tuluum's Diaryland Diary
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Family Portrait
i had wanted to cry myself to sleep last night but was too tired and so I just skipped right to the sleep part.
mom took my hand and gave me a smoochie :)
i told her a bit of my secret last night... : bleh
simi is back in town :D We're gonna go out tonight to some place called Shakers in MovieTowne. Yay :) Glad I have some money too :) DISPOSABLE INCOME :) I miss Simi :) I should take some pictures this time around? Gotta buy batteries for my camera. Anyway I'll probably miss Sex and The City so I have stuck a POST IT note to my monitor to remind me to catch it early Tuesday morning in rerun :)
Last night I spent a lot of time doing genealogy of my Mother's family. both the Chinese and the Jewish sides. We have never really known too many names or details and there is a great site JamaicanFamilySearch.com that updates now and then. I had not been there in about 3 years so I thought it would be good to see if they had any new info that would help us.
I struck out on the Chinese info but mom had told me that she had been told that her great grandfather had founded the Chinese Cemetery and Chinese Benevolent Society in Jamaica, so I searched online and found that they were still in existence :) So I emailed them and hopefully they can help us out :)
On the Jewish side we finally struck gold and now I finally know the name of the Portugese great-great-grandfather who started the whole line :P Mom's grandma (who raised her) had never said his name and mom had never asked (apparently kids didnt ask too much back in the day), however through a list of the properties they had owned, the date of birth for the oldest son (1877) and the fact that there was only one Feurtado who mysteriously arrives on the scene around 1878 in the business directory we were able to figure it out :) I say we to be diplomatic, it really was all me :P
Throughout his life he only listed by an initial, but going through old wills I found two entries in 1903 and 1906 that not only list his full name but match the properties that mom said they owned. So I'm pretty sure that our branch of the Jamaican Feurtados was spearheaded by one Alexander Feurtado, lumber merchant, Kingston :)
Also interesting was finding my mom and aunt's baptismal records! (That really wigged her out :))
There are gaps in the records that have been uploaded so I have not been able to find her dad's records.. even sadder is not being able to find her mom's records. Her mom died when she was young. All we know is that she was from the country and probably the daughter or granddaughter of freed slaves. Because of her rural origin it is quite unlikely that there would have been a birth certificate or baptismal certificate. We do know her full name though and we suspect which parish she is from but are not fully sure. I think it will take actual grunt work in Jamaica to get her info, but I know it would mean a lot to my mom. She gets irate that cos her mom was all poor and black that she is like anonymous in the annals of time but the rich landed men are all documented and stuff...
All this genealogy work got my dad jealous and stuff but he has been given opportunities all his life to meet our Martiniquan family and never took it. (Apparently the man all have the famous Bland bald head :))))) Anyway now he wants me to research the Scottish and Martiniquan lines that make up the halves of his family.. but uh.. until Trinidad's records are also digitized , fat chance on that one monkeys! I am interested in finding out how the Scottish side and African sides got mixed up though (and no it wasn't a slavery thing haha :P).
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10:14 a.m. - Sunday, Feb. 15, 2004
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