Jamaican Family Search Genealogy Research Library
St Elizabeth's, February, 1866.
To His Excellency E. J. Eyre, Esquire, &c.
The Magistrates, Clergy, and Inhabitants of the Parish of St. Elizabeth, feel it a great duty which they owe to your Excellency to express to you, at this time especially, their conviction that to you the Island is indebted for the checking and putting down the Rebellion, which, commencing in Saint Thomas in the East, unless for the prompt measures and energy exhibited, we believe, would have spread death and misery through the Island.
Your Excellency, by wise and immediate action, has saved our families from worse than death. It will be our duty to impress on our sons and on our daughters that to you they owe life and honour. Your own heart will tell you as a husband, and a parent what you have done for us. Our hearts say, may God reward you, and deliver you from all your enimies.
Your Excellency we hesitate not to tell you that we have no faith in the present calm; we know not what will come, or how soon services such as you have rendered us may be required again. We trust such Counsels and action as lately preserved us, may not be wanting in a like emergency.
With every good wish towards yourself and Mrs. Eyre, with whom we sincerely sympathise, and for your family, we shall ever be,
Your Excellency's
Grateful and faithful friends,
(Signed)
John Salmon
J. Isaacs
Charles Isaacs
Robert Smith
William Finlason
M. Myers
Arthur P. Rowe
F. Hendricks
A. J. Hendricks
John Finlason
Thomas Doran
W. G. K. Boxer
John W. Earle, J.P
Sol. Myers DaCosta
T. Salmon Maxwell, JP.
Nathaniel Stevens
Stephen B. Parchment
Henry Labor
William Weller
John Calder, J.P.
Louis Lindo
William Simpson, J.P.
Samuel Anderson
William Lewis
John A. T. Calder
Alfred J. Wray
Abraham J. Hyam
John Clarke
R. P. White
Thomas Wetherby
George E. Levy
H. M. Belenfante
Edwin Levy
Frederick Alberga
Joseph Peart
Isaac R. Dacosta
E. T. Allen
J. R. Tuckett
B. Wells
Stephen Peynado, J.P.
E. A Sherlock
N. R. Hyam, C. P. D.
W. O'Francis Nangle
F. A. Petgrave
Myer Polack
Thomas W. Petgrave
Stephen Bondsell
Thomas A. Baguie
W. A. Roberts
H. C. Taylor
J. R. Tomlinson
J. Sinclair
Raynes W. Smith, J.P
John C. C. Thompson
Robert Watson, jnr
George G. Nicholson
William Smith
Thomas McDaniel
W. H. Coke, J.P.
J. E. Kerr, J.P
Arthur Beswick, J.P.
William Freckleton
George Beswick
John A. Roberts
William Doran
Elias Quallo
J. M Muschett
John Blake
Henry Thomson
G. W. Cator
M. H. Smith, Island Curate
N. J. Heath
J. R. Usher
John Hudson, J.P.
Peter Byone
D. Sullivan, J.P.
Daniel Fogarty
A. A. Finlason
William Sullivan
Thomas McTaggart
Henry McDonald
C. J. Monteath
W. E. Bennett
J. W. Bean
William Bean
John O'Sullivan
John Shaw
J. J. Gruber
William B. Crawly
John M. Cooper, J.P.
Francis Maxwell, J.P.
To the Honorable John Salmon, I. Isaacs, C. Isaacs, R. Smith, W. Finlaison, (sic) Esquire, &c, &c, &c.
Mr. Custos, Reverend Gentlemen, and Gentlemen,
Accept my grateful thanks for your warm hearted address expressing your appreciation of my services in putting down and preventing the spread of the late rebellion.
It is a very great grstification (sic) to me to know that whatever may be the misrepresentations I am subjected to by a section of the English public and press, the colonists of Jamaica who have the best means of estimating the emergency which existed and of understanding the limited resources available to meet it, recognized both the necessity and the justice of the course adopted, and that that course was crowned with success.
I deeply regret to learn that you have no faith in the present calm, but I fervently trust, that through the naval and military protection afforded by Great Britain, and by and the watchful vigilance of the colonists themselves, any further recurrence of disturbances may be averted, and that in the course of time the excitement or ill feeling which have existed or yet exist may gradually subside and a renewed state of confidence be restored between the different classes of the community
For your good wishes and sympathy towards myself and family, I thank you most heartily
(signed) E. EYRE.
Flamstead, 1st March, 1866.
Extracted from a typewritten book entitled; Addresses to his Excellency Edward John Eyre, Esquire, 1865, 1866.
Birmingham Central Library, Birmingham, West Midlands, England
Local Studies, 6th floor,
Shelved at; A 972.92, Eyre. (Has just been relocated to the Black History Collection section, same floor)
The names of the inhabitants appear as two vertical columns on page 54, same on page 55.
This book has hundreds more inhabitants listed from other parishes in Jamaica (but not Kingston and others). On a visit to the Public Records Office, London a few years ago, I quickly searched their 'Original Correspondence' files (I think!) and noted that they have the original documents to the above book in original handwritten form, some but not all, showing the 'original' signatures. I would imagine the above book was written using a selection of those original documents from the Public Records Office.
Reading through the book one learns that Edward Eyre was the Governor of Jamaica at the time and had been slated by some of the British public and press for not keeping the black people under control in Jamaica, whereby they believed the famous 'Morant Bay Rebellion' riots started. He apparently quickly deployed the British Army, Navy and Maroons etc. to quell the troubles. The white colonist inhabitants who had feared for their lives, wrote to him expressing their thanks.
Contributed by Robert Hodgson
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