Diary: "The Belles of Abaco"

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Diary: "The Belles of Abaco"

• circa 1913 (Creation)

Foreword on diary: "'The Belles of Abaco' is a story about two young chicks, Jennie and Malvena who like Cir'ce lured young sailors to the island. They were a couple dolls and the island has never recovered from having these two here. Though their stay was limited to five years, more than likely by some high authority who thought the island worth saving, the island has been a little use since."

"The manuscript memoir vividly details the experiences and life of two young teenager sisters experiencing life in a logging town in the Bahamas at the beginning of the 20th century. In 1906, an American lumber group led by Frederick Weyerhaueser, organized the Bahamas Timber Company and secured a 100-year contract to log the pine operation. Malvena Southmayd was a 19-year old music student at Milton College who decided to move with her family on the great adventure. The Bahamas Timber Company constructed a state-of-the-art sawmill, and built adjacent towns for loggers and mill employees. She writes vividly about the assorted Caribbean foods, including Green Turtle Soup, fried clams, boiled crabs, fish served with grits, or rice, friend plantains, and fruits of guava, mangos, oranges, grapefruits, limes, and even avocados. In addition, the details how the "White" settlement was built on the largest north slope with the saw mill, dry kiln, ice house, and lumber yard, while the "Colored settlement" was constructed on the lower side of the tracks near the docks. She writes of viewing coral beds and tropical fish through glass-bottomed buckets, swimming excursions in bloomer style swimsuits worn with stockings, the Swedes working and living in the Swedish village suffering from tropical diseases and high child mortality, as well as quadrille dances featuring zither, accordion, and mouth organ music, taffy pulling, coconut candies and milk. She makes frequent mention of African-American workers, including one couple named Weir who were recent graduates at the time from Booker T. Washington University working the mill, as well as the boisterous African-American and Bahamian church services. There are several mentions of the courting of Malvena and Jennie by Daniel Dudley Brown, a steam engineer hired by the Bahama Timber Company because of his 'experience in handling Negro logging crews' while working on a mahogany contract in South America prior to landing on shore in the Bahamas. They were married by 1908 and when they returned to the United States for working sawmills in Oregon, they brought with them Malvena's parents and two young girls, Lillie Margaret, and Lola J. The Bahama Timber Company later became the Abaco Lumber Company and continued commercial logging of Caribbean pine until the 1960s when the majority of the lumber had been cut. The Wilson City sawmill shut down in 1945, and moved to other locations on Abaco and later Grand Bahama and Andros." –Description from Buckingham Books