Plantation Life in Suriname: 52 Ancestors 2021 Prompt “Favorite Photo”

Archie Shields and Daughters on Entry Drive to Alliance Plantation, Circa 1917-18

Photo taken by Surinamese Photographer Augusta Curiel

            Some photos are so evocative and beautiful that they immediately draw you in—you feel an instant connection to the moment, the place, and the people the photographer captured. This photo of my husband’s great-great uncle Archie Shields and his daughters is one of those photos.

            My husband’s great-great-grandfather Thomas Shields was an engineer for a manufacturer of sugar processing equipment, and in the early 1870s was sent from Scotland to the Demarara region of what is now Guyana to supervise the installation of equipment at a large sugar cane plantation. He stayed on in South America, at first managing and maintaining the equipment, and then moving on to managing entire plantations. Thomas eventually bought a plantation of his own in Suriname that was known as Alliance Plantation, and several of his children, including his eldest son Archibald, followed him to Suriname to work at Alliance.

            Archibald, known as Archie, was born March 18, 1864, in Clackerton Scotland, to Thomas and Margaret Shields. Like his father, he first trained as an engineer before moving to Suriname to work on the plantation. He eventually took over as manager of Alliance during his late twenties.

Archie married rather late in life. His wife, Louise Annie Kinnear, was the daughter of a European planter and a Javanese woman. Archie and Louise appear to have wed sometime after Archie’s father died in 1905; Archie was about forty. Their first child, Margaret Sutherland Shields, was born October 13, 1909 in Paramaribo, Suriname.

The couple spent most of their time in Suriname, returning every couple of years to Scotland to visit family for several months. On a visit in January 1912, their second child, Euphemia Louise Shields, was born in Lambeth, London. Their third and final child, Bethia Delphine Shields, was born in Parmaribo in 1913.

The three little girls spent most of their childhood at Alliance Plantation, living in the huge plantation house there. Sometime around 1918, Paramaribo’s most famous and talented photographer, a Surinamese woman named Augusta Curiel, came to the plantation to take photographs. She was accompanied by her sister Anna, who served as her assistant. One of the photos Augusta took was this stunning shot of Archie and his three daughters on the long, tree-shaded drive that led to the Alliance Plantation House.  

This shot truly captures the privileged lifestyle of the European plantation owners and managers. Archie stands proudly in his white suit and white pith helmet, resting his hands on daughter Euphemia’s shoulders. Little Bethia, who looks to be about three years old, stands close to her sister, chubby legs encased in white stockings.

Young Margaret, probably about nine years old in the photo, is perched on an amazing tricycle with three delicate wheels and solid black pedals, probably shipped from England to Suriname. All three girls are in pristine white dresses. The climate was hot and humid; imagine the work required to keep all these people in white clothing each day. The Shields family of course would take on none of this labor. So who would?

We get a clue from an easily overlooked detail on the left side of the photo. Two other children are barely visible, seated on the ground between two trees, slightly behind the tricycle. They are dark skinned, the children of some of Alliance’s indentured laborers. These workers were imported from Java and India to work in the cane fields, to run the sugar processing equipment, and to clean, cook and do the laundry in the huge plantation house that can be seen at the end of the tree-lined drive. The lives of those two children were vastly different than those of the three Shields girls, and Curiel’s composition illuminates that difference.

European planters like Archie and his father attempted to recreate the society and trappings of the wealthy and elite in their home countries in the new world of South America. Alliance’s tree-shaded drive echoes those that lead to the stately homes of the United Kingdom, differentiated only by the more exotic tree species used, and the style of the home at the end of the drive. Archie’s clothing and his daughters’ playthings and dresses all mimic the fashions of the wealthy in Europe, with the necessary substitution of lighter weight fabrics in cooling white. And, like the wealthy back in Scotland and Europe, Archie seems to ignore and dismiss the lives of the common people who made his lifestyle possible—Alliance’s hundreds of servants and laborers are invisible in this image, except for the two youngsters hidden in the shade at the edge of the drive.

Alliance has since fallen into ruin. The view of the drive today is nearly unrecognizable, as seen in this tourist photo.

Sources:

The original of this photograph is owned by the Stichting Surinaams Museum in Paramaribo. The photo can be found on their Flickr stream and on various internet sites. Here is the museum’s info on the photo:

“Alliance seen from the Commewijne River. With a gentleman with three little girls on the entrance, one of them on a three-wheeled bicycle. To the left, between the trees, a few small children. Date: Location: Commewijne, Suriname Manufacturer: attributed to Augusta Curiel Inv. Nr .: 74-13 Photo archive Stichting Surinaams Museum.”

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Tropenmuseum_Royal_Tropical_Institute_Objectnumber_60006292_Huis_op_plantage_Alliance.jpg

https://collectie.wereldculturen.nl/?query=search=*=TM-60006292#/query/4f163456-4eb5-4c23-a1f0-46cbda254676

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augusta_Curiel

https://www.surinameplantages.com/archief/a/alliance

https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Augusta_Curiel

Shields Family’s Repeated Names: 52 Ancestors 2021 Prompt “Namesake”

 

Scottish Naming Conventions in the Shields/Sutherland Line

 

            A quick glance at the Shields/Sutherland section of my husband Bruce’s family tree shows repeated use of certain first names, both across and down generations. I wondered why they kept using the same names even when there had to be confusion, with cousins just months or years apart often sharing the same first name and surname. Then I ran across notes my mother-in-law took while talking to her husband’s aunt, Ruth Shields MacNiven. Ruth explained that the family followed a Scottish naming tradition.

            According to Ruth, in Scottish families, the first son is named for the father’s father, the first daughter is named for the mother’s mother, the second son is named for the mother’s father, and the second daughter is named for the father’s mother, etc. So Mary “May” Seller Shields Aird was named for her mother, Mary Jane Pollock’s, mother, Mary Seller.

            Confusion can result when the families are quite large, so you have five or six siblings all wanting to use their parents’ first names for their first or second sons and daughters. And that’s exactly what happened in the Shields line: repeated Effie/Euphemias, Johns/Jacks, Archibalds, Marys/Mays, Bethias and Margarets.

            As an example, let’s look at my husband’s fourth great grandparents, Robert Muir and Margaret Mary Anderson Lauder. Robert was born in Lanarkshire, Scotland on December 11, 1779 to parents John Muir and Ann Penman Muir. Margaret was born on June 1, 1780 to parents Archibald Lauder and Bethia Anderson Lauder.

The couple married in Lanarkshire, and Robert and Margaret Mary went on to have several children. The first two sons and daughters, in order, along with the grandparent who they were the namesake of, are listed as follows:

Son John Muir, born 1806. Named for his father’s father, John Muir.

Son Archibald Muir, born 1808. Named for his mother’s father, Archibald Lauder.

Daughter Mary Anne Muir, born 1812. Named for her father’s mother, Ann Penman Muir.

Daughter Bethia Muir, born 1815. Named for her mother’s mother, Bethia Anderson Lauder.

Old Monkland area of Lanarkshire, Scotland where Muirs and Sutherlands lived

            Bethia Muir went on to marry John Sutherland. Among their first children were Robert Sutherland, namesake for Bethia’s father Robert Muir, and Margaret Sutherland, namesake for Bethia’s mother Margaret Anderson Lauder.

            Margaret Sutherland went on to marry Thomas Shields. Their first daughter was named Bethia Shields, named in honor of  Margaret’s mother Bethia Muir. However, Margaret and Thomas broke tradition somewhat, naming their first son Archibald Shields, thus honoring Margaret’s grandfather Archibald Lauder instead of her father Robert Sutherland. Margaret and Thomas waited until their fourth son was born to use her father’s name, Robert.

            Ruth Shields MacNiven, the source of the information on Scottish naming practices, was the grandchild of Margaret Sutherland and Thomas Shields. Ruth married a cousin named John (but called Jack), had an aunt named Bethia, a sister named Margaret and both an uncle and a brother named Archibald, so the names continued on for several more generations.

            These examples show how complicated and confusing this branch of the family tree can be. While namesake children are a charming tradition, they make the genealogist’s job much trickier.