Cayman Islands – Founded upon the Seas – and Mahogany
by P. Ann van B. Stafford
The three Cayman Islands are located in the western Caribbean Sea, south of Cuba and some 270 miles NW of Jamaica. Grand Cayman is 76 square miles, Little Cayman 10 square miles and Cayman Brac 14 square miles.
Mahogany, West Indian Mahogany – Swietenia mahagoni is native to Florida and the West Indies, including the three Cayman Islands.
Cayman’s plants and history are woven together, like the wattles of Wattle and Daub houses.
Grand Cayman Land Grants
1734 – 1742
Mahogany – Swietenia mahagoni, Endangered.
1730s – 1740s The first formal land grants were made in Cayman, mainly to cut Mahogany. Mahogany furniture had become popular in Britain and Europe and Mahogany surpassed turtle as Cayman’s most valuable product.
West Indian MahoganySwietenia mahagoni (L.) Jacq.
Native to:
Bahamas, Cayman Is., Cuba, Dominican Republic, Florida, Haiti, Jamaica, Turks-Caicos Is.
Introduced into:
Andaman Is., Assam, Bangladesh, Caroline Is., China South-Central, China Southeast, Hainan, India, Laos, Leeward Is., Lesser Sunda Is., Marianas, Mauritius, Nicobar Is., Puerto Rico, Réunion, Taiwan, Thailand, Trinidad-Tobago, Venezuela, Venezuelan Antilles, Windward Is.
See below for more information about Big-leaf Mahogany, Honduras Mahogany – Swietenia macrophylla
The first Land Grants, made by the Governor of Jamaica in Spanish Town, Jamaica (1734 – 1742), were to cut Mahogany for export to Jamaica and thence to England.
1734 The first land grant was to Daniel Campbell, Mary Campbell (probably Daniel’s widowed mother) and John Middleton for 3,000 acres in the area between Prospect and North Sound.
House of Campbell and Middleton: between Hog Sty Bay and George Town Barcadere, somewhere in the vicinity of the present Butterfield roundabout, junction of North Sound Road and Esterley Tibbetts Highway.
In 1729 Daniel Campbell was granted 3000 acres in Westmoreland, Jamaica.
1734 Dec. 2. Battersby and Foster, two Jamaican merchants, made an agreement with John Bodden of Grand Cayman to take 8 male slaves to Grand Cayman cut Mahogany, in return for a quarter of the profits from the venture. John Bodden asked John Middleton for advice on the best place for lumbering.
1735 Battersby went to Grand Cayman, found the slaves working near the Great Sound at a place called Bodden’s Work. (A History of the Cayman Islands by Neville Williams 1970 p.17-18)
1735-1741 There was considerable informal settlement.
1741 Murray Crymble had a land grant of 1000 acres in Cayman. He was an absentee land patentee, a prominent Jamaican merchant, Receiver-General in Jamaica and extremely wealthy. He seems to have had mercantile dealings with Central America, including Roatán, one of the Bay Islands of Honduras.
1741 Samuel Spofforth, a wealthy absentee merchant, had a land grant of 1000 acres in West Bay. He was a prominent Bermudian shipowner. He cut Logwood (Haematoxylum campechianum), from Central America, for its dye, and also Mahogany, for its timber, from Cayman.
1741 William Foster had a land grant from the present centre of George Town south to Pull-and-Be-Damned Point, South Sound. Foster had become acquainted with this area of S.W. Grand Cayman during the 1730s, when he was in partnership with fellow Jamaican, Benjamin Battersby. They had an agreement to fell and cut Mahogany.
In 1745 William Foster of Kingston was granted 3000 acres alongside the Great River in Westmoreland, Jamaica.
1742 Mary Bodden, the final land grant of land of 1,000 acres, in the Newlands area, dated January 15.
1741-42 Land Grants A codicil stipulated that those who could prove, with two witnesses before a magistrate, that they had occupied, planted or felled trees within the granted land, could retain possession of that land, with 30 acres of adjacent woodland, provided that they took out a patent within two years. (Founded Upon the Seas, p.41)
1741-42 Land Grants – all grantees were to bring ten white servants into their plantation, regardless of how many slaves they owned. Walter / Watler may have come with Foster.
Surveyors:
Richard Jennings, from Bermuda
Thomas Newlands
1741 August Governor Edward Trelawney of Jamaica ordered Richard Jennings to survey Grand Cayman prior to grants of 1000 acres each to Spofforth, Foster and Crymble, to encourage settlement to defend from Spanish attack. Williams p.18
Thomas Newlands was a timber merchant. He surveyed Mary Bodden’s 1000 acres. Timber shipped to Jamaica via North Sound. Williams p.19
Problems of Land Tenure
It was Jamaican merchants who exploited the market for the hard woods in the interior, and the turtle trade.
Williams p.21
1739 -1748 Anglo-Spanish wars – War of Jenkins’ Ear
West Indian Mahogany tree in George Town, Grand Cayman
included Mahogany from Cayman.
Mahogany Furniture
Mahogany changed the British and European furniture industry.
Thomas Chippendale (1718-1779) was one of the leading cabinet-makers of the 18th. Century.
Rococo style was used in Chippendale’s designs of Mahogany chairs with intricately pierced slats and for elaborately carved furniture.
Thomas Chippendale (1718-1779) Biography, Furniture and Facts
What Materials are Used to Make Chippendale Furniture? | Laurel Crown
Probably one of the most distinguished British cabinetmakers of the 18th. Century, Thomas Chippendale launched a furniture style that is still one of the most sought-after antique furniture for collectors and admirers today. …. He was the mastermind behind a furniture style that was named after the artisan rather than the reigning monarch, which at that time was revolutionary.
Chippendale Mahogany Side Chair c.1760
An exceptionally fine 18th Century Mahogany Chippendale Side chair of superb colour and patina. The top rail crisply carved with scrolling leaf work and flowers, with finely carved tassel dropping from the centre. The superbly shaped pierced and carved interlaced splat flanked with roses. The well drawn cabriole legs are finely carved with an abundance of scrolls and curling leafs, terminating with a claw and ball foot. The carving extends from the shaped ear pieces at the top of the legs across the bottom of the front rail in a fine flower and ribbon pattern with punchwork to the background. A masterpiece from the pinnacle of the English chair making tradition,circa 1760
George III Mahogany library desk attritubed to Thomas Chippendale, c.1760. Sold for $168,750. Oct.17, 2017 at Christie’s in New York.
George III Mahogany breakfront bookcase by Thomas Chippendale, 1764. Sold for £2,057,250. on June 17, 2008 at Christie’s in London.
The English Mahogany Trade 1700-1793
by Adam Bowett November 1996
The Jamaica Trade: Gillow and the Use of Mahogany in the Eighteenth Century
By Adam Bowett
Mapping the Mahogany Trade in the 18th and 19th Centuries
Lecture by Adam Bowett, Yale University, November 2018
Furniture historian Adam Bowett outlines the development of the British and American mahogany trade from its tentative beginnings in the early 18th century to its climactic peak 150 years later. Bowett puts particular emphasis on the ways in which British colonial policy, combined with other commercial and economic factors, dictated the geographical spread of the trade, and considers the implications for current research on historic British and American mahogany furniture. Bowett has published widely in academic and popular journals and is the author of two books on English furniture.
Until 1760s over 90% of Mahogany imported to Britain came from Jamaica.
Cayman Exports
Mahogany, Fustic, Logwood, Turtles, Cotton and Silver Thatch rope were exported.
1764 third week of February – Mahogany carriers arrived in Kingston, Jamaica from Grand Caymanoes
50 ton brig Success
30 ton sloop Eagle recently captured and renamed
Together they unloaded 80 tons of timber at Kingston.
Their escort sloop also called Eagle carried 30 tons of Mahogany.
1764 April 15 ton Greyhound to Kingston from Grand Cayman with 15 tons of Mahogany
1765 Royal Navy officers Remark Books provide information about Cayman. HMS Active anchored off Grand Cayman. Captain Robert Carkett noted that there were about 20 families, most of whom cut Mahogany (Swietenia mahagoni) and Fustic (Maclura tinctoria) which were exported to Jamaica.
1768 March 30 30ton sloop Diamond arrived in Kingston from Grand Cayman with 400 ft Mahogany, 260 pieces of timber and 2 tons of Fustic, then set sail for Honduras in ballast.
Fustic – Maclura tinctoria, Family: MORACEAE, is native to the West Indies and continental tropical America. It was exported for its yellowish dye, known as fustic or khaki, which was extracted from the wood.
1765 Cayman – 2 Walter brothers married 2 Bawden sisters in Jamaica, parish unknown.
Waide Walter Snr, mariner, married Rachel Bawden
Stephen Walter, mariner, married Sarah Bawden
1765 William EDEN from Wiltshire, England (b.1737- d.1801), arrived in Grand Cayman from Jamaica
1770s Settlers produced cotton for export, and for their own consumption and passing vessels – corn, yams, sweet potatoes, plantains, melon, limes, oranges and other fruits and vegetables. A few people of considerable property between them owned half a dozen sloops and schooners – for turtling and trafficking to Jamaica
Cotton
Sea-island Cotton, Long-staple Cotton – Gossypium barbadense
Wild Cotton, Short-staple Cotton = Gossypium hirsutum
1773 Gauld survey map and notes, early settlers: population 450: “in all 39 families, consisting of at least 200 white people and above [the] same number of Negroes and Mulattoes.
21 families at Bodden Town (South Side), 13 at West End commonly called Hogsties (present day George Town), 3 at East End and 2 at Spot’s Bay.
Gauld map 1773
https://www.crouchrarebooks.com/maps/cayman-islands
1773 There was a triangular trade between Jamaica, Cayman and British Settlements in Central America, especially British Honduras (Belize) and along the Mosquito Coast.
1783 Memorandum and sketch map seized by Spanish authorities in Cartagena from Robert Hodgson Jr, British Superintendent of Mosquito Shore, who had been captured en route to England.
Reciprocal trade, between the British and Spanish colonies was continued, even though such trade was not formally permitted. Grand Cayman was an important relay station in this indirect trade. Some ships arriving in Kingston carried logwood, cocoa and sarsaparilla.
Cocoa, Chocolate tree – Theobroma cacao wasn’t grown in Cayman. It is native to continental tropical America.
Cocoa arrived in the British Isles in the 1650s, which was more or less at the same time as coffee. With Cromwell’s forces Britain took over the control of Jamaica from the Spanish. At the time cacao plantations were already flourishing there, and these became the main source of British chocolate.
Sarsaparilla – Smilax ornata = S. regelii is native to: Belize, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico Gulf, Mexico Northeast, Mexico Southeast, Mexico Southwest, Nicaragua.
It has been introduced into Jamaica.
Sarsaparilla root was used, historically, in the treatment of syphilis.
(Wire Wiss, Wiry Vine – Smilax havanensis is native to the Cayman Islands, Bahamas, Cuba, Florida and Turks-Caicos Islands.)
Wiry Vine – the leaves were crushed and the juice taken for Malaria.
Wilfred Kings, Report on the Botanical Collection: Plants of Reputed Medicinal Value –
1938 Oxford University Biological Expedition to the Cayman Islands.
Miskito Coast / Mosquito Shore of Nicaragua and Honduras
1787 Miskito Coast / Mosquito Shore of Nicaragua and Honduras evacuation by the British, to Grand Cayman via Belize, of 300 or so settlers including 250 slaves. The population was substantially increased and new cotton plantations were established.
Caribbean Mosquito Coast (or Miskito Coast)
Fustic – Maclura tinctoria
Fustic – Maclura tinctoria, is dioecious. Male and female flowers grow on separate trees. Fustic was exported for its khaki dye.
Logwood – Haematoxylum campechianum
1715 Logwood was introduced in to Jamaica by Henry Barham (father of Dr Henry Barham), Mesopotamia Sugar Estate, Westmoreland, Jamaica. The wood is ready to be cut into logs after 11 years, unlike Mahogany, which takes many years to reach maturity.
Logwood was introduced in to Grand Cayman, probably in the mid-eighteen century.
Logwood heartwood is red when freshly cut.
Logwood doesn’t float, Mahogany floats.
It has become invasive.
Description—The name of the genus comes from the Greek and refers to the blood-red colour of the heart-wood. Haematoxylon campeachianum is a crookedly-branched, small tree, the branches spiny and the bark rough and dark. The leaves have four pairs of small, smooth leaflets, each in the shape of a heart with the points towards the short stem. The flowers, small and yellow, with five petals, grow in axillary racemes.
Logwood and Brazilwood: Trees That Spawned 2 Nations
by Wayne P. Armstrong (Spring 1992)
Logwood – Haematoxylum campechianum
Brazilwood – Paubrasilia echinata synonym Caesalpinia echinata
Extract:
Brazilwood (Caesalpinia echinata)
There are European records of true red dyes during the Middle Ages, primarily from the heartwood of an Asian tree called sappanwood (Caesalpinia sappan). Sappanwood is native to India, Malaya and Sri Lanka, and is cultivated throughout the Asian tropics. The wood was imported into Europe since medieval times, but only in limited quantities. The dye was a beautiful red, the color of burning coals (in Old French and English “braise“) and was called bresil or brasil by the early Portuguese traders. In 1500, Portuguese ships discovered and claimed the Atlantic side of South America that straddled the equator and the tropic of Capricorn. This massive land was called “Terra de Brasil” and later Brazil, because of the dyewood trees (Caesalpinia echinata) that grew there in abundance. Like the closely related sappanwood, the valuable dye from brazilwood (called brazilin) became a popular coloring agent for cotton, woolen cloth and red ink. As with precious cargoes of gold and jewels, Portuguese ships loaded with brazilwood were favorite targets of marauding buccaneers on the high seas.
Logwood – Haematoxylum campechianum
Meanwhile, the Spanish had discovered another leguminous tree in Yucatan with a deep red heartwood very similar to brazilwood. The tree became known as logwood (Haematoxylum campechianum), and by the late 1500s Spanish ships were exporting large cargoes of the valuable heartwood from the Yucatan coast. At this time it was common practice for British privateers to attack and destroy the Spanish vessels. In his book British Honduras (1883), A. R. Gibbs describes one such privateer, a Captain James, who discovered that the debarked heartwood sold in England for the enormous price of one hundred pounds sterling per ton. English political economist Sir William Petty estimated that the average value of merchandise a ship of the 1600s could carry in a year was 1000 to 1500 pounds sterling. A single load of 50 tons of logwood was worth more than an entire year’s cargo of other merchandise!
There were other natural red and purple dyes used in medieval Europe, including
madder ,
carmine, Tyrian purple, and the lichen dyes orchil and cudbear. Like sappanwood, they were all imported from faraway lands and were very expensive. Since these animal and vegetable extracts were considered to be superior permanent dyes, many English dyers vigorously opposed the cheaper, imported heartwood dyes from Mexico and Central America. Between 1581 and 1662 an Act of Parliament strictly forbade the use of logwood for dyeing. Although anyone violating this law was subject to imprisonment or the pillory, some dyers apparently discovered the colorfast attributes of logwood and used it under other names.
Red Bay
Red Bay was so-called because the sea water was stained by Mahogany logs floating on the water, awaiting shipment to Jamaica.
The reddish-brown color is produced by carotenoid and anthocyanin pigments which are found in the
roots, stems, flowers, fruit, and rarely, in the leaves.
Cayman Islands Coat of Arms –
Motto: He Hath Founded It Upon The Seas
A Brief History of the Cayman Islands
by David Wells of the West India Committee
for the Government of the Cayman Islands
Big-Leaf Mahogany, Honduras Mahogany –
Swietenia macrophylla
Big-leaf Mahogany Swietenia macrophylla King
Native to:
Belize, Bolivia, Brazil North, Brazil Northeast, Brazil West-Central, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico Central, Mexico Gulf, Mexico Northeast, Mexico Northwest, Mexico Southeast, Mexico Southwest, Nicaragua, Panamá, Peru
Introduced into:
Andaman Is., Bangladesh, Caroline Is., Cayman Is., Comoros, Cuba, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, French Guiana, Haiti, Jamaica, Laos, Leeward Is., Marianas, Nicobar Is., Puerto Rico, Seychelles, Solomon Is., Thailand, Trinidad-Tobago, Venezuela, Venezuelan Antilles, Vietnam, Windward Is.
Big-leaf Mahogany, Honduras Mahogany – Swietenia macrophylla in the Dart Family Park, Grand Cayman. It was blown down by Hurricane Ivan in Sept. 2004.
Notes, References and Links
Cayman history, architecture, step-wells, house-shaped gravestones (grave markers) in Grand Cayman cemeteries, Cayman traditional arts and crafts. Catboats – local woods used catboat construction, Silver Thatch plaiting, gigs, calavans, paintings, Miss Lassie’s house, Wattle and Daub houses and the woods that were used in their construction.
1802 Lt. Governor Nugent Letters On The Cayman Islands
Corbet Report
1802 Grand Cayman Census
pp. 8-13
1656 Jamaica – The Settlers From Nevis
pp. 14-16, including Bowden
British Honduras, later called Belize
British Honduras: An Historical and Descriptive Account of the Colony From its Settlement, 1670
In the Eye of All Trade: Bermuda, Bermudians, and the Maritime Atlantic World, 1680-1783
by Michael J. Jarvis, 2010
In an exploration of the oceanic connections of the Atlantic world, Michael J. Jarvis recovers a mariner’s view of early America as seen through the eyes of Bermuda’s seafarers. The first social history of eighteenth-century Bermuda, this book profiles how one especially intensive maritime community capitalized on its position “in the eye of all trade.”
Jarvis takes readers aboard small Bermudian sloops and follows white and enslaved sailors as they shuttled cargoes between ports, raked salt, harvested timber, salvaged shipwrecks, hunted whales, captured prizes, and smuggled contraband in an expansive maritime sphere spanning Great Britain’s North American and Caribbean colonies. In doing so, he shows how humble sailors and seafaring slaves operating small family-owned vessels were significant but underappreciated agents of Atlantic integration.
The American Revolution starkly revealed the extent of British America’s integration before 1775 as it shattered interregional links that Bermudians had helped to forge. Reliant on North America for food and customers, Bermudians faced disaster at the conflict’s start. A bold act of treason enabled islanders to continue trade with their rebellious neighbors and helped them to survive and even prosper in an Atlantic world at war. Ultimately, however, the creation of the United States ended Bermuda’s economic independence and doomed the island’s maritime economy.
Merchants and Merchandise in Seventeenth Century Bristol
Bristol Records Society’s Publications
Vol. XIX
Appendix H p.286
Merchandise imported into Bristol 9 Nov. 1654 – 27 Oct. 1655
Cotton wool (Barbados, Nevis)
Fustic (Barbados)
Ginger (Barbados, Nevis)
Indigo (Barbados, Nevis)
Wild Indigo – Indigofera suffruticosa, native to the Cayman Islands
Indigo – Indigofera tinctoria, introduced into the Cayman Islands, native to the Old World, but now naturalized in most warm countries, formally cultivated as a source of Indigo dye.
Indigo was not exported from Cayman.
While used for one reason or another in ancient cultures for thousands of years, the dye became commercially valuable in the Western hemisphere at the same time that the Caribbean islands were being colonized by Europeans in the 17th and 18th centuries.
While short-lived, indigo production, along with tobacco, cocoa, coffee and ginger, dominated the plantation economies from Barbados to Hispaniola a hundred years before sugar and cotton would become the most lucrative crops in the region in the mid 1700s.
…. there is actually no blue color in any of these indigo-bearing plants. The green leaves (and sometimes stems) of “indigo” plants yield a yellow or greenish color that turns blue with the magic of oxidation, especially as induced by man.
Although the growing and harvesting of the plants was not particularly hard work, the processing was neither a pleasant nor healthy enterprise.
Lignum vitae (Barbados, Nevis)
Appendix I p.288
Merchandise imported into Bristol 29 Sept. 1685 – 28 Sept. 1686
From America and the West Indies
The Trade of Bristol in the Eighteenth Century
Bristol Records Society’s Publications
Vol. XX
Glossary p.192
Index of Persons and Places p.195
Index of Selected Subjects p.205
Bristol harbor, published c.1850, with ten sailing ships and rowing boats before the channel was filled in 1892–1938. Black and white etching showing the towers of St Stephen’s Church, St Augustine the Less Church and Bristol Cathedral,
Jamaican Family Search Geneaolgy Research Library Historical Background
Mahogany introduced into India
1795 Mahogany seedlings – Swietenia mahagoni, from Jamaica, were taken by the British to India and planted in the Botanic Gardens of Calcutta. The trees flourished, but several were destroyed in the great cyclone of 1864.
caymannature 