Myron Jackson

Editor's Note: The following segment was transcribed from a slide presentation and narration on Virgin Islands neighborhoods made by Mr. Myron Jackson during the course of the Summer Institute on Virgin Islands Culture, July '93. We recommend it be read as a supplement to the Moolenaar piece on Savane and the earlier interviews on life in the yard or among the folk of our islands. If class time permits at some point Mr. Jackson or a person of his qualifications with his photographic and artistic collection should be invited to make a similar presentation before Virgin Islands schoolgoers.

The population we're talking about in Savaan, we're talking about artisans--for example, if you've read the letters of Alton Adams when he goes back and he talks about the family living in Savaan and the occupations: his father worked in ship repairs and his mother, who was a tailor, a seamstress. And they talked about life in Savaan during the late eighteen, early nineteen hundreds. Many of the coal workers--since Savaan was really the center for the African population on St. Thomas, that was the place like how Tutu is today. That is where you found the majority of Black Virgin Islanders living. Many of the coal workers were from that area. And the West Indian Company Dock and Hassel Island they [the workers] would go . . . and Signal Hill was very important, which was visible from Savaan, which would tell them the nationality of the boat that was coming in.

If they were going to haul coal for a German ship they would look at the Signal Hill, and that would tell them--the balls and their location--tell them what nationality. So, from that the merchants would leave their homes, open up either for goods coming in, or the coal women and coal men would go to the Kings Wharf or West Indian Company, depending on where they were coaling their ship.

Sprauve: I have a question . . . The area that includes Frenchman Hill. Now, let us look at the claim that Savaan became the place where freed Blacks lived. There is more to the real story of Savaan. There was a place there they used to call Tortola Yard, where you used to go buy coal, right? I feel that there's maybe an area we're glossing over, in terms of stratification in Savaan. I don't know if it's being treated. There was a freedmen's presence there, but then there was also this grassroots people, and we know that in later years, in the early years of this century that Savaan was essentially a place where many people from Tortola, hard working . . .

Jackson: I'm getting there . . .

Sprauve: OK, I'll just wait . . .

Jackson: I want to point out some areas of interest which . . . Dr. Sprauve talked about Frenchman's Hill. It's interesting since today we were meeting, because Public Works is about to launch a street-naming project, so we were trying to define where certain streets' colloquial names are identifiable to those particular streets. For instance some streets have . . . one street may be Dronnigen's Gade and it may have two sections. Let's take Seventh Day Street, for example. Seventh Day Street is Dronnigen's Gade to the east and west, including Polyberg. Seventh Day Street is from the beginning of Seventh Day Street to the stop light. And Polyberg starts from the opposite side, from Jefferson School, go over the hill, but that's all Dronnigen's Gade. So we were trying to get Public Works to be sensitive enough to the project that identifies areas like that.

This is the Frenchman Hill area [showing on chart]. [Answering a question from a participant:] Dronnigen's Gade, Kings' Quarter is Seventh Day Street. And Seventh Day Street . . .

Olive: It extends to the top of Polyberg Hill?

Jackson: No, it doesn't. It stops at the stop light. And Polyberg starts on the opposite side of the street.

Olive: In essence, Seventh Day Street is nothing legal?

Jackson: The legal name for the street which the properties carry, is Dronnigens Gade. But, we of course give our local names to these streets

Olive: ...Goat Street?

Jackson: Now, Goat Street is Prindsens Gade . . . When we talk about areas--and Dr. Sprauve raised a very important question. And that is, what were the areas, what was Savaan like in the various periods? To deal with the seventeen hundreds, the whole area we are talking about is in this area here [demonstrating on map]. If you notice, there's a cemetery right here. This is Jorde Gade, meaning Jew Street. There was a very strong Jewish presence. Frenchman's Hill, Catholic, French Huguenots. A very strong influence. And they even had a hospital, I think in this building, one of these buildings here. This area is comprised of three groups in the seventeen hundreds, going into the eighteens. Free Blacks, Jews and Catholics. Those were the three groups that Danes tolerated and allowed some upward mobility to some extent in the society. And when I say that, meaning, for example, for the Jews and the Catholics, they were not permitted to build their church or synagogue, but were allowed to worship in the privacy of their homes. They were tolerated to that degree. Many of these buildings here, once you go to the east of these lots, which is very important when you start to talk about genealogy and family histories in these islands and the movement of people. For, cemeteries are one way you can trace a people and find out from the tombstones . . . next would be the properties, property ownership. So when you start to go back to the property ownerships or briefs you will deal with the late seventeen, early eighteen hundreds. But most of our records are not available from the seventeen hundreds. You will find ...anytime after eighteen forty for most of these properties you'll find names, and it's very difficult to identify if you don't know the family line, whether you're talking about White families or you're talking about Black families, or you're talking about families that were mixed. But we know for the most part in this area, that there are many families who come from that mixture, whether they be Jewish and African--and Jewish doesn't necessarily mean that it was White either.

The Frenchman Hill area, this was a very aristocratic area, on this hillside here (and Dr. Sprauve could give you a little history on their family property and the purchase of that property by his father and how that changed hands.) So, gentrification, so to speak, in this area has changed it and would still change it, because it has really up to this day been a place where new immigrants to these islands--and I don't like to use those terms: immigrants and stuff, but newcomers to the islands. Savaan continues to be that place. If you go through there today, for example, you will hear music and the people of Santo Domingo. You will hear Haitians. You will hear people from the Eastern Caribbean. [The tendancies] continue today.

Back in the early nineteen hundreds this was a place where many Tortolians took refuge whether they came . . . in those days immigration was not as difficult . . . and people came through Red Hook and sometimes even walked to Town, to a family member or a friend that they came to in Savaan.

Very narrow streets, made for walking and horse and buggies, donkeys. Had a well organized system of lots and many of these lots are in today standards, even back then, they were very small. The buildings front the street. It was required that all properties carry a legal address. This has General Gade, the lot number and the quarter. So you'll find that on it. Building materials: of course in this area were permitted in wood, even we find shingle. Before galvanize was introduced, shingle roofing was customary for these buildings. Shingle sidings. Many of the buildings because of the fire code, many of the property owners got fire insurance. This is one early company here, the Sun Insurance. This is a company still in operation. You notice the requirement of a black print and white lettering. This is on Pile Straade. Most of the buildings are hip roof, and these are single family homes . . . the multiple family are longer; they're usually on a different lot. Cooking and everything--the family activity--took place in the rear of the lot. And many of the larger lots would sometimes have tenement housing to the rear, and what I mean by that is the owners would sometimes build some small cottages in the back and lease out, rent out rooms, one or two rooms or several rooms, just like people do today, people did back then. A source of income for many families in this area. The cook house was usually separated, a separate structure, where the larger structures, like on Frenchman Hill, for instance, those kitchens were a lot more elaborate and usually connected to the house, even though it might be detached in some way.

Cooking, doing the laundry, storytelling, many of those traditions that are deep-rooted in African traditions. For example, the sweeping of the ground every morning at five thirty to six o'clock, many of us remember it as children either as having to do it or we remember the women in the household with the younger members of our families doing that.

(This is a village in Tumu which I went to visit in Canton, a family clan in Tumu. And it struck me in many ways as a place I was very familiar with in terms of what the yard is to us.)

The yard also was a place where our children learned to use various tools. I was moved by this toy, which is a Heinekin beer can and a vegetable can which were opened by the seam and smoothed. As children our yard was an extension of our play area. And this is a beautiful toy. Some people look at it and discard it, but the child uses his resources, his resources from his environment, and of course there is no Woolworth's, Pueblo and Grand Union, and so many of our children . . . our children growing up.

It also is a place where we played our games. Warri is just one. There are many ring games, children games, storytelling by our grandparents or the community storyteller.

The shingle siding is the earliest type you would find, and then the lapboard siding came about later. You'll notice all of these houses front the street. And there is usually a building or lot, some area left for the things that we don't do in the house. There is a cemetery associated--a Jewish cemetery--across from this. This is Jode Gade, meaning Jew Street, and it's connected to the Synagogue which is the second oldest in the Western Hemisphere.

When we talk about the history of a lot I want you to keep in mind that

. . . I'm talking about lots as they connect to this community and they connect to our history. And these lots that are in this vicinity in Savaan was a small Jewish community. And they lived in Savaan with their families, and they probably did not have a synagogue at that time. Later on they built a synagogue and the connection to this synagogue to the Virgin Islands is a connection to Spain, because it was a Sephardic synagogue. And what does that mean? In terms of the history of Spain? That [goes] back to the Moors. And the Moors ruled Spain for several hundred years. And it was only through Isabel and Ferdinand defeating the Moors that led to the voyages of Columbus. So in a very big way this little area called Savaan has a very, very rich history. And the meeting together of religions, culture, races we are products of. (And this is in Spain. And this is the Great Mosque in Cordoba, which was converted to a church.)

The craftsmen that built these structures came out of the tradition of one generation to a next. They made furniture, some of them made from the mahogany wood that was available, the tropical hardwood . . . this is Mr. Broome whose father was a carpenter and who built houses. These houses were built with the technology we call mortise and tenant. This is a building we restored recently that was on our family property on the lot. Very small cottage. As you notice, everything is connected: all these beams are connected by pins. Very few nails in there, with the exception of the siding that goes on and the nailing or screwing in of the galvanize on the roofing.

For the most part we discard these houses for various reasons. One, wood is a symbol of poverty. That to say you have arrived in a society, you've made it, a concrete structure is preferred. So, we are losing these wooden structures on these lots. Tortola, the connection of Tortola in terms of many of the merchants, the farmers sending their produce or coming to St. Thomas with it to sell their good. (Much of the Virgin Islands population on St. Thomas has deep roots on Tortola. That goes back several hundred years, and Tortola has provided food to this community for several hundred years. The movement of Africans, whether it was slaves or free Blacks to the Virgin Islands, was a very extensive one, and Savaan had its role as providing shelter and homes and a community for many Tortolians.

The market place which is not too far...from Savaan--and Savaan has grown over the years; some people, like the area I showed before, the older ones say "That's Savaan!" and some people today claim Savaan from seventy-five corner by the Catholic Church up is Savaan today. But Savaan has grown. So its boundaries over the past two hundred years have expanded east, west, north and south.

The market square was a commercial center and the women were the dominant characters in the market square. This is today Rotschild Francis Square, who came from the Savaan area, and the square was named in his honor because he was a political activist and we claim that he is the father of the organic act. This is the tenement housing that Dr. Sprauve made reference to in terms of Tortolians. Many of these structures were built to provide housing for the Virgin Islanders or immigrants and that each door and window is really just a room, a front room, and then there would be a divider gave some kind of privacy for a bedroom, and then cooking was done to the rear of the property. And this is one of the last of these long rows to this length. It's quite an impressive length. Running almost the whole length of the block. This lot is owned by one family, so that the family that owned the lot lived in this main house and rented out rooms to the rear of the property. This is also a tenement house and each . . . usually the stairs would tell you how it was divided: window, door, window, door, window, door. Probably three families lived here. Many of the structures are now being replaced by concrete houses. Some sensitive [to] and continuing a vernacular architecture. Louvered windows replace shutters and jealousy windows, for example. And these monstrosities that we are building--concrete jungles--that are out of scale to our old neighborhoods and their character and in many cases really destroy the . . . setting of our old neighborhoods.

So, the challenge to you that I bring this evening is: How do we go about preserving our buildings and preserving the history? And how do we make these buildings live again through new construction [that we make] relevant for our children. [It is] the question: whether we restore these buildings even though they may not serve the intention that they were intended [for]. They could be efficiency apartments. They could be many things other than us losing them. And that symbol, for example, the "Committee To Revive Our Culture" has used, the symbol of the vernacular cottage which is very much part of the landscape of the Caribbean.

DISCUSSION: Mr. Jackson's presentation [which was enhanced by a large collection of slides] is offered here as a backdrop for the Moolenaar article on Savanne and the narrative discussion of Eunice Sprauve that preceded the Moolenaar piece. The main points made relate to:

1. The community's early mercantilistic orientation and how it impacted on ethnic groups and sectors within the laboring class. Students should be able to identify the main ethnic and laboring groups mentioned and relate each to some physical structure or feature on the Virgin Islands cultural landscape even if it is only residual in siginificance today.

2. Official versus vernacular practices in street-naming. Can students gave three examples of dual names for streets or places on their island of birth?

3. Cohabitation along religious lines in the greater Savanne area, reflecting Danish policy on foreigners and their religions. Can students name the groups identified here. Can students speculate about the absence of Moravians and Lutherans in this list, though both groups are present early in the colony's history?

4. The Tortola element in Savanne's history. Students should describe at least one way that Tortola migrants "came through the window."

5. Vernacular dwellings and issues related to preservation. What are Mr. Jackson' s major concerns?