Barbados Research 

    Here are a few more thoughts relating to Barbados and the possible Sizemore connection. I don’t have access to my original papers, but did locate some of the notes I made and have included them below. Also, remember that my major interest in Barbados was from a broad settlement influence, not so much for specific families. Also, the “old” Sizemores claimed to be Native American and that’s the position I took in my book and I have no reason to doubt them (a claim now supported by DNA research).

     However, it does seem pretty clear that many Americans of “British” descent came to United States shores by way of Barbados. This fact may open the door for more mixed folks than we might normally expect (as opposed to their having come here directly from England) since intermarriage in Barbados certainly occurred for a good number of them. Lila Salazar’s book, Love Child by Lila Salazar, paints a pretty interesting picture of all the “love children” produced by “white” plantation owners and their less than white mistresses. And in many cases these children took the surnames of their white fathers. I throw this out not to make a stand on any particular issue except to say there were a lot of mixed folk in Barbados and a lot of them then came here, particularly to South Carolina. 

     Anyway, some items of possible interest: I absolutely saw a variation of the surname “Sizemore” listed on a Barbados list and designated as “Portuguese Jew.” However, and this is important, there was no first name given, making a connection then – and now – with this person/family and “our” Sizemores very difficult, if not impossible. Also, the names I presented in my article some years back were culled from Hotten’s book and related papers and articles (and there were a lot of them). I included the Hotten citations as a help to others researching Barbados, but it was not meant to be all inclusive. I no longer have immediate access to these articles but will do my best to see if I can locate the Sizemore source. But again, that source alone will NOT provide an indisputable Portuguese Jewish link to our Sizemores. It’s an intriguing possibility, but one that will be very difficult to prove without a lot more information than I saw. If some of the other supposed Sizemore links to Portuguese Jews are valid (e.g., Jamestown, etc.), and I have no idea if they are, then those may prove more promising. 

   Other items of possible interest. In Hotten’s book my notes tell me there is a map of Barbados created by Richard Ligon in 1650. The plantations are drawn in, and many are denoted by a FR or a GO. The FR refers to Freedmen and the GO to Goans (East Indians from the Goa region of India who had been imported by the British for labor purposes). These were apparently the work crews. Many of these plantations were managed by Portuguese “ingenheiros”– engineers/managers. Among the plantation names that I jotted down were Newman, Southall, Syzmor, Isham, and Cole. I’m not sure what the relevance is to any of the settlers with these names. I do know that the spelling of “Syzmor” above is the same form often found among Jews (such as violinist Syzmor Goldberg, a German Jew). But is there a link here? I don’t know.
 
     In the Parish Register of St. Michael (1680), among “The Jews” listed by Hotten are Sarah Atkins, Sarah Mordecah, and Rachel Burges. I do know this is only one of the sources where I found the Atkins surname attached to a Jewish family. Again, I suspect there was a good deal of conversion going on and judging one’s “Jewish-ness” by surname or even genetics will be tough.
 
     “The South Carolina Historical and Genealogical Magazine,” January, 1936, Vol. xxxvii, No 1, was also quite good. It goes into great detail about Governor James Moore who came from Ireland to Barbados, and then to South Carolina and on to the Appalachians. From page one of the article I noted this statement:
 
     “As South Carolina was largely settled from Barbados and other West India Islands, most of the families have roots there, making it doubly hard to trace them back to England or the Continent.”
 
     This is echoed by Warren Alleyne and Henry Fraser on page 5 of their book, “The Barbados-Carolina Connection.” Here they say, assuming I am reading my scribbles correctly, “Barbados" in the 1600s was to become the gateway to America.” This book has an excellent bibliography as I recall, with dozens of related books and articles.
 
     Jerome S. Handler has also written several excellent books on Barbados history and particularly the mixed race and slave issues. In “Plantation Slavery in Barbados: An Archaeological and Historical Investigation,” Handler and his co-author, Frederick Wilange, Harvard University Press, 1978, call Barbados the “Dutch and Sephardic Jewish Capital.” They also write extensively about the African and Amerindian slave trade that prospered there in the early 1600s.
 
Other sources I noted were:
 
     “Stokvis Studies in Historical Chronology and Thought, #13” – “The Monumental Inscriptions in the Churches  and Churchyards of the Island of Barbados, British West Indies,” by Vere Langford Oliver, Borgo Press, 1989.

     “The Traveller’s Tree” by Patrick Fermor, published by John Murray Publishers, London. I honestly don’t recall this book, but I’m including it as I had a note that I had read it. Here are several interesting websites that incorporate some of the information I recall reading about the permanent versus migratory settlers.  Straddling Two Worlds: The Sephardic Presence in Northeastern Brazil  &  The Sefardim of the Island of Nevis

     Anyway, hope this is somewhat helpful. It reflects only a portion of what I dug through some years back, but there’s a wealth of information on Barbados, with Hotten being only one source. I’ll see what I can re-locate regarding the mentioning of “Sizemore” as a Portuguese Jew, but even if I find it, unless there is more information with it, it won’t prove much of anything except someone in Barbados considered someone else, first name unknown, to be Jewish.

 Special note: Angela Andrews provided me with much of the original material and to her I remain deeply grateful.

Related Books

Links