LIVERPOOL ERSKINE SAWYER

June 1998 Table of Contents - Current Issue of The Abaco Journal - Abaco Bahamas' Home Page

LIVERPOOL ERSKINE SAWYER OF CHEROKEE SOUND
by Nadeen Beneby

Several years ago I went to Cherokee Sound to witness one of its special days. A Nassau friend of mine was surprised to see me, a black person, there and was shocked when I told him that not only my maternal grandmother but her parents were also from Cherokee. This friend said he was only aware of one black family - the Bains, who still have a homestead there.

I had to give my friend a brief lesson in the black surnames and families whi lived in Cherokee in the 1800s: Sawyers, Robbins, Monks, Lightbournes, Muckmaiers, Hudsons, Dames, Hopkins and Smiths.

My great father on Mama's side was Liverpool Erskine Sawyer. He was a wonderful man, my grandmother said. I don't know how he got to Cherokee but he lived there after marrying my great mother, Elvira Cash, in Hope Town in 1869. She had been married to a white man from Hope Town. Our family tradition says her husband was killed by his family for marrying a black woman.

A very enterprising man, Liverpool had vast land holdings and three schooners. He provided for the needs of his family through wrecking and farming pineapples. Grandma Minvella says that had he wanted to he could have given everyone in Cherokee a shilling.

Liverpool lived in Cherokee and died there July 17th, 1896. His tombstone was still there in the cemetery until the site was made into a dumping ground.

Liverpool was a mulatto with mesmeric eyes, very handsome. It is reported that the fishermen went on their smack fishing trips with great trepidation. He fathered eighteen children. One woman who bore him children was Phoebe Albury. There were others who bore him children while their husbands were away. Some of these children were Lavinia (1847), Evalena (1856), Robert (1845), Eliza 1865), Mary (1884) and Minvella Ann (the only one by his wife) in 1876. The old family bible and baptismal records were revealing.

At night during the fishing season he walked the narrow roads of Cherokee Sound keeping his promise to protect the women folk. In a village where there was no electricity and tales about the supernatural abounded, people thought the devil was taking a walk dragging his chain.

In his will that has been widely distributed he left his worldly goods and vast tracts of land to his wife, Elvira, his daughter, Minvella, and grandson, Wellington Lightbourne. They have yet to inherit. The hill where his homestead lies is now occupied by an expatriate. It was very interesting in recent times to see a Canadian, who was tracing her roots to Liverpool Erskine Sawyer, stand at our doorstep.

We do not know how Liverpool got to Cherokee Sound but we do know he came from Africa. He told his daughter and she told us, her grandchildren, that one day while he and his friends were playing on the seashore they saw a large cauldron sitting on a raft in the water. They clambered aboard and began to eat the tasty rice in the pot, unaware that the raft was being carefully pulled towards a large ship. When they realised their peril, it was too late. The slave traders captured them and brought them through the middle passage to The Bahamas.

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