***
Jane Grey Girvan
1837-?
*
From the research of John Thom McKinley Girvan (1920-?)
And Gloria Girvan Akin (1922-2003)
*
Jane, daughter of the First John Girvan, sister of John Thomas, Mary Ann and Robert was born at Tanarchy, Clarendon in March 1837. She may have been educated in Scotland. It is general knowledge in the family that she and her father, the First John, has a very serious break in their relationship. Although she had tried to heal the breach by going to see him, he refused to see her and never did relent. Her father did not leave her anything in his will.
Jane eventually left Jamaica with her daughter Otalee, emigrating to the U.S.A. For some years she kept in touch with the extended family. Mrs. Clarissa Evans reported that she married a Mr. Henry and had a son, Harold.
It was generally felt that her father dealt very harshly with her.
***
***
Editor’s Opinion:
Patriarchy and
Privilege
*
Post Scriptum, 2022: The rupture between Jane and her father John is thought to have been caused by Jane’s premarital pregnancy: a situation which John apparently could not condone! Consider this: the same John Girvan, Jane’s estranged father was reported to have had some 16 children, although there is no ‘wife’ officially recorded for John!
The number of John’s children remains difficult to ascertain. From inside the Ayrshire narrative, as reported by Inga Margaret Girvan Hunter of Australia, John had 16 children with an anonymous woman in Jamaica, or more likely with anonymous women in Jamaica. Inga’s account creates “Jamaica Girl” for us as the complement to the pervasive unilateral patriarchy where children seem to emerge spontaneously: they simply materialize without the inconvenience of pregnancy or maternity! nameless women without status! simple vessels for the pleasure of a moment and the incubation of another generation.
The gist of the Ayrshire narrative about John is as follows: John left Ayrshire in 1825 and made his fortune on a coffee plantation in Jamaica. He had 16 children with ‘Jamaica Girl’, a Jamaican woman whom he educated.
From inside the oral accounts passed down within the Jamaican family, John’s story is somewhat quantitatively less impressive. We do have John with at least 4 acknowledged surviving children. Although no record of a wife exists so far in the materials currently available, there is a ‘suggestion’ that John married a woman named ‘Ann Grey’. Nothing corroborates that assertion. We have his will in the Genealogy section of this blog. There is no mention of Ann Grey although he may have had a relationship with someone of that name before he emigrated to Jamaica in 1825 at 27 years of age.
In his will there is no mention of a wife. John is very generous, even leaving access after his death to a residence,in Clarendon, Jamaica for a woman, Catherine McGhee, whom he had hired from Scotland to care for his children and who later stayed to care for John himself in his old age until his death in 1878. He described Catherine McGhee in his will as ‘nurse and friend’.
John lived 53 years in Jamaica after emigrating from Scotland in 1825 and would likely have had a reliable female companion at home to care for his children and perform other undefined duties, as well as a few ‘Jamaica Girls’ at his beck and call to respond to his many complex ‘domestic’ needs.