Rooms Without Doors

Copyright © 2016 by Ron Bonnick.

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Rev. date: 08/27/2015

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CONTENTS

Dedication

Introduction

Chapter 1

Chapter 2: Samuel Barrett of Cinnamon Hill

Chapter 3: Edward Barrett of Cinnamon Hill

Chapter 4: Edward Barrett Moulton-Barrett

Chapter 5: Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Chapter 6: Robert Browning (Poet)

Chapter 7: Peter Barrett Bonnick

Chapter 8: Some Other Barretts

Chapter 9: Rose Hall

Chapter 10: Newspaper Articles

Chapter 11: The Author’s Family

Bibliography

DEDICATION

T his book is dedicated to my grandfather Peter Bonnick of Round Hill and Stanmore districts in the parish of St. Elizabeth. He is the first one to give me insight into the great Barrett family, and he is one of the funniest storytellers of his time, 1875–1960.

INTRODUCTION

I t was not very long after my children arrived in the United States that the book Roots , written by Alex Haley went on the market. A movie was made called Roots , and I watched every chapter of it, and when it was concluded, I said to myself, How can I do the same thing with my ancestors? Sometime after this, two of my children came home from school and said that their homework involved the tracing of their ancestral lineage to the farthest point. This set off my intellectual machine into forward drive. I knew all my ancestors back to the fourth generation, but with their requests, I wanted to go much further. I knew that my great-grandmother’s maiden name was Barrett, and I always like to read poems by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, so I went to my library and looked her up but did not get anywhere, so I told them of all my great-grandparents down to them from four different angles. This satisfied the school for the homework assignment, but it did not satisfy my ego. The following week, I went to Strand Book Store on Broadway, in New York City, where my friend Mr. Bass was quite helpful. He sent me to an aged collection of books, and after one hour’s search, I found a book that contained the diary of Elizabeth Barrett Browning for the years 1830–31. I paid for it, and went back to work at the bank where I worked for many years. Before I left that bank I made sure to look at certain dates and occurrences, and bingo, I came to December 1831 during the slave rebellion in Jamaica under the leadership of Samuel Sharpe, now one of Jamaica’s national heroes. When I read that her father’s estate was not destroyed, I almost went ballistic. I did not know that her father was a Jamaican, born on the hillside overlooking the city of Montego Bay in the parish of St. James. My grandfather always said to me that all the Barrett family are one, and that most of them lived in St. James and Trelawny parishes. Those in St. Elizabeth always go to visit the other families all over the island because they always like to keep in touch from the days of slavery down to the present time. Putting everything in perspective, it was an eye-opener to me.

What was so important in Elizabeth’s diary, was the fact that her father had estates in several parishes such as St. James, Trelawny, and Westmoreland but his major estate was in the parish of Cambridge. There is no parish named Cambridge at present in the island of Jamaica, and so it has been for over 140 years. This author had to rock his memory back to sixty-two years when he was in the second grade at Newcombe Valley Elementary School. The teacher was giving a history lesson on the Morant Bay Rebellion, which took place in the parish of St. Thomas in 1865. Her name was Ina Wilson, the wife of a Methodist pastor, who was also manager of the school, and in 1943, when she gave the lecture, the school was still housed in the church building. She said that the rebellion took place twenty-seven years after slavery was abolished in Jamaica, and the poor people petitioned the governor, Sir John Eyre, for land. The white folks had all the arable land in Jamaica, and the freed slaves had none. They were supported in the House of Assembly by one George William Gordon who requested land for the poor people. A preacher named Paul Bogle took up the call for St. Thomas parish, while Gordon took it up islandwide. Gordon was the mulatto son of a Scottish planter and a black woman, and Bogle was the son of slaves.

When the rebellion broke out, Bogle headed the group, and they marched on the courthouse in Morant Bay asking for land to cultivate. Riot broke out, and some white people were killed by stones and machetes. The governor called out the militia and sent them in battle against some stone-throwing Negroes with machetes. He also summoned a British battleship in the port of Kingston to go to Morant Bay, and at the same time, he court-martialed Gordon and had him arrested. The trial was short, and without any evidence, he was found guilty and hanged within minutes after the fraudulent trial onboard the battleship. At the same time, the battleship turned its cannons on the people in Morant Bay at the instructions of the governor, and hundreds of black people, including women and children, were killed. The German custos of the parish was also killed by the rioters, and it is stated that eighteen white people were also killed. The name of the custos was Baron Von Kettleholdt.

The report of the killings angered Queen Victoria so much that she recalled the governor in disgrace and stripped him of his titles. Since most of the people who died were poor black people, and she knew that she was descended from the black Moorish King John of Portugal, which caused her to be very sympathetic to black people. She also welcomed the Emancipation Bill passed in the House of Commons in 1834 to free all black slaves throughout the British Empire. In the place of Sir John Eyre, that notorious barbarian bastard, she sent Sir John Peter Grant to replace him.

It was the work of Sir John Peter Grant, who came to Jamaica in 1866 as governor, that explains why there is no parish of Cambridge in Jamaica. I am now quoting as far as can be remembered from Ina Wilson about Sir John Peter Grant. She said, Sir John Peter Grant came to Jamaica in 1866, succeeding Sir John Eyre, who was recalled by Queen Victoria because of his actions during the Morant Bay rebellion in 1865. His best known works were: he extended the railway lines from Spanish Town to Old Harbor, and he reduced the twenty-two parishes to fourteen.

This is the statement the author remembered that made him give up on finding a parish of Cambridge. It is now understood that Cambridge parish was located in and around the place in St. James called Cambridge, where a railway station exists. When Elizabeth made it aware that her father owned estates in Jamaica, a new impetus was given to the author to locate the ancient Barrett family and to expose who they were. The questions now were who are the Barretts? Where did they originate? And how did they get to Jamaica?

After going through several books and documents at the College of Arms, located at Queen Victoria Street in London, and the island record office in Spanish Town, Jamaica, it was discovered that the family of Barrett was descended from the Vikings who marauded and plundered the west of Europe southward from Norway and Denmark. Most of them came from Norway. Some were picked up in Denmark and Holland and they were in part buccaneers who did not return to their homelands. They wanted warmer climates to settle down, so they went to England and France, and there they settled for a while. In the year 911, King Francis of France signed a treaty with the Vikings, giving them land called Land of the Northmen if they would not attack the capital of France. The Vikings agreed not to attack Paris, so they remained in France from that time onward. Some one hundred years after, that part of France became known as Normandy. From these amalgam of Vikings, the name Barrett appeared in a high position with William, Duke of Normandy, who became King of England in 1066, after the Battle of Hastings, when King Harold was defeated.

Just prior to this battle it is said that William boasted in the following quote, I am William, Duke of Normandy, grandnephew of Emma. The crown of England is mine. I demand it. I will take it by force. I have at my command sixty thousand men, a vast flotilla of boats nearby; the blessing of the pope is given me, I shall make my land flourish along the English coast. So help me God. With this boast, he was showing that he was related to Queen Emma of England who died and did not leave an heir to the throne. It seemed that a grandnephew was too far off to claim the throne, but William had other ideas.

When he attacked Britain with his forces, there was among them, a man by the name Ensign Barrett. The author tried to find the meaning of the word ensign and all he could come up with was a person of the rank of second lieutenant. However, further study showed that this was the first name by which he went. No matter which is right, the name was Ensign Barrett, and he was the first Barrett to live on English soil. He must have been very important to William, as after the battle and William the Conqueror was crowned King of England he gave to Ensign Barrett as a dowry the county of Cornwall. No one knew then where the boundaries of Cornwall were but Ensign Barrett settled at a place called Tregarne in Cornwall, and most of the modern Barretts traced their ancestry back to this place and to this man, even though no one heard of another famous Barrett until 1649. Nearly six hundred years had elapsed before anyone heard anything of another significant Barrett. Maybe the whole family for all those centuries was nothing more than inconsequential farmers who did nothing of note.

When the English Civil War broke out in the seventeenth century, and the parliament and King Charles I were at war against each other, there emerged a great leader of the parliament named Oliver Cromwell who was bent on overthrowing the monarchy. Some historians said it was to prevent King Charles from reestablishing Catholic rule in England, which was overthrown by Henry VIII and his daughter Elizabeth I. Some say it was the House of Commons who wanted supremacy over the king but this author says it was both of these reasons. Based upon the evidence, proven and otherwise, it could clearly be seen that the civil war was caused by these two foremost reasons, and several other insignificant ones.

Cromwell established what came to be called his Red Coat army, and Hersey Barrett Sr. became a lieutenant in this army. This is where Barrett importance became pronounced. When the war ended in 1649, with the capture of King Charles, a court martial was set up to try the king for treason. The significant names in this court martial for the island of Jamaica were Bradshaw (chairman), Blagrove, Wayte, and Harrison. These families came to Jamaica in 1655 with the expedition of Adm. William Penn (the father of William Penn, the founder of Pennsylvania) and General Robert Venables. They were fleeing England because they thought that Prince Charles, who was under the protective custody of King Philip of Spain, would one day return to England as king. They were right. In 1660, the restoration of the monarchy took place and Prince Charles was crowned as King Charles II.

Now when the court martial found the king guilty of treason, he was sentenced to death, but no one was brave enough to execute him. This is where fame or infamy came to the Barrett family. Lt. Hersey Barrett came forward and he wielded the axe that separated King Charles’ head from his body. From that time onward, all the court martial judges and Hersey Barrett were called regicides. This is the term used for killing the king, and some who took part fled the country, most of them to Jamaica, West Indies.

Most of the Barretts settled in the city of Port Royal, but Hersey Senior settled in Spanish Town. He lost a large portion of his family when the great earthquake struck in 1692, but this did not deter him from his main objective of becoming rich from the land. After his stay in Spanish Town, he left behind his name on a street that still bears his name in 2007. He went to the parish of St. Ann, where he established properties in the vicinity of Moneague Lake and named the property Albion, which at the time of writing was still owned by a Barrett. Albion is located near the small town of Alderton. He went on to the place that was to become St. James parish, and also acquired land there. Trelawny did not come into existence until his great-grandson told the governor where to set its border when it was cut from the parishes of St. Ann and St. James in 1773. Hersey also had land in Vere called Withywood Paradise Estate, and a large portion of what is now Monymusk were properties owned by the Barretts. The reason why Hersey Senior is so involved here is because he was the ancestor of the people who were later to become involved in the house that had two rooms without doors.

Now, Hersey had two sons. One named Hersey Junior, and the other was Samuel. Samuel, the second son, was the one favored by this father because he had the pioneering spirit just like his father. Hersey Junior was like a playboy, and did not see the importance of running from property to property. When he saw his father showing much more favor to Samuel, he changed his name from Barrett to Barritt. This last name continued until 1819 when all the family with that name changed it back to Barrett. As I will now say, the Barrett family was a close-knit one, and what hurts one hurts the other, but when they are fighting among themselves, strangers should keep out. There were many legal fights among the Barretts, at least one of which will be borne out in this book. While Samuel went to Withywood, Hersey remained in Spanish Town. Their father Hersey Senior was now dead and had left most of his properties to Samuel, who married Margery Green of Vere parish and had a son named Samuel Junior.

The Port Royal earthquake of 1692 devastated the island, but the Barretts in Withywood, Vere, were not affected personally except in the loss of their family. Many Barretts went under with the earthquake, and up to the present moment Port Royal has not recovered and will not recover because more than two-thirds of the city went under the sea. There are many fantastic stories about this earthquake, which are not appropriate for this book, but the economic and military consequences would be felt in the years afterward.

The French, upon hearing that the richest British city had been destroyed by the earthquake of 1692, began preparing an invasion force under Admiral DuCasse, who was stationed somewhere on the island of St. Dominique (Santo Domingo). In 1694, he invaded Jamaica from his fleet anchored off Rocky Point. Samuel Barrett Sr. was captain of the horse guard in Vere, so he took up the challenge and went into battle. He was ambushed by the French and was killed in battle, leaving Samuel Junior to take over the plantation in Withywood at the age of nineteen years. The French were subsequently defeated, but Samuel decided to pack up and head north. He would later become the father of the northside Barretts from whom most of the famous Barretts were descended. He settled in the parish of St. James and established his famous house at Cinnamon Hill, some three miles beyond Rose Hall Great House. His great house was started in 1722 and was completed in 1734, and later on, his son Edward did extensive expansion and repairs, and it was in one of these expansions where two rooms without doors are located, the reason for which will be explained in an appropriate chapter. Many famous people occupied this house when the last Barrett, John Charles Moulton-Barrett, sold it to get his brother Septimus out of debtor’s jail for money he owed to the tavern keepers. He drank himself into poverty just as some of his family are doing today. Young Samuel married Elizabeth Wisdom when she was fourteen years old. She had fifteen children (no twins) and died at age thirty but she would produce a son named Edward who was the progenitor of famous Barretts. He became so rich and so famous that when Jamaica was being cut into three counties he and his father saw to it that one was named Cornwall after the county in England from whence the Barretts came. When the name Edward Barrett of Cinnamon Hill was called, the governors of Jamaica always listened.

Edward Barrett was the son of Samuel Junior, who survived the French invasion of 1694. Of all those fifteen children his mother had, he emerged as the real estate kingpin of the family. As the eighth child, when his father died in 1760, he had acquired much more than his father under conditions similar to the robber barons of the United States. No one on the island of Jamaica had more slaves than he had (as a future chapter will show), and he did everything to remain on top. He was a great builder, and sometime in the 1760s there were two great hurricanes that took the roof of the great house twice. He feared for his family, so he built a hurricane shelter, which they called Cutwind, to protect his family should another hurricane remove the roof of his house again. He also built another mansion connected to the older one for his extended family.

In relation to his many slaves, he did something to the slaves that put the white slave masters in shock. He promoted a slave to that of overseer or busha on the largest of his properties, put him on a horse to ride with a modern saddle to oversee work done on that property. He gave him his own name, Edward Barrett, and white people thought that Edward Barrett of Cinnamon Hill was going crazy. The result at the end of each year proved that, that was the right thing to do. No slaves revolted on Barrett’s properties and sugar yield and production went up significantly. He also let his slaves work on the hilly land and produce foodstuff, which they sold, and despite everything, Barrett slaves were permitted to work hard in their field, sell the produce, and were given the opportunity to buy their own freedom.

From the Barrett family came all kinds and classes of people. We have the people who disciplined slaves as if they were demigods. The favorite one was Samuel Barrett of Cinnamon Hill, who beat his slaves into subjection and was one of those from whom some American slave owners copied methods of controlling their slaves. There were many who loved liquor so much, such as Richard Barrett from Greenwood Great House, who was twice the speaker of the House of Assembly in Jamaica, and died from an overdose of alcohol. One of the worst liquor men in the family was Septimus Moulton-Barrett, the brother of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, who drank so much liquor that his brother Charles John Moulton-Barrett had to sell three properties to keep him out of debtor’s jail. There were racist Barretts who loved to use the N-word, as well as the words tar brush, tar drums, tar barrel, and African monkey to describe black people. The author’s grandfather, Peter Bonnick, whose mother was Ellen Barrett, also used some of these words, especially in his old days when the superego could not control the subconscious mind. They all came out in a volley.

There were many who were Christian slave owners who made some of their slaves overseers, taught some to read, and were very kind to them. Some were slave traders, and had several ships engaged in the tripartite trade of taking sugar, rum, and indigo to England, then took manufactured goods to Africa in exchange for slaves, then back to Jamaica to sell their human cargo. Edward Barrett of Cinnamon Hill fulfilled all of the above. Since all the families had the same Christian names, they had to be specifically identified. This Edward Barrett is the son of Samuel Barrett of Cinnamon Hill, and is the great-grandfather of Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Elizabeth was such a common first name in the family that in her direct lineage she was the seventh from Hersey Barrett Sr., who came to Jamaica in 1655. A vast number of the males in this family loved Negro and mulatto women, especially two sons of Edward Barrett of Cinnamon Hill. Between the two were at least sixteen women of color, ranging from complete Negro to mulatto and quadroon. A mulatto is a cross between white and black. A quadroon is a cross between white and mulatto. There were about sixteen children between them. They were never married. They were in charge of the slave ships. Why I am emphasizing all this is because these two were the direct cause of rooms without doors.

This family was an intellectual one. It produced governors, generals, and all ranks of the British army were filled by Barretts. They were college professors and school teachers of every rank. Some sided with the abolitionists and some protected them. It was a Barrett who headed the West India delegation to the House of Commons and asked for the freedom of slaves throughout the British Empire. They were also falsely charged with encouraging the Sam Sharpe Rebellion in 1831. And when most of the sugarcane plantations were burned and none of the Barretts’ estate was touched, people accused them of collusion so that they could get a higher price for sugar on the London market since they had, as a family, the largest amount of sugarcane in Jamaica. Even though the charges seemed reasonable, it was not true, based on the evidence.

The planters did not like the Barretts even after slavery was abolished. They did something the planters hated. The slaves, in 1838, were paid sixpence per day and were driven from their homes on the properties on which they were slaves. The Barretts, in the days of slavery, allowed their slaves to cultivate the hilly land for themselves, sell the produce, and buy their freedom. After slavery, the slaves were allowed to stay on Barrett properties, where they lived and their salary was doubled to that of one shilling per day. This annoyed the other planters, and many people believed that the speaker of the House of Assembly’s liquor was poisoned the night he died. He was Richard Barrett, who headed the delegation to London. There was no post-mortem, so no one is sure of what took place.

The ensuing chapters will detail some of the exploits of the Barretts up to the time those rooms became doorless, and quite a few years afterward. In the opinion of the author, the Barretts are a unique family in the history of the world.

Most of the historicity of the story in this book was taken from two books. The one dealing with the Barretts came from the book The Family of the Barrett by Jeannette Marks. Any reference that came from this book and was not properly identified, the author is now giving full credit to her for anything that was not given to her. Most of the historical facts came from this book, so full credit goes to her if in case she was not credited in the foregoing chapters. Also, the facts about Robert Browning came mostly from his cousin Vivienne Browning, from her book My Browning Family Album. Any credit that may not have been given in the chapter about Robert Browning, the author is now giving credit to any statement made in the chapter or chapters without the proper credit.

I am now doing so because authors have a way of reading several books and have some lines stuck in their heads and write these without remembering from whence they came, and therefore, the proper credit was not given. So in this case, I am making sure that no such thing occurs. I have been through so many volumes on my family that there could be many things in my head without me knowing from whence they came. So at this time, I am giving credit wherever it is due if I did not give the proper accreditation. However, if there are similarities between what my family told me and that told by any historian, I am sticking to my family’s traditions.

CHAPTER 1

T he story of Rooms without Doors is based upon the personality of Edward Barrett of Cinnamon Hill. He will take up a whole chapter and more by himself. Before we come to him, it will be wise to look backward in time to examine who were these Barretts before him and how they came into prominence. His great-grandfather Hersey Barrett Sr. was a lieutenant in the British Army, and he hailed from the county of Cornwall, England. His family settled in two places in Cornwall known as Saltash and Tregarne.

Before Hersey Barrett and his selected descendants are examined, a look back at where he came from would be encouraging. The earliest record of anyone with the name Barrett was the year 1066. William of Normandy made claim to the English throne, claiming to be the grandnephew of Queen Emma, who ruled as Queen of the Anglo-Saxon with her husband Ethered II (the Unready), 1014–1016. She was the aunt of Robert II (the Devil), Duke of Normandy; and William, Duke of Normandy, is his son. This William defeated King Harold of England in 1066 and became known as The Conqueror. His claim to the throne of England was based on fraud and brute force. He declared he had sixty thousand men at his command, a vast flotilla of boats, and that the blessing of the pope was given to him in order for him to conquer England. Most of these men of Normandy were descended from the Vikings. They came from Denmark, Norway, and Sweden seeking warmer climes. They occupied a part of France they called Land of the Northmen. In the year 911 AD, King Francis of France made a treaty with them to stay where they were and not to invade Paris, the capital. He even expanded their boundaries in the name of peace, and this land subsequently became known as Normandy.

Among the sixty thousand men that he had under his command was a man by