16 August 2019

Descendants of Mary Ann Rose Smith (James Smith’s only daughter)

bY Duncan Richardson, Barbados, West Indies. (2014)
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My paternal grandmother was Mary Anna Rose Smith, James Smith’s only daughter and my grandfather was George Richardson. I am the eldest son of their youngest son George Richardson.
George Richardson Snr. had been working in Swakopmund, in German South West Africa [present day Namibia] in 1914 when the Great War commenced. He was accused of passing information to the British Authorities in South Africa and imprisoned for eleven months. He was reunited with Mary in Cape Town where he was posted and my father was born there nine months later. George retired to live in London and died there on May 20th 1933.

Mary Anna Rose had one son James with Captain James Thomas and I am in touch with their great granddaughter Tessa Clarke who is a doctor in Canada. With George Richardson, Mary had Gladys b.1906, Ilene b.1908, Grace b.1911, Gordon b.1913 and George b.1917.

George Smith supported his sister [Mary Anna] in completing my father’s [George Richardson] education in England and around 1936 my father returned to live in Mauritius taking up a job on a sugar estate controlled by Paul Anthony. His mother Mary Anna remained in London where she died on the 31st of May 1957. In 1939, as a member of the Territorial Army my father signed up into the Royal Artillery and worked on the coastal defences of the island. He was a close friend of Ian Smith and was best man at Ian’s wedding.

In August 1946 he married my mother Margaret Leslie Richards from Somerset who had been a nurse in Queen Alexandra’s Army Nursing Corp stationed in Mauritius. It was at the wedding of her friend and neighbour Phillip Austin to Elsie Haigh that she met my father.

Seeking a better future in the sugar business in 1946 my father accepted a job with the Ste. Madeleine Sugar Company in Trinidad, West Indies where he remained until retirement. Sadly he never returned to Mauritius. He died in Trinidad on the 7th of January 1986. I was born in Trinidad in 1948; my brother Keith was born in 1950 (d. 2002), and my sister Jean was born in 1956.

Jean trained at St James’s Secretarial College, Bridport, Dorset and has been working for 37 years with what is now Yara Trinidad Ltd a large petro-chemical manufacturer on the island. She started as a Secretary, then became a Human Resource Officer and is now Executive Assistant to the CEO.

My brother Keith started his working life with Barclays Bank in Trinidad then joined a contracting company but the illness that lead to his death terminated his career several years beforehand.

My father George – perhaps following in the tradition of the Smith shipbuilding family – was a gifted builder of very detailed models of famous clipper ships through the 1930’s and 40’s when he lived in Mauritius.

After five years in management on a sugar estate in Trinidad I obtained my commercial pilots licence and in 1970 trained to be an aerial crop sprayer working on sugar cane in Trinidad, In 1976 I moved to the Windward Islands in the West Indies settling on the island of St Vincent where I set up my own business spraying bananas. I married first in 1970 and divorced without children. In 1987 I married Heather Barnard and we settled on the island of Barbados though I continue to this day to fly and spray on St Vincent. Heather is the daughter of Cyril Barnard born in St Lucia who owned a large coconut plantation on St Vincent. We have a daughter Diana Emily born in June 1986 who is a psychologist and lives in Chelsea, London.

With a keen interest in genealogy, several years ago I visited Kingston, Moray and found the tombstone of James Smith’s father in the nearby Urquhart cemetery:

‘To the memory of Mary Ann Shaw, the Beloved Wife of George Smith, Shipmaster, Kingston, who died 19th February 1869, aged 57 years. And George Smith, Shipmaster, late of Kingston, who died at Lossiemouth, 10th November 1885, aged 77 years.’