The house was not very large as estate houses go, neither was it very old. It sat in
the contented manner that bungalows do on a quarter of an acre of slightly
rolling lawn, surrounded by a startling display of tropical blooms whose names
I never learned, but whose vivid, indeed spectacular show I surely will always
remember.
She
said she was having a lazy morning, her basket filled to overflowing with
enormous anthuriums. This told me that she had been working in her anthurium
garden. "Come," she said, and I followed. Sitting in the long
gallery, sipping lime squash, I had to admire Paulina Sorzano. Well into her
late 70s, she possessed a lively mind, witty and very clear. She was also quite
lovely and womanly, very feminine, stylish in an old-fashioned, "grande
dame" sort of way. She being my father's first cousin, I called her Aunty
Polly. I was there to get information on the Sorzanos. This is what she told
me:
The
Sorzano family has had a long connection with Trinidad for about 220-odd years,
the earliest holding of the post of Contador de Real Exercito in the
administration of Governor Don José Chacon. After the surrender of the island
to the British, it became necessary for him to give an account of his
administration of that office. He travelled to Spain with Don Chacon, and was
one of the officers mentioned in the last paragraph of the dispatch in which
the Spanish governor announced the disaster which had befallen him.
During
that time, the Sorzanos owned several plantations on the island, and as such,
he made up his mind to return and to take the oath of allegiance to his new
sovereign and to regard this new British colony as home. With a view to making
his family position perfectly clear, he took occasion whilst in Spain to
collect all the necessary documents to prove his descent from a long line of
distinguished ancestors.
The
family of Don Manuel Thomas Sorzano de Tejada is a very ancient one. Its coat
of arms was bestowed upon Don Sancho Martinez Sorzano de Tejada by Alfonso III Kind of Asturias,
for his distinguished gallantry at the battle of Albeida in the year 859 AD, where he and his thirteen sons gained a great victory over the army of Abdullah, the Arab caliph of Cordoba. The thirteen green pennants which support the shield each have a crescent.
for his distinguished gallantry at the battle of Albeida in the year 859 AD, where he and his thirteen sons gained a great victory over the army of Abdullah, the Arab caliph of Cordoba. The thirteen green pennants which support the shield each have a crescent.
Don
Manuel became commandant of Arima under Sir Thomas Hislop in 1803, and served
the British government as such for several years. He was given a seat at the
Board of Council by Sir Ralph Woodford. An old letter describes that when last
he saw Don Chacon as being "in the Fort of San Sebastian outside the walls
of Cadiz and for the moment unable to leave it". This was a civil way of
saying that the unfortunate governor was a prisoner.
Aunt
Polly's grandfather, Thomas Sorzano, had placed on loan at the Royal Victoria
Institute 1897 exhibition several interesting exhibits, among these were a pair
of very handsome pistols with old-fashioned flintlocks, the nominal roll of
slave children on the Torrecilla estate, once owned by the family in 1803, an
original printed copy of the Cedula of Population of 23rd November, 1783, and
is meant to have been a copy brought out by Don Chacon to whom the working of
the Cedula was entrusted, an interesting iron-banded wooden chest, said to have
been "the chest of fines" in which the moneys paid to the courts were
kept, and a very old flintlock musket.
Because our family
is connected to the Ganteaumes and the Pantins, who are in turn connected to
the Caracciolos, she was also able to tell me something about the latter. Count
Giuseppe Joseph Caracciolo, who died in Trinidad in 1819, was a direct
descendant of Domenico Caracciolo, Marchese de Brienza. Count Joseph's father
was named Literis, and his name is registered in the Libro d'Oro of Naples. He
married Mariana de la Porte Strabia. One of their sons, Joseph, Giuseppe, was
born in 1779 and at the age of 18 was named sub-lieutenant in the Royal
Cavalry. Impatient to earn military fame, he joined the Russian army under the
famous General Suwarov, who was then engaged in aiding the Austrians to fight the
French under the Generals Massena and McDonald. Giuseppe served for about a
year and then returned to Naples. Subsequently finding his safety, perhaps even
his life, endangered in consequence of having taken service with the Russians,
he determined to emigrate and arrived in Trinidad in 1801. Four years later, he
married Marie Josephine Amphoux by whom he became the father of two sons. His
eldest son married Henrietta Pantin de Mouilbert, the other, Alfredo, married
Barbara Almandoz.
"Which
is the oldest Spanish family in Trinidad in the sense of being here the
longest?" I asked.
"Oh,
the Farfans of course," Auntie Polly answered. The first by that name had
come out in 1644. His name was Don Manuel Farfan de los Godos. He founded the
Hermanidad del Santisimo
Sacramento at St. Joseph. From him are descended the Farfans of today.
For many years, indeed for more than a century, they dominated the Illustrious
Cabildo, the government, wielding great power on the island, imprisoning
governors, forbidding others to leave. Their power was not altered until the
arrival of Don Jose María Chacon, the last Spanish governor. The distinctive
epithet "de los Godos" indicates that they belong to one of the
Gothic families at the disastrous battle of Guadaletec in 711 AD, where
Rodrigo, the last of the Gothic Kings of Spain, was slain by the victorious
Saracens.
In
1566, Don Pedro Huarez Farfan emigrated to New Granada, now Venezuela, and his
descendants some 90 years later crossed over to Spanish Trinidad. An
interesting connection of the Farfans is the Marquis de Creny whose daughter
married a Farfan in the latter part of the 18th century. Another old Spanish
family of Trinidad is that of Don Jose Mayan, who at the time of the
capitulation in 1797 held the important post of Teniente de Justicia, Mayor of
St. Joseph, an office that was created when the seat of government was removed
to Port of Spain in 1774.
This
move away from St. Joseph to Port of Spain was very upsetting to the old
Spanish families. The office of Teniente, a kind of lieutenant governorship,
was always held in reserve to be awarded in a special circumstance. Don Jose
was the son of Don Matias Mayan who emigrated from the province of Galicia,
Spain, in the 1750s. He settled at St. Joseph and married Augustina Prieto de
Posada, daughter of Don Antonio Prieto de Posada and his wife Donna Josefa
Gonzales, on the 7th April 1777. Jose Mayan married Dona Antonia de Salas, by
whom he had issue one daughter, Trinidad de los Angeles. In 1797, Trinidad
married Don Pablo Giuseppi. All the Giuseppis of Trinidad come from this union,
so too the Ciprianis, Fitts, Frasers, and Monagas.
It
was in the house of Don Jose Mayan on the Valsayn estate, St. Joseph, that the
articles of capitulation were signed under which Don Chacon surrendered the
island to the British crown, this on the 18th February, 1797. The old house was
long ago knocked down. It stood in an area just behind where WASA now is in St.
Joseph.
In
1880, the Royal Princes, the Duke of York and the Duke of Clarence, visited
Trinidad in the H.M.S. Bacchante, honouring with their presence an
entertainment given for them by Mr. Paul Giuseppi. His ancestor, Don Pablo
Giuseppi, was a native of Corsica. He belonged to a family of considerable
wealth and importance. In 1791, when the troubled times of the French
Revolution were commencing, he was chosen commandant of the national guard of
his district. His father, a staunch royalist, did not approve of his giving any
countenance to the revolutionary party, and sent him away to Martinique, from
which he subsequently emigrated to Trinidad, where he married the only child of
Don Jose Mayan, Trinidad de Los Angeles, and became joint owner with her of
Valsayn estate.
Another
old Spanish family of Trinidad are the Basantas. Aunt Polly related that Don
Valentine de Basanta, at the time of the capitulation to the British held the
office of First Commissary of Population, to which he had been appointed by the
King of Spain in the year 1792. He was also an officer in the Spanish navy like
his friend Don Manuel Sorzano. He too owned property, had married in Trinidad,
and decided to remain here after the conquest, taking the oath of allegiance to
the King of England.
The
name Basanta occurs in the chronicles of the 14th and 15th centuries as taking
part in the wars with Navarre under Pedro the Cruel and in those waged by
Ferdinand and Isabella against the Moors. Connected to the Lezama and Garcia
families, many descendants still live in Trinidad.
"Did
Don Jose Chacon leave any mementoes behind?"
"Yes,
as a matter of fact, he did. A Mr. Diaz once showed me an embroidered robe, a
prayer book, and a group of the Virgin and Child which belonged to his
daughter, Maria Chacon. She married M. Henri Joberty and as such the
descendants of Chacon still live amongst us."
A
little bell tinkled from the dining room of Mausica estate house, calling us to
lunch, ending a lovely morning, reminiscing about the old Spanish Dons of
Trinidad.
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