A web of connections in the British West Indies

I have been reading a fascinating thesis about the history of the middle class in Antigua. The author described ties that bound the Antiguan middle class in the 19th and 20th centuries, including common schools, occupations, businesses, social organizations, and marriage connections between similarly situated families. These ties existed throughout the British West Indies, and some family names pop up repeatedly. In the case of my husband’s roots in St Kitts, I’m often surprised that the more I research, the more connections appear.

One example emerged from looking at the ownership of the mercantile firm SL Horsford’s of St Kitts. My husband’s great-grandfather, Burchell Edward Marshall (1873-1951) obtained controlling shares in the company in 1929. He purchased these shares from the widow of the former owner, Samuel Lamartine Horsford. Horsford was from Antigua, and had bought an existing business in St Kitts in the 1880s, called Estates Agency Depot, which he renamed as SL Horsford. Burchell started off life as the son of a man of mixed race who was educated by the Mico school system in Antigua. He was an office clerk under Mr. Horsford for many years. Horsford died in 1913, and the company ownership passed to his widow Alberta Augusta, whose maiden name was Shiell.

The name Shiell brings up connections to other British West Indian islands. and to my husband’s family tree. One is with the Cannonier family of Montserrat. John Cannonier (1769-1838) was an executor, with William Shiell of Montserrat, for the estate of the Reverend Joseph Gerald. It is believed that Albert Augusta Shiell was the great-niece of William Shiell. Alberta Augusta’s brother was Matthew Phipps Shiel (1865-1947), an author who lived much of his life in England, despite his birth in Montserrat. One of Alberta Augusta’s sisters was Harriet Shiell, who was a friend of another family connection – Edgar Oscar Challenger of St Kitts, who was an historian and labor leader, and related to my husband on his Marshall side (via their shared Madeiran ancestors). Burchell Marshall’s wife was Margaret Johanna Cannonier, whose aunt Arcenia Augusta Challenger was Edgar Oscar Challenger’s grandmother.

An interesting side story to the Shiell family is that author Matthew Phipps Shiel alleged that he had been crowned the “king” of Redonda, a tiny island off the coast of Montserrat. Matthew Phipps wrote that his father, Matthew Dowdy Phipps, originally claimed the island in 1865, in order to take financial advantage of natural deposits there of phosphate. Although Redonda was annexed by Antigua, Matthew Phipps held that he inherited the title of king from his father in 1880, when he was just 15 years old. Though the island is uninhabited now, its very unofficial crown has been passed down over the decades to various people vaguely connected back to Matthew Phipps Shiel. A woman currently holds the title of Queen of Redonda.

Sources

1. The Peculiar Class: The formation, collapse, and reformation of the middle class in Antigua, West Indies, 1834-1940; by Susan Lowes, 1994
2. Horsford’s Group of Companies, Our Chronology, 2013
3. Matthew Phipps Shiel (1865-1947); by Paul Fox, Yellow Nineties 2.0, 2010
4. Legal Aspects of the Title of ‘King of Redonda’, The Redonda Foundation, 2023
5. The Future of the Realm of Rendonda, The Redonda Foundation, 2019