Bad gyal Eva

During my genealogy research, I discovered an ancestor named Eva.  When Eva was a teenager, she got pregnant for her aunt's husband, who was 49 years old at the time, and proceeded to have ten children for him.  They eventually got married when Eva was 40 years old and he was 70 years old, and he died two weeks after the marriage.

Why did it take so long for them to get married?   Did the wife not want to grant a divorce?  Or were husband and wife still living together?  I have yet to find out what became of the wife (Eva's aunt).  I have found no record of her death.  The investigation continues.

Finding your ancestors in Jamaica, West Indies

Some of the difficulties of genealogy research using Jamaican records

Some people’s surnames on their birth certificates are different from the ones they were known by, which makes tracing Jamaican ancestors difficult.  When I looked at some birth certificates, I noticed a pattern in the registration.  In Jamaica not so many years ago, if the parents were not married, the father’s name was not entered on the birth certificate. That section was left blank, even if it was the father who was registering the child’s birth. The mother’s surname was entered as the child’s last name. That is why so many older people had a problem finding their birth certificate, because they were requesting it using their father’s surname.

However, if a person is given his/her unmarried mother's surname on the birth certificate, when that person dies, the name on the death certificate would have the father's surname, because that is the name the person would have been using since birth.  This really creates a problem when searching.

Difficulties encountered when a baby is born in a hospital

If a baby was born in a hospital and the parents were not married, the section for home address was left blank. The lack of a home address makes it difficult to identify the mother, because there are usually several people with the same first and last names.  It’s always good to see an unusual name, and even then there would be other people sharing that name.

To further compound the difficulty, sometimes the child born in a hospital was not named right away, so the space for name was left blank.  The section for informant of birth is usually a help in identifying a particular family, as sometimes it would be a family member who registered the baby’s birth, and the name of the person and the relationship to the child was noted in the section for Informant of the birth.  When a baby was born in a hospital, the person who registered the birth was the Chief Resident Officer of the hospital. So just imagine a case where the space for the baby’s name is blank, there is no home address for the mother - the space is blank, and there is no family member registering the birth.  To top it all off, the mother has a very common name.

If the parents were married, the father’s home address was entered on the birth certificate.

Occupation of mother

If the parents were not married, and the mother was a housewife, that information was not entered on the birth certificate. I think the reasoning was that you cannot be a housewife if you are not a wife, so the mother’s occupation was entered as one of three things -  washerwoman, domestic servant, or labourer. Unless you were from the upper strata of society.

Women were really treated less than, and I am surprised that it was allowed to go on for so long.

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Map of Jamaica

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The Story of Evadney

Evadney was my grandmother's best friend.  She and my grandmother were married to two first cousins.  They lived within walking distance of each other in Kingston, Jamaica.  My mother used to tell me that when she was a child, Evadney would sometimes come and ask for her to spend the day.  Evadney had four sons and no daughter.

Sometimes when Evadney picked up my mother, she would ride the bus with her, and when the bus got to the terminal she did not get off, but would ride it back.  This would go on for several trips.  During the bus ride, Evadney would sit silently, staring out the window.  My mother said she thinks Evadney suffered from depression.

Genealogy is one of my hobbies, so I decided to do a report on the family of Evadney and her husband (my grandfather's cousin), to extend my family tree.  First, I searched for the children's birth certificates, to make sure I got the names and date of birth accurate.  When I read the names to my mother, she said that could not be right.  Evadney had only four children, all boys, and she should know as she was very close to them growing up.  I just named eight children, and she knows nothing of those extra four, two boys and two girls.  The records showed that all eight children were born very close together, a year apart in most cases, and the four children unknown to my mother were born before the four that my mother grew up with.

Well, the record of the births were there, eight children born to Evadney and her Chinese born husband, who I will refer to as L.S.  I thought maybe the first four children died right after they were born.  Unfortunately, I could not find their death records, since FamilySearch had not yet published all of the death records for Jamaica, so I decided to google their names to see what I could find.

When I googled the names of the children, imagine my surprise to see the names of three of the four children appear at the Ellis Island website.  They were registered at Ellis Island, having arrived in New York from Kingston, Jamaica on a ship, in transit to Hong Kong, China.  The second child, a boy, was all of 2 years and 9 months old.  The third child, a girl, was 1 year and 8 months old.  When I checked the passenger list for the ship, I saw the name of an adult with the same last name as the babies, and he was listed as the guardian for the children.  It appears that L.S., the father of the children, was sending them to China, where his relatives would raise them in the Chinese culture.

The fourth child, a boy, was only 9 months old at the time, so I guess that is why he did not make that trip.  However, the following year, almost to the day, he was registered at Ellis Island, in transit to Hong Kong and travelling with his father, L.S.  The baby was 1 year and 9 months old.

I have since found a death certificate for baby #1, who died when she was 9 months old.

Evadney was pregnant when the last baby was taken away, because baby #5 was born three months after her husband left with baby #4.  He would not have stayed long in Hong Kong, because he had a business here in Jamaica to take care of.  Babies #6, 7 and 8 were born in quick succession.

My grandmother would have known about the babies, since she and Evadney were best friends, plus they lived within walking distance of each other.  Evadney and L.S. stayed married for over fifty years until he died.

One important piece of information from this whole saga, is that on the birth certificates of babies #5, 6, 7 and 8, held at the Registrar General's Department, is a note which states "No certified copy of this entry of the birth is to be issued, except on the order of a court".  It seems that Evadney finally got the courage to try and save her remaining children, by going through the court.  Without a birth certificate, there could be no passport.  Without a passport, the children could not be taken from Jamaica.  That's how Evadney ended up with four children instead of none.
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Ellis Island

Jamaica's Coat of Arms

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