The Betty Black Blog

I’ve always had an interest in History and in my native country, Jamaica. This has led me to collect all sorts of interesting facts about Jamaica so for my very first post I thought I’d share some of them with you:

1. Jamaica has a prehistoric forest.

Forestry Department image

This is not like the rolling hills that form much of Jamaica’s landscape nor like the majestic Blue Mountains soaring thousands of feet towards the sky. The Cockpit Country more resembles the landscape of an alien planet invented by Asimov. Take an egg carton and turn it upside down. That is precisely what you see if you fly over the Cockpit Country. Twelve million years ago Jamaica emerged from the ocean with a large birthmark. This resulted in a vast limestone karst area where hundreds, if not thousands, of varieties of flora and fauna, extinct elsewhere in the world, still grow and thrive. (CockpitCountry.com)

2. The first iron bridge in the Americas was erected in Jamaica.

The old Iron Bridge which crosses the Rio Cobre on the outskirts of Spanish Town was cast in England and erected in 1801. The bridge has been closed to vehicular traffic since 1931. It is reputed to be the oldest bridge of it’s kind in the Americas and is on the World Monument Watch’s list of the 100 most endangered sites in the world. The foundation of the bridge was restored in 2002 and other areas are now being restored. (Jamaica National Heritage Trust)

3. Florence Nightingale was not the only woman tending the sick in the Crimean War.

Mary Jane Seacole (Grant) was born in Kingston in 1805. Her mother ran a nursing home for British Army and Navy personnel and had a reputation for being skilled in herbal medicine. Mary learned her mother’s skills and improved upon them through her travels. During the Crimean War her thoughts turned to soldiers she knew. In an effort to offer medical care on the battlefield, Mary travelled to London carrying letters of recommendation from many high ranking members of the military . There she met head on with the twin discriminations of sex and race.

Being the typical Jamaican woman, even 150 years ago, Mary did not give up. She made her way to Turkey and put herself up in the British Hotel, all at her own cost. She travelled to the Crimea to the hospitals set up by the British, where Nightingale was already working, and the two famous women cared for the injured even on the battlefields though not together as the official team were said to have snubbed the mixed-race “doctress.” (MarySeacole.com)

4. Jamaica’s most popular Newspaper has been published for 175 years.

The Gleaner first came off the presses on 13^th September 1834. The original Paper was a four page weekly published by Jacob and Joshua deCordova, natives of Spanish Town. The newspaper outlived all its competition, changed hands a few times, and today still has the largest circulation in the Island. (www.Jamaica-Gleaner.com)

This leads us to:

5. Jamaicans helped build Texas.

Jacob deCordova left Jamaica for the United States in 1836, later settling in Texas. He travelled extensively throughout the territory. He gave lectures in the cities of the eastern United States as well as in England encouraging his audiences to settle in Texas. He wrote and published several books about Texas and published two newspapers. At one time he was one of the biggest land agents in the territory, owning over 1,000,000 acres of land in Texas. The territory became a state in 1845 and in 1847 Jacob became an Assemblyman in the second State Legislature. He also created The Map of the State of Texas in 1849; this was used as the basis for many subsequent maps of the state. The American Civil War brought a downturn to his fortune and he died in 1868. (The Handbook of Texas Online)

As a side note: Dallas Texas was named after George Mifflin Dallas, US Vice President under James K. Polk. His father was Alexander James Dallas, sixth US Secretary of the Treasury and native of Kingston. (Wikipedia)

6. Black River was wired for electricity at the same time as New York City.

In the mid eighteenth century Black River was one of the wealthiest towns in Jamaica mainly because it was the centre for the export of logwood, royal purple dye. One of the wealthiest of its citizens was John Leyden. In c1875 Leyden wired his home for electricity and by 1893 the entire town was electrified with a steam powered generator supplied by Leyden Bros. Street lights and public and commercial in Kingston followed and by 1899 Kingston had an electric tramcar system. The Edison Company opened its doors in New York City in 1882 and between then and 1910 both they and the Brush Arc Lighting Company electrified most public and commercial buildings in that city. (The Gleaner, JNHT)

I have lots of other interesting facts on my website www.jamaica-allspice.com so please visit.