Monthly Archives: May 2013

Right next door to the Caribbean Genealogy Library is the Bethel Christian Fellowship Church, a small congregation in a storefront the size of the library.

Last Sunday the preacher was just getting wound up as the library opened, the front and back doors wide open to take advantage of the breeze. This Sunday there was loud music playing and as I walked past the preacher waved to me. Lani was opening the library and we had both just settled in to our own microfilms when the preacher ducked his head in and said, “Whenever you’re ready.”

“Both of us?” asked Lani.

“Of course.”

I asked Lani what that was about and she said we were both invited to their buffet.

“It’s Mother’s Day.”

Inside I groaned. I have so few precious hours left to spend at the library and I don’t want to waste a second now that I’m making discoveries that are shaping the future direction of my research. Plus I’m shy. We talked for a few minutes about which records I might want to prioritize and then Lani said, “Come on. We’d better go eat their food.” We locked up and went next door.

Everyone looked up and smiled when we came in, shook our hands and wished us happy Mother’s Day. The music was so loud I could barely hear myself think, and yet people were having conversations. They are obviously better lip readers than I am. I just smiled dumbly as we were led to the buffet. Oh my!

So much food for only about 25 people! I took a quick look and saw fish and chicken and pork and who knows what. I was wary of hidden meat products and asked the lady who handed me a plate if she could point out which dishes were vegetarian. She didn’t bat an eye but walked me down the buffet pointing out each dish in turn. I took a polite serving of the first couple of items but quickly saw that my plate was starting to look like Jack’s first pass at Thanksgiving. By the time I got to the end of the table and the cucumber and tomato salad I was seriously questioning my ability to eat it all.

I found a chair next to a man who had greeted me warmly and Lani joined me.

I noticed she was a bit more prudent at the buffet. I started in on the zucchini fritters, corn pie, macaroni and cheese square and scalloped potatoes — surely a month’s ration of carbs — when a young man came by to ask if we’d like some maubi. Lani’s lips moved as she explained what it is but I couldn’t hear a word of it over the ear-splitting music so I just smiled and nodded to the offer. He came back with two cups of a pale fizzy liquid that had a refreshing herbal taste.

Maubi, it turns out, is a local beverage made from the bark of a tree and other spices. The version I was served was a soft drink and definitely not fermented and it was delicious.

After a while it became clear to me that I was not going to be able to consume everything but I didn’t want to be impolite. That’s when I noticed a lady dispensing sheets of foil wrap for take-home plates. I was handed a sheet with a smile and wrapped up the rest of my food. Lani did too and we said our good-byes and thank yous and wished everyone a happy Mother’s Day again and went back next door to work. The music continued to blast right through the walls, making it hard to concentrate.

A little while later the pastor came over again with two more foil-wrapped plates. Cake. By that time I had found some new deed records and asked him a few questions about where the buildings might be. He was sure the original house numbers hadn’t changed since the early 19th century and that I’d find the address easily.

The deed records turned out to be a treasure trove of new information and I watched the clock wishing I could slow down the minutes until I had to rewind the microfilm and take the safari taxi down the hill to the waterfront.

And yes, I ate the cake.

There was barely a breath of wind out on the glassy harbor, hardly enough to disturb the smooth surface of the water or to even make a catspaw. Sunday morning in Charlotte Amalie is never very active but this morning I’d have to describe it as dead. That’s fine by me. It’s two o’clock in Spain and that means its time for the running of the Spanish Formula One race but I’m in Charlotte Amalie, St Thomas,USVI.

We’ve bicycled to a sports bar. We’ve actually watched a race on Escape Velocity’s built-in flat screen TV using an antenna mounted sixty feet up at the top of EV’s mast. We’ve watched a sputtering web cast version on our iPad. Usually we’re reduced to reading a lap-by-lap live blog of the race, the guy can really type, better than nothing but its just not the same.

Todays modern communication miracle attempt will be NBCs Sports Extra App live streaming of the actual broadcast, formerly seen on ESPN but bought by NBC this year with promises of this App streaming live direct to my iPhone. This as far as I know will be their first attempt. Wifi will have to do because we had to buy a SIM card just for use in the USVI without a data plan. The problem is that we also had to buy a 200 hour wifi plan which is vaguely beamed at the harbor for $40 and is slow and mercurial at best. We have a long range wifi antenna on the roof arch so when we log onto shore based wifi, we can then log all our i devices onto EV’s router with much joy aboard ship. Lately there hasn’t been much digital joy aboard ship. It simply doesn’t work very often. Annapolis cost $12 a month and was always ready and waiting with a smile.

Well the morning was taken up juggling various devices and on several occasions I had audio and video at the same time only to get bumped off a minute later. Yes, it is complicated but it was great to hear the energy and excitement of the announcer’s voice and know that it was live. Live from Spain, where it is now happy hour. Dos Mojitos por favor!

We had just settled in to watch an episode of The Voice on the iPad because we had an unusually good wifi signal when we noticed a lot of heat lightning all around us in the hills. There was no thunder so we just took note and went back to the show. Suddenly I felt drops on my arm and we both jumped up and performed our well-rehearsed ballet of hatch and porthole closing and clearing the cockpit of anything that shouldn’t get wet. Suddenly strong wind blew into the anchorage from the west, an unfamiliar direction, and swung us completely around. Jack went to the helm and checked his bearings to be sure we didn’t drag while I switched on the instruments and VHF radio. I also set a track on the iPad to keep account of our position.

The heavens opened up and dumped an enormous amount of rain. The sky was strobing with lightning. Jack monitored our position and our relationship to the boats around us while I checked that we were buttoned up and not leaking anywhere. It’s funny how your whole evening changes when a storm blows through.

The VHF weather said we were in for a lot of rain but never mentioned the wind. It blew 20-25 with 35 kt gusts for about an hour, shifting first to the north, and finally settling back to the usual east again.

At the height of the storm we heard someone hail the Coast Guard to report a large catamaran “drifting through the anchorage endangering other boats.” We recognized the name of the vessel; they had just arrived this afternoon and disappeared into the crush of other boats close to the marina just east of us. A few minutes after the call we saw a ketch come flying out of the inner anchorage, round up and drop anchor almost at the harbor entrance. We figured it was the boat that made the call, getting away from the drifting catamaran, which we couldn’t see from our vantage point.

Meanwhile we heard the Coast Guard respond to another distress call, a sailboat on the rocks at the Baths in Virgin Gorda. We winced to hear that, because our friend Alan lost his boat on the rocks in Puerto Rico not long ago.

Band after band of rain and wind came through. Just when we thought it was moving off another band would hit. The rain finally abated but the wind didn’t. We swung this way and that and we both kept checking the positions of the three boats closest to us.

Three times a tender zoomed across the anchorage at high speed and disappeared behind the boats in front of the marina. We guessed it was the Coasties checking on the drifter, and we heard them hail the boat but didn’t hear a response. Everyone else seems to have held firm.

Eventually the wind disappeared and strangely the rolling and pitching we’ve experienced all day is gone and EV is sitting quietly under a gentle rain. The clock just struck eleven. The Voice can wait for another day.

It’s been over a week since a cruise ship was tied up to the quay in Charlotte Amalie, St Thomas. I haven’t figured out how the shop owners know about the pending arrival of a cruise ship…but they definitely know. A few hours before a ship’s arrival, doors are unlocked, banners are unfurled, jewelry overflows in the display cases and there’s a buzz about town. It’s kind of fun. Soon they’ll be queued up five or more deep in a buying frenzy at almost every shop in town, especially jewelry!

In a display of titanic oneupsmanship the Disney cruise ship came in, do-si-doed and backed into the outer slot. Good looking boats, those Disney boats. Great colors, design, and very cool roller coaster in a see through tube on the top deck.

Next up, Carnival something-or-other. Less style, less color, many more people packed in. A lot more smoke too.

Last but definitely not least, a Freedom of the Seas monster. No style, no color, looks like a Soviet era apartment block, and I mean the whole block. Gargantuan monsters maneuvering and backing down within feet of other yachts and cruise ships without any tugs or assistance of any kind. Awesome.

Just the other day I discovered one of the treasures of Charlotte Amalie. Ok, the Carousel is no longer here but in its place I would humbly nominate The Greenhouse. I admit I passed on this place thinking that it was a little “shiny pants” for our budget but after climbing the mountains of St Thomas I felt a little parched and thought that a little pain killer was appropriate. HA! Two for one starting at four o’clock. I’ve noticed other sailors from out in the anchorage have found it too.

Thirst quenched, just as I was contemplating a dinghy ride back to Escape Velocity, I heard the most powerful, if not the loudest sound I’ve ever heard in my life. At first I thought those pain killers are powerful stuff, only to realize that it was melodic, like something from Close Encounters but played by Jimi Hendrix only with thousands of Marshal Amps turned up to eleven! No, not Purple Haze but…something like the first seven notes of When You Wish Upon A Star! It’s how the Disney boat calls its peeps back to the boat. They add another phrase as departure nears so that by end you better be on the boat. Cool.

Of course as twilight approaches, one by one, they do the dance of the hippos, gracefully backing out and leaving for the next port of call, of course with the Disney boat self-accompanied, lit-up twinkling like a city, all in line like elephants in a circus parade. I wonder where they’re headed next but I bet the store owners are already preparing for them.

Sadly, I got a big NO to my request to see the original record of my great-great-grandmother’s birth at the Cathedral of Sts. Pete and Paul here in Charlotte Amalie. My contact emailed me that the Monsignor “is in the process of trying to get the records preserved and until that time cannot allow anyone to handle the records.” This was after being told that a staff member would do the search and I asked just to be present to see. I’ve reiterated my request of course, but received no further response.

This is the first time in my 25 years of family history research that I’ve been denied access to original documents. I sat in a vault in the basement of a church in Philadelphia and paged with reverence through 225-year-old registries. In a city archive I was handed carefully wrapped books of 19th century handwritten court records and told to unwrap them; they would be rewrapped in fresh acid-free paper when I was finished. I’ve dug through archival boxes at historical societies, libraries, state repositories. Records are for a reason. They preserve names and events for posterity and that means they must be open and shared. To say I am disappointed is to not even scratch the surface. This place, this birth, this ancestor, Marianne Riou, represents a turning point in our family’s history that put us in one place rather than another, whose journey to Philadelphia from here meant her descendants are American rather than Haitian or French or West Indian, perhaps why we are white rather than black. I came a long way to see her birth record, not just in sea miles but in years of the painstaking, often tedious work of family research. I am crushed.

Several years ago I was working on Jack’s family and needed to get copies of some birth records from Romania. But Romania does not allow microfilming or photocopying of the records. They are available nowhere except in the official archives which you can visit in person with prior permission, but you will only gain access to those specific books and pages that you request ahead of time. Paging through a parish record to find the complete picture of a family is not allowed. In order to get the records we needed we had to write a letter to the government of Romania asking for specific records and giving our reasons for wanting them. The letter was then translated into Romanian and sent to the appropriate agency. We were granted permission through an agent who went to the archives, found the records we needed and the officials created an abstract of the record because no photocopying is allowed. We have never seen what the original looks like but just have a paper with the information and a lot of stamps and signatures on it.

So the Cathedral of Sts. Peter and Paul is like Romania and their attitude goes against the very purpose of archives. Archives are by definition old and many are delicate, especially in challenging environments like the Caribbean. But they are either preserved or not preserved. If they are not preserved they will crumble into dust one day all on their own whether someone looks at them or not. And it would have been nice to see Marianne’s baptismal record before they are lost forever while the Monsignor denies access to those of us seeking to interpret and share the stories they tell.

Well, remarkably the watermaker, which we thought had comprehensively blown up, had locked up by sucking air into the feeder pumps due to the violent motion of Escape Velocity on our long windward passage. The pressure gauge needle broke off because of metal fatigue and while we had the guy out on the boat he stopped some annoying leaks that had developed in some hard to reach places. Whew!

So we decided to blow the budget in a different way and get as much of the orange canvas finished as we could. Miss Janice’s canvas shop was recommended to us and she’s conveniently close, but still a rough and bouncy dinghy ride away. We’ve pulled the trigger on that long awaited project and while we’re at it the dodger had a few bad zippers near the instruments so we included that repair as well. With a third of the dodger off the boat we were feeling a little exposed during this morning’s rain storm.

We rigged this boom canvas in place of the side curtains. Thanks to Jim for passing on that piece of kit. We knew it would come in handy.

The new external sun covers are included in this project and it looks like the original covers are crumbling so we couldn’t have pushed this much longer. During squalls I’ve found them pealed back and ready to abandon ship!

Janice fixed up the dodger in a day and we got it reinstalled just in time for another rainfall.

A few years ago I was researching Jack’s family history and found mention in a distant cousin’s diary of “wine land near Vienna” that the family supposedly owned. We couldn’t find any other reference to it, and it’s become our persistent joke whenever we wish we had more resources to do the things we want to do: “Gotta find that wine land!”

Here in St. Thomas I’ve been digging through tax records to find where our various family groups lived and when. I found some success with one branch and with the help of Rob at the Caribbean Genealogy Library and some early maps Jack and I located the house my Liggett family lived in. It’s now a jewelry store in the middle of the main tourist shopping district in the oldest part of town. My heart went pitterpat to see the house my great great great grandfather was born in. How cool is that!

We also climbed the hill to Bluebeard’s castle, similar to Blackbeard’s castle, also built by the Danes as a lookout over the harbor. It’s now part of a hotel and not open for tours, but the significance for me is that our ancestor Alexander Liggett briefly owned it in 1856.

It was a very steep hot walk but the view was worth it. Escape Velocity with the yellow canvas is visible just to the left of the pirate ships.

Right across from where we’re anchored is a gathering of more or less permanent tented stalls of various touristy stuff, t-shirts, island clothing, handbags, jewelry and so on. On Saturdays there’s also a farmer’s market. The produce in the grocery stores is fairly good here but we definitely prefer buying from the growers. I managed to roust Jack early last Saturday to see what we could find at the market.

I bought the smallest wedge of West Indian pumpkin I could find and still it’s a huge amount. We had pumpkin quesadillas for Cinco de Mayo and it barely made a dent. The next night we had a lovely black bean and mango salad with rice and fried plantains. I’m open to any West Indian recipes you can share with me. Oh, and Jack did not buy any fish. You can take it up with him.

I’ve been in family history heaven this past week. St. Thomas is home to the Caribbean Genealogy Library, a wonderful repository of official records and local research projects where I’m hoping to answer some long-time questions, bridge some gaps and knock through some genealogical brick walls.

The library is volunteer-run and has limited hours so our days in St. Thomas are scheduled around when it’s open. After years of digital research I’m back to where I started, in front of a microfilm reader, this time plowing through early 19th century parish records, in French, looking for my great great grandmother’s baptismal record. These early records are rarely indexed and different scribes recorded the information in a different order so the only thing to do is go all zen-like and read every word.

I had an idea of an approximate birth date, 1818-1820, so I started in 1818 and worked forward. I got almost to the end of 1820 and was about to give up when a name caught my eye. Yes, there she was, my ancestor, Marianne Riou, recorded here as Claire Marie, a woman whose life story is legend in our family (you can read it here if you’re interested.) The record confirms her parents’ names, and with that I move back a generation in my research. For a family historian, this is huge.

As you can see, the microfilm is barely legible so we did what any researcher would do, go to the source. The Cathedral of Sts. Peter and Paul is farther than we’ve walked before and there’s a serious map deficit in this town but eventually we found our way.

I was pretty sure this was not the original building but I know my ancestor was baptized on this spot, and probably some of the art and accoutrements were here when she was here. Researching family history always makes me feel connected to everyone before me and sitting in this space gave me chills. After a while we went next door to the parish office and I talked to the person in charge of the archives. She told me the records are very delicate and she’d have to ask the Monsignor for permission to let me see them. It will take a few days. Fingers crossed.

Feast or famine. One minute we’re guarding our fresh water as if our lives depended on it, the next we’re sloshing it all over the cockpit in a belated cleanup from our very salty passage.

The watermaker folks were gone by lunchtime leaving us with a working system cranking out the gallons. A few hours later, before the tank was even full, the heavens opened up with a gorgeous cooling rain. I was ready for it and deployed my various containers under the sun awnings hoping to supplement the watermaker’s production. In under an hour I had captured thirty gallons of water, turned off the watermaker, topped up the tank and I still have fifteen gallons in jerry jugs that I’ll add to the tank when I do laundry tomorrow. Woo-hoo! Thanks again to Ron for showing us the error of our ways and pointing us toward rain catchment.