A Different Kind of Storm: 52 Ancestors 2021 Prompt “Stormy Weather”

 

A 2021 Volcanic Eruption Reminiscent of Montserrat’s 1995 Disaster

Ruth Shields MacNiven: 1904-1995

 

            On Friday, April 9, I was watching television news coverage of a huge volcanic eruption on the Caribbean island of St. Vincent. Ash was raining down, making it hard to breathe, and led to the mandatory evacuation of a large percentage of St. Vincent’s populace.

            This reminded me of the eruption on Montserrat July 18, 1995, that destroyed the capitol city of Plymouth and left much of the island uninhabitable. The island’s population dropped from 12,000 to about 5,000 today. Many of the island’s inhabitants fled to the British Isles, never to return. Monserrat is only about 250 miles from St. Vincent; the islands are among a chain of over a dozen Caribbean islands with active volcanoes.

            Montserrat was the retirement home of Jack and Ruth Shields MacNiven, John Aird’s aunt and uncle. Laurel and John Aird visited Ruth there in November 1987, and Laurel took “trip notes” about her impressions of the island and Ruth’s home. The notes are rather disjointed—they were just jottings of her thoughts rather than journal entries with complete sentences; the notes were among materials we found in Laurel’s house after her death. I have transcribed her handwritten notes as best as I could, so make allowances if there are confusing sections:

“To see Glen Mhor (R’s note: the name of Ruth’s house/estate) at the end of the afternoon! Looks in the back across Ghaut (R’s note: ghaut, pronounced gut, is what Montserrat natives called the ravines through the hills) and a valley to beautiful mountains. St. George’s Hill is across the road in front. Now made into apartments—quite changed from when the MacNivens came.

It is a lovely long house, reminding me of the photo of Alliance. However as changing as the mountains are in color and clouds, we prefer the sea view here at Witkijk (? Can’t find anywhere on map.)

Glen Mhor has an old sugar mill of its own from which about half (toward the road) has been torn down to use the rocks in other construction. Two owners since the MacNivens and many more walls and steps now, including a huge patio in back where once only earth.

Aunt Ruth’s trees:

Mahogany in back

Cassia fistula—shower of yellow blossoms. Planted one at Alliance for Grandmama’s 100th birthday.

Anthurium (pink) all and the Cassia modosa.

Flamboyant tree with mimosa-like leaves—red blooms in front and yellow in back

Avocado in back

Bohinia, white in front from Puerto Rico, and red from Africa out back. Tiny dense, dark leaves and tiny white flowers. Overpowering tropical fragrance.

Flowers in back:

Ixora, red, pink and white. Plumbago—Blue, both sides of the driveway. Oleander: deep pink in front. Clitoria: deep purple, lovely wrap-around layers with pale yellow striping, like nectar guides.

Trees:

Norfolk pine, back

Bay for Bay Rum, back

Logwood

Apple blossom acacia (cassia modosa

Blue jacaranda—mimosa-like leaf

Frangipani—pink, white in back

Cordia—small orange in back good for hummingbirds

Spathiodia—orange flowers, African Tulip tree—very prevalent in Puerto Rico after introduced there.

Papaya

Night-scented jasmine—gallery vine, and day-scented variety on corner of garage.

Has about 6 different jasmines---people mistakenly call one variety a camellia but it isn’t.

Wonderful rainbows, visible right to the ground, not only in air. Double arc seen from the air.

Took Ruth to dinner at Belham Valley Restaurant, near Vue Pointe, an appealing tropical setting. You sit down first in a lounge, with groups of comfortable chairs, for drinks if desired. Classical piano tape playing Beethoven, Chopin, and Saint Saens. Handsome tall, dark Montserratian waiter, in white shirts, black trousers—very well trained, warm, courteous. Menus brought there, orders discussed, then called when table is ready. Table was on an open gallery overlooking the back side of the another hill, with lights shining out from the widely spaced leaves, and glittering stars above, and the Caribbean out to one side. Delectable food!

Mahogany seed pods are very heavy. “Savannah medals”—what they call cowpies on Trinidad.

In to town for first and last walkabout. Went to the wool wall hanging shop. Bob Townsend the American artist who designs them, and Montserrat women do the rug hooking. Found 2 I’d have loved at $50 or $55 US each, but John said, rightly, we have more than we can put on our walls now.

Pick up Ruth’s repaired hearing aid which Ian had mailed. What an experience at the Post Office! Half an hour or more.

…these islands—very green and mountainous… Strange to know it will be well into winter when we return from this perpetual summer.”

            Ruth wrote a brief summary of her life with Jack on various plantations, and ended with the wish that she stay on Montserrat “until my bones come to rest beside my husband’s in the cemetery down by the sea.” Sadly, she never got to be buried with Jack. Ruth died in the United States on June 20, 1995, less than a month before the volcanic eruption destroyed most of the island. I would guess that the cemetery by the sea is now buried beneath ash.

Most of the locations mentioned in Laurel’s notes are gone. The view she describes from Ruth’s house of St. George’s Hill seems to suggest that Ruth’s house was in the Belham Valley area, much of which was buried. St. George’s Hill is now in the “exclusion zone” on the island—too hazardous for occupation. It is difficult to reach and apparently requires permission from the agency monitoring the volcano.

I can find no current listings for the Belham Valley Restaurant where they ate. A hotel still remains at Vue Pointe, but has only just reopened in 2016—it was closed in 2007 because the government felt the area was too dangerous. You can see from the photo of the hotel how beautiful the area was and remains, but the pyroclastic zone is nearby.

I’m glad Laurel and John were able to see the island before the devastation, and I’m glad Ruth MacNiven never had to learn that much of the island and possibly the home she loved was gone.

Note: If anyone in the family has photos from John and Laurel’s 1987 trip to Montserrat, especially any photos of Ruth and her home, let me know. I’d love to add them to this post and to our family history materials.