouring Sculpture Gardens. The Museum is just up the street from the dock; an old, well preserved, white wooden building with green trim. Mr. Sawyer's father-in-law, a stately elderly gentleman named Noel Roberts (who, with his wife, Ivy are curators of the Museum) let us into the building located next door to his own home. Just stepping over the door step gave me a momentary shiver it was like stepping immediately into the past. The wooden floorboards gently vibrated as we walked into the main room. The furniture, curtains, rugs and lamps are all "old-fashioned." Sculpted heads by James Mastin, one of the residents of the Cay, are placed on antique tables all around. Carved wooden schooners made by the late Albert Lowe himself, were in the room's centre and up against the far wall. Albert was the father of the renowned Bahamian Artist, Alton Lowe, who was even then in Nassau preparing for his spring exhibition. Paintings by the artist were hung at intervals on the walls. These, in particular caught my attention. Placed side by side for contrast, I suppose, as much as to emphasize their individuality, were paintings of young girls on the beach. The Loyalist girl wore the clothing of a teenage girl from the early 1800's, powder-blue and white dress and pinafore accentuating the colours of the sky and sea in the background, blond curls blowing in the wind. On the other side was a painting of a black girl of about the same age and at the same site an unspoiled Bahamian beach. This girl, with skin like brown sugar, would obviously have been brought to these islands by former slave-owners. Her attitude was certainly not that of a harried and fearful servant, but more like that of a teenager at any age wandering the beach, looking for pretty shells, dreaming of her future. By looking at these two lovely young women, one immediately caught the definition of the Bahamian future-to-be . . . these girls would be the mothers of a new race of freedom-loving people free from shackles of religious and political persecution and free from the shackles of racial and economic persecution. On the wall near the front door hung an arresting painting in sombre sepia tones, of a handsome, elderly black woman, whose lips held a smile not unlike that of the Mona Lisa in its warm inviting curves. But, whereas the Mona's smile might be beheld as that of a coquette, this lady's smile welcomes those that need comfort and reassurance. The subject of the painting is Dana Mrs. Marian Hewitt, the Cay's beloved late midwife, who died at age 88 in 1972 and who delivered Alton Lowe himself. Dana, as she was affectionately known, began her working life as a maid and only moved into midwifery when the former midwife became too old and infirm to continue. Dana would have been in her 30's at the time but she soon proved to have a natural gift for knowing how to deliver babies safely and how to assist their mothers. Dana, whose natural love of life was evinced by her passion for the dance as well as the fact that she delivered her last baby a great grandson at age 84. Dana was born in Green Turtle Cay, and except for a short period when she followed her second husband to the States to work, lived her long years there. Her life is perhaps one of the true testaments of these people hardy, devoted and filled with an unimpeachable trust in God. That trust was sorely tested during the horrific 1932 Hurricane, which devastated this Cay and left many people homeless but, miraculously only eight of the residents dead. Noel Roberts remembers the Hurricane as if it happened last month. His house, the museum in which we stood and the New Plymouth Inn were the only buildings he says, that remained standing when the storm subsided. Photographs of the devastation hang on the walls in the western parlor of the museum testimonies to the endurance of a people in the face of utter destruction. There had been about 1200 people living in the Cay at the time, but afterwards, only some 450 remained. Many residents took up "lock, stock and barrel" and literally moved themselves and their wooden homes to Key West in the Florida Cays. There, today you will find the same style homes, the same surnames, the same ways of Bahamian living so much so, that in 1977, Key West and Green Turtle Cay were declared sister-cities and the descendants of Bahamians living there are affectionately referred to as "conchs (konks)." Of the 1600-2000 who inhabited the Cay around 1825, a large number moved to other places when the industries of pineapple-growing, sisal manufacture, shark and turtle (the green turtle, after whom the cay is named) fishing and the lumber mills failed. Former British Premier, Neville Chamberlain (he, of the "peace at any price" said about negotiations with Hitler) grew up with his family in Green Turtle Cay, in a house which still stands in the town of New Plymouth. His father, Joseph was one of the businessmen who had tried to make the pineapple and sisal industries thriving ones in the Bahamas. Eventually, Eleuthera and then Hawaii would fare better with the pineapple on such a scale that, even though it originated in these islands it is automatically associated with that American state today. In the same room of the museum are displays of military buttons and other paraphernalia associated with the two World Wars a legacy to Bahamian participation in the Second one in particular, and to the fact that Bahamians replaced Americans on USA farms and factories during those times when their native men had to fill the quota at war. A miniature replica of "The Landing", a sculpture by an American artist of two pioneering women of the Abacos, rests on the dining table of the museum. We were to see another example of this moving piece in the Gardens to which Mr. Sawyer now directed us. Opposite the old "hurricane-proof" New Plymouth Inn and about five minutes down the street from the Schooner Gallery are the Sculpture Gardens a monument to the sons and daughters of Green Turtle Cay those of Loyalist descent. As you enter the cobbled pathway, your attention is immediately drawn to the large-as-life sculpture of the two young figures depicted in "The Landing" by James Mastin, who now resides in Florida. The women; the white one planting a flag in the ground of the island on which she has obviously just landed and a black one, blowing the conch shell horn of victory are older versions of the painted girls described in the museum. Whereas the museum girls exist in the dreamy aftermath of their parents' struggle, these women are in the forefront of eking out a new and unknown existence in a world far different from that which they had come. The sensitivity of these two artists Mastin and Lowe in using females to represent a struggle normally and easily depicted by males shows that they are fully aware of the wisdom of the maxim "the hand that rocks the cradle rules the world." All around this
central piece are sculpted heads of Bahamian men and women
some of whom still walk among us: The list goes
on . . . Laddie Gates, Henry Albury, Capt. Hartley Roberts and
Rupert W Roberts. Many of these were pioneers in their fields,
firsts in their chosen life's work and outstanding members of
their communities. Mastin has given a priceless work to the Abacos
and, indeed, to the Bahamas in this his Garden of History.
The talented Lowes, father Albert and son Alton, have likewise
given back to the world a gift which could only have come from
God. |
