RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Perched on a windswept hill­side along a dirt track off Canaan Road, La Ro­maine, three weath­ered tombs stand qui­et­ly be­neath trees, their stone walls and fenc­ing stur­dy de­spite the forces of na­ture.

For decades, they have re­mained large­ly un­no­ticed by the ma­jor­i­ty of cit­i­zens. Yet these graves mark the fi­nal rest­ing place of mem­bers of the La­m­ont fam­i­ly, whose es­tates helped shape the de­vel­op­ment of Palmiste and neigh­bour­ing com­mu­ni­ties dur­ing Trinidad’s sug­ar era.

The bur­ial site, hid­den be­hind over­grown veg­e­ta­tion, con­tains the tombs of broth­ers Boy­don and John La­m­ont and their nephew, Sir Nor­man La­m­ont, the Scot­tish Laird of Knock­dow. Born in Scot­land in 1869, Sir Nor­man in­her­it­ed the fam­i­ly’s Trinidad es­tates be­fore dy­ing here in 1949 at the age of 79.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia, Palmiste His­tor­i­cal So­ci­ety pres­i­dent Ter­rence Hon­ore said the ceme­tery is one of the area’s most sig­nif­i­cant his­tor­i­cal land­marks and should form part of a wider her­itage project doc­u­ment­ing Palmiste’s plan­ta­tion his­to­ry.

Ac­cord­ing to Hon­ore, the La­m­onts ar­rived from Knock­dow, Scot­land, dur­ing the ear­ly 19th cen­tu­ry and es­tab­lished a net­work of es­tates that in­clud­ed Palmiste, Cedar Grove and Canaan.

He said Sir Nor­man in­her­it­ed the plan­ta­tions in 1907 and lat­er di­ver­si­fied the es­tate be­yond sug­ar cul­ti­va­tion. He al­so served on the Board of Agri­cul­ture, sat on the Leg­isla­tive Coun­cil and even­tu­al­ly be­queathed Palmiste Park to the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go.

One of the fam­i­ly’s best-known sto­ries, Hon­ore said, is the death of Sir Nor­man.

He said pho­tog­ra­phers had gath­ered at the es­tate to take Christ­mas card por­traits of Sir Nor­man with his prize Ze­bu bull, Adam, when the an­i­mal sud­den­ly at­tacked him. The el­der­ly es­tate own­er was re­port­ed­ly thrown in­to the air sev­er­al times be­fore es­tate work­ers in­ter­vened. He died two days lat­er at the Colo­nial Hos­pi­tal in San Fer­nan­do.

Hon­ore said the firearm used to put down the bull re­mains in the pos­ses­sion of a mem­ber of the Sinanan fam­i­ly and is re­gard­ed as one of the sur­viv­ing arte­facts from the es­tate.

To­day, lit­tle re­mains of the once-ex­pan­sive plan­ta­tion land­scape be­yond the ceme­tery, the Cedar Grove Es­tate chim­ney, traces of the for­mer rail­way route, plan­ta­tion lands and the near­by Heart-Shaped Pond.

Hon­ore hopes these land­marks can one day form a her­itage trail an­chored by a mu­se­um and in­ter­pre­ta­tion cen­tre where pho­tographs, arte­facts and oral his­to­ries col­lect­ed from long-time res­i­dents can be pre­served.

“The need to pre­serve this area is crit­i­cal,” Hon­ore said. “It is in­cum­bent up­on the au­thor­i­ties and the peo­ple who know this his­to­ry to en­sure it is not lost.”

Sto­ries hand­ed through gen­er­a­tions

For res­i­dents, Palmiste’s his­to­ry ex­tends far be­yond old build­ings and for­got­ten graves.

Aki­no Charles, who lives a short dis­tance from the La­m­ont ceme­tery, grew up ex­plor­ing the site.

“We used to come here and eat man­goes,” he re­called with a laugh. “We nev­er saw any jumbie. We just used to have a lot of fun.”

Charles said old­er res­i­dents of­ten spoke about Sir Nor­man’s prized bull and be­lieve a near­by grave­stone marks where Adam was buried af­ter fa­tal­ly gor­ing the es­tate own­er, al­though that sto­ry has not been in­de­pen­dent­ly ver­i­fied.

To him, pre­serv­ing Palmiste means pro­tect­ing the sto­ries that have been passed from one gen­er­a­tion to the next.

“Palmiste has a her­itage to pro­tect,” Charles said. “If we lose these places, we lose the sto­ries that make this com­mu­ni­ty what it is.”

He point­ed to an­oth­er re­minder of the area’s plan­ta­tion past—a heart-shaped pond cre­at­ed by the Philippe fam­i­ly, for­mer own­ers of the neigh­bour­ing Philip­pine Es­tate.

A liv­ing link to

plan­ta­tion life

Among the peo­ple keep­ing Palmiste’s his­to­ry alive is 103-year-old John Moose, whose mem­o­ries stretch back to the es­tate’s fi­nal decades.

The cen­te­nar­i­an said he be­gan work­ing on Palmiste Es­tate when he was about 12 years old, earn­ing six cents a day un­der es­tate man­ag­er John C Au­gus­tus.

De­spite the mod­est wages, Moose re­mem­bers the es­tate as a place where fruit trees were plen­ti­ful, and neigh­bours looked af­ter one an­oth­er.

He laughed while re­call­ing the day hunger got the bet­ter of him, and he picked two grape­fruits from an es­tate tree.

“I thought I had lost my work,” Moose said. “But he told me to suck the fruit and con­tin­ue work­ing.”

He de­scribed Au­gus­tus as firm but fair.

“Au­gus­tus nev­er per­se­cut­ed peo­ple for steal­ing,” Moose said. “He would work them for six cents a day on the es­tate.”

Life in the es­tate bar­racks, he added, was close-knit.

“It was a home en­vi­ron­ment,” he said. “Every­body looked out for one an­oth­er.”

An­oth­er long-time res­i­dent, Amar Singh, re­mem­bers dis­cov­er­ing the Au­gus­tus tomb while play­ing crick­et as a boy.

“For me, this area has her­itage,” Singh said. “It should be pre­served as a his­tor­i­cal site.”

Un­earthing Palmiste’s past

While res­i­dents pre­serve Palmiste’s his­to­ry through mem­o­ry, ar­chae­ol­o­gists have been un­cov­er­ing phys­i­cal ev­i­dence be­neath the ground.

Re­cent re­search in­volv­ing the Palmiste His­tor­i­cal So­ci­ety, the T&T Na­tion­al Trust, the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (St Au­gus­tine) and North­west­ern Uni­ver­si­ty has com­bined ar­chae­ol­o­gy, archival re­search and oral his­to­ry to doc­u­ment how the for­mer Palmiste Es­tate func­tioned and how labour­ers lived.

In­ves­ti­ga­tions at Palmiste Park un­cov­ered the re­mains of work­ers’ homes, frag­ments of ce­ram­ics, glass bot­tles, coal pots and wa­ter jars.

Re­searchers al­so found ev­i­dence of a black­smith’s forge, in­clud­ing horse­shoes, nails and a ham­mer, sup­port­ing oral ac­counts that one once op­er­at­ed near the Heart-Shaped Pond.

Else­where, ar­chae­ol­o­gists un­cov­ered the re­mains of a 19th-cen­tu­ry struc­ture con­tain­ing im­port­ed ce­ram­ics dat­ing to the ear­ly 1800s and a clay oil lamp still in its orig­i­nal po­si­tion.

Brick align­ments, path­ways and con­cen­tra­tions of arte­facts sug­gest the re­mains of a much larg­er plan­ta­tion set­tle­ment be­neath what is now a pub­lic park.

Archival records from the Na­tion­al Archives and UWI’s West In­di­ana Col­lec­tion have al­so helped re­searchers re­con­struct the his­to­ry of Palmiste Es­tate and its as­so­ci­at­ed prop­er­ties, in­clud­ing Cedar Grove and Philip­pine Es­tates.

Hon­ore be­lieves those dis­cov­er­ies strength­en the case for pre­serv­ing Palmiste’s re­main­ing land­marks and de­vel­op­ing com­mu­ni­ty her­itage tourism.

He said the ceme­tery, es­tate relics and ar­chae­o­log­i­cal find­ings to­geth­er tell the sto­ry of Scot­tish landown­ers, In­di­an in­den­tured labour­ers and gen­er­a­tions of fam­i­lies whose lives shaped the dis­trict.