Of St John’s Anglican Church and Allison Morris – Part II Way back when

ALLISON MORRIS is mourning the destruction of Black River, Elizabeth, by Category 5 Hurricane Melissa. It is like a loved one has passed. There was substantial damage to her own family house and yard. The historic town, situated beside the Caribbean Sea, is where she was born, grew up, lives, and operates a tour business, ‘Way Back When’. Her connection to this storied place goes way back to about seven generations.

“My family has long been involved in documenting Black River’s history, so a lot of that was passed down. My grandmother used to collect a lot of articles. There’s stuff that she’s written. There are actually interviews that she has done with the Memory Bank … One of the most poignant ones for me was her describing down where the (Hendriks) building is … because she worked for Hendriks & Company Ltd,” Morris told Family and Religion.

Her grandmother, who lived until she was 94, worked for the Hendriks family for 75 years, from she was 18 until she was 93, as bookkeeper, stenographer, cashier, et cetera. She took a break for about a year and a half to New York during the Spanish flu. She was recalled to work.

One side of the family was “white or whitish Jewish”, and Morris can trace her lineage back to a great-great-great-grandmother, an enslaved woman named Arabella Palmer, born in 1795. There might have also been an African named Maria.

Her great-great-great-grandmother, Arabella Palmer, was the mother of her great-great-grandfather, Edmund Isaac Francis. His son, Morris’ great-grandfather, was also named Edmund Isaac Francis, a jeweller. Then came a grandfather, and a grandmother, Lily Emma Arabella Francis, born 1895, with whom Morris grew up, and with whom she shared the same bedroom until she left for university. She would fall asleep listening to her grandmother’s stories of Black River’s heyday.

“I used to always enjoy my grandmother’s story about Black River. I used to ask her to tell me, again, again and again, and I think it was like that with all of us as children. It was so tied in with your family. She was telling you a Black River story, but it was also a family story,” Morris shared.

“She was a great storyteller, so a lot of those oral stories that I have, came from her … Then my father, and then me … Interestingly enough, my mother came from Westmoreland to Black River when she was 18. She became one of the great documenters of everything I have today about Black River – handwritten notes, tons of articles, from The Gleaner and other places.

“My father now, in addition to knowing a lot of the stories and being very involved in the Black River community, was a photographer from he was young. We had a lot of pictures from, maybe, when he was a teenager in the 1930s coming forward.”

So when Morris started a website, ‘Real Jamaica Vacation’, about St Elizabeth in 2008 with a focus on Black River, she started with much of her mother’s history and the history of a woman named May Barrett, who was like their first official historian. But Morris did not accept everything as is. She cross-referenced and did further research. Yet, as a young woman, how did she appreciate all of this rich knowledge about her home town?

Initially, as much as Morris loved her grandmother’s stories, she was doing what young people did, including partying and getting involved with music, her main preoccupation. She has evolved into a musician and a music educator who played the instruments in St John’s Parish Church, which she described as the church of her ancestors. “From the 1800s, my family was there, and this is not a white family,” she shared.

Sometime ago, a marble plaque was mounted in St John’s Parish Church as a tribute to three of her ancestors: her grandmother, Lily Emma Arabella Francis, a member of the church committee for 30 years; Lily’s son and Morris’ father, Justice of the Peace Dr Harold Roy Francis, rector’s warden and diocesan lay reader; and his wife, Morris’ mother, Justice of the Peace Marjorie Joyce Francis, rector’s warden, “For the dedication of their lives to the service of this church and community”.

Hurricane Melissa destroyed the church building, leaving the bell tower intact. Some tribute plaques are still affixed to sections of the walls that are still standing. Some have gone down with fallen sections of the wall. Morris’ family plaque weathered the storm and was recently unmounted. It is a testament to their contribution to the history and heritage of Black River. So when Morris first saw the decimated St John’s Church the day after Melissa wrecked it, she went into a tailspin.