The HALLs of Jamaica – Allegonda’s Legacy

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A Holiday in New York

There is a website www.ellisislandrecords.org that lists records of passengers travelling to New York between 1892 and 1924. Quite a few family members made the trip from Jamaica. There are undeniable matches with our Astwood, McPhail and Massy families.

With very few exceptions, I’ve only looked at the list of names in the Ellis Island records. With the exception of the Massy and Hall families I looked at all Jamaican ports of departure. For Massy (but not Massey) I looked at all ports of departure. With Hall I limited it to Kingston. Each name in the list is linked to a complete text entry for that person. Sometimes the personal records give age to the nearest month. They also gives ethnicity, of dubious value but can sometimes be used to distinguish between white and coloured people with the same name. Most of the travellers seem to be white. From the name entry a link leads to the list of ship’s passengers, which can be interesting, for example with McPhail and Massey families travelling on the same ship.

All but one of the Astwoods travelling from Jamaica to New York came from our family. There were hundreds more Astwoods that travelled from Bermuda to New York but I didn’t look at those. The family had moved from Kingston to St Andrews before 1917. Jessie Astwood was still living in Kingston in 1921. By 1924 she was living in Bermuda. Arthur Donald Lee appears incorrectly as ‘Alfred D. L.’ One of Jessie Astwood’s ages and Edward Leicester Stuart’s age is out by 10 years, but otherwise the list is spot on. ‘Emily A.’ is Emily Agnes Lee/Astwood. Details follow:

The “age on arrival” for the McPhails is remarkably good with two exceptions. John Powell McPhail would have been 30 in 1919, not 50. Jane Edgill Hall/McPhail would have been 56 in 1915 not 40. The McPhail travellers can be grouped into the families of two brothers:

1. Digby McKenzie McPhail, his wife Jane Edgill Hall/McPhail and their children Sybil Norah McPhail, Francis Digby Mackenzie MacPhail, Daisy Mary MacKenzie McPhail.

Note that Digby is referred to as ‘Doctor’. Digby, Jan and Norah have moved from Jamaica to the island of St Lucia in the West Indes some time between 1895 and 1915.

2. John Herman McPhail (older brother of Digby), his wife Olive Lee Powell/McPhail and their children John Powell McPhail, Donald Stuart McPhail, [Ella Jane McPhail/Massy].

Note that Donald Stuart McPhail has moved from Tulloch Estate in Jamaica to Montreal in Canada between 1914 and 1922. Details follow:

The entries for the Massy family are valuable for two reasons. They tell us that Mary Massy is May Massy in confirmation of Iris’s Birthday Book. The second reason is that it gives us the birth years of three individuals that I don’t have from other sources. These are May Massy b. 1884, Iris Massy b. 1888 & George Massy b. 1889. Iris and her mother Ella, if not the whole family, must have moved from Kingston, Jamaica to Portsmouth, England sometime between 1903 and 1906. Other new information is that Iris has middle initial M. Details follow:

Beyond the Astwood, McPhail and Massy families, there are other descendants who appear in the Ellis Island lists, but the evidence is not so concrete. Three members of the Campbell family may have made the trip individually. These are Dugald Archibald, Margaret Hughes and Ella Violet. Ella Violet is unlikely to be correct as she was known as Ella (in Iris’s birthday book) and the age is out by 4 years. Dugald is also unlikely to be correct because of a confirmed 3 month difference in birth date. Details follow:

Many individuals with surname Hall may have made the trip, but my research has been so slipshod that I’ve only tracked two lines of descendants to that timeframe, and one of those, the children of the OTHER John Herman Hall, didn’t go to New York. I know of 13 children of Francis Robert Patterson Hall. Of those, it looks as though Francis Hall, Sybil Melville Lane Hall/Toone, Constance Helen Hall, Irma Louise Hall and Mary Hughes Hall travelled to New York. Two others, Mary Maud Hall and Ella Blanch Hall, may have, but the birth dates are wrong. The situation is complicated by another Constance Hall, another Louise Hall, and another Sybil Toone travelling from Jamaica to New York. The list – including some of the red herrings – follows:

I’ve looked at a few more surnames. Mary Ann Dorothy Hall married first George Rees and later Edward Kinkead. There are later members of the Rees and Kinkead families at Ellis Island, including some with first names George and Edward respectively. There are about 35 instances of ‘Vidal’ travelling from Jamaica to New York but none of these have been identified as belonging to our Vidal family.

Three members of the Colthirst family made the trip, but they’re not known family members. I have a tentative identification for Alfred Phillips, a Colthirst descendent, but the birth date is out by 5 years.