Sugar Cane Farming in Suriname: 52 Ancestors 2021 Prompt “On the Farm”

Alliance Plantation: Farm Operation and Production
Suriname: 1890s-1950s

 

Previous posts on Alliance Plantation focused primarily on the Shields family and their personal histories while they were running and managing Alliance Plantation. But exactly what was involved in sugar cane production in Suriname in the early 20^th century? What did Alliance produce?

Alliance's location, with the river at the top and the Kreek running parallel to the plantation buildings.

Here is the text of an advertisement that ran in the Surinaamsche Courant en Gouvernements Advertisement Sheet, a Paramariblo newspaper, in issue no. 14, Thursday, April 9, 1879 (translated from Dutch):

“ADVERTISING:

The civil-law notary E. A. CABELL will be present on Tuesday the 30th. September, selling at 9 am:

The sugar plantation ALLIANCE in full operation in the district of Matappica. Approximately 1350 acres with all their buildings, machinery, factories, vessels and the accompanying adjacent grounds, New Acconoribo, large 2000 acres, Sunflower, large 1000 acres, Catharinasburg, large 212 acres, part of the Jonge Bijenkorf, 750 acres, belonging to the estate of Mr H. WRIGHT.

In cultivation are 500 fields of sugar cane.

Population: 195 coolie immigrants, 38 free coolies and Chinese under contract, and 332 uncontracted free workers.

The plantation works with a vacumpan machine and also has a wood sawmill.

The aforementioned plantation and land are now for sale out of hand. Information to be obtained from Mr. A. STIRKING. Paramaribo September 3, 1879.”

The property described in this sale comprised the plantation Alliance, which was purchased by Thomas Shields a little over a decade later. The property description helps to explain the plantation’s name: it was created from the union or alliance of five smaller plantations: Sunflower, New Acconoribo, Catharinasburg, Jonge Bijenkorf, and the original 1350 acres that formed the heart of the plantation.

A man named Knott bought the property in 1879. Thomas Shields originally came to Suriname to work for Knott, running and maintaining the plantation’s sugar mill, the “vacumpan” equipment mentioned in the sale advertisement.

Alliance's sugar mill or factory in 1890

Obviously, the plantation needed a large number of workers to plant and harvest the sugarcane, and to operate the sugar mill. Surinam’s sugar plantations used slaves until 1863, as noted by A. van Tran:

".....the abolition of slavery in 1863 greatly reduced the number of sugar plantations, due to the shortage of labour, and at the beginning of this century there were still only seven plantations in operation, two of which soon fell off. The quintet of factories that remained survived until the crisis that began in 1929, and today are only two left, viz. Marienburg, and Alliance…”

Records show that Hugh Wright, as the previous owner of Alliance, was paid “150,600 guilders for the 508 enslaved people on Plantage Alliance” in compensation for their freedom in 1863. Presumably this money came from the colonial government. By the time Alliance was sold to AK Knott in 1879, owner Wright’s 565 workers were a combination of indentured or “contract” workers described as “coolies” (which suggests they were brought from India) and “uncontracted free” workers, who were probably freed slaves who now worked for wages.

While I am sure the Dutch word that Google helpfully translated as “free” had a more nuanced meaning, it does reflect the difficult position of non-free, indentured workers. They could not leave their jobs until their contract was fulfilled, so they were barely better off than slaves, trapped in often miserable conditions under cruel and demanding overseers. There were frequent worker uprisings among the indentured as a result.

Javanese contract laborers on Marienburg Plantation

According to the website SurinamePlantages.com, Alliance grew in size and production under Mr. Knott and during the transition period to Thomas Shields’ ownership:

“The plantation was 642 hectares large, of which 140 hectares produced sugar cane. Alliance produced 314,900 kg vacuum pan sugar, and 33,720 liters of rum. …In 1894, Knott was still the owner of Alliance. The plantation had grown considerably and was now 1,860 hectares large with 192 hectares devoted to sugar cane culture. 760,000 kg vacuum pan sugar and 74,233 liters of rum were produced. That is therefore a doubling of the production compared to 3 years before. There were 662 workers; Alliance was a large plantation.”

Cutting cane at plantation in Suriname approx 1910

The site goes on to explain the labor situation and the growing numbers of contract laborers recruited from Java and India.

“Between 1873 and 1929, Alliance grew into a very large company, recruiting a total of 2016 British Indian and 2,136 Javanese contractors.

The arrival of the immigrants was accompanied by bickering over (too) low wages and poor working conditions. It was inevitable: the aim of the plantation enterprise, especially in the 19th century, was to maximize profits, and one means was to minimize wages with the highest possible labor tax. Already in 1878 there was a strike against these harsh working conditions. The management of the plantation was supported by the government and was repressive: 58 workers were arrested, of which 10 were convicted. Working conditions remained unchanged. In June 1902 - after Alliance's new executive made a pay cut - British Indian worker Jumpa Raigaroo led a strike for better wages and treatment. It again turned out to be a major confrontation with the government. But now the workers were right: wages were increased again and the director replaced. Even now the price was high: 17 workers were sentenced to 6 months hard labor. Three weeks later, the great uprising at Marienburg followed, with 18 dead (including the director) and 39 wounded.”

The plantation grew in size of cultivated land and production under Thomas Shields’ ownership and his son Archie Shields’ management. Dutch researchers wrote that around the turn of the century,

“The plantation covered an area of 1,860 hectares and produced sugar (1,668 tons) and rum (86000 liters). 350 hectares were under cultivation. 828 workers worked on the plantation, including 673 immigrants. A. Shields was the captain.”

Archie Shields at far right, with other government figures. About 1910-20.

The site also noted that the plantation continued to improve the sugar mill equipment. Presumably Thomas Shields’ connections with McConie Harvey, the sugar mill production company he once worked for, helped him keep abreast of innovations in equipment.

“From 1860 to 1953, the sugar-taking Alliance has undergone a continuous process of scaling up and innovation. That the company was successful in doing so is evident from the fact that it was able to survive until 1953, and thus the second to last sugar company of Suriname. (Marienburg was the last). The details of the business operations are not exactly known. Just like the others sugar companies switched to sugar processing at some point using the vacuum pan method, and has been continuously modernized.” (translated from Dutch)

Sugar mill at Marienburg Plantation--similar to Alliance's

Interior of Marienburg sugar mill--similar to Alliance's mill

Thomas Shields’ grandson and granddaughter, Jack McNiven and wife Ruth Shields McNiven, took over management of the plantation in the 1930s when Archie Shields neared retirement. Ruth wrote in a memoir about how the plantation shipped off the sugar it produced. She did not mention rum production; perhaps that had been halted by the 1930s.

“… during much of my time at Plantation Alliance our sugar was shipped with the Norwegian bauxite freighters: the Dalvangen, Vestvangen, Sorvangen, Lindvangen, etc. which, being about three thousand tons, were too big for the Matapica Kreek. Actually, they reversed in the Commewijne and backed up to our stelling, since the kreek was not wide enough for them to turn there… The Captains and their passengers were always welcome guests. The latter were fascinated with this stop at a working plantation, by the glimpses of tropical life afforded them, by the local drinks and dishes we served, the garden of exotic flowers and trees, the vista of the cane fields stretching away to the distant bush ….”

The photo shows the Dalvangen. The other three ships Ruth mentioned were built by the same company and were nearly identical. I am amazed a ship of this size was able to navigate the Commewijne River. The river must have been quite deep to handle a ship with this draft. The Lindvangen was torpedoed by a German U-boat in 1942; luckily the ship’s captain, John Einar Nelson, survived; he was probably one of the captains who enjoyed the McNivens’ hospitality.

Archie sold Alliance to the government of Suriname in 1953. At the time of sale, the plantation was described as follows:

On November 12, 1953, the Sugar Company Alliance was sold to the State. Hereby the following lands were transferred:

Lodewijksburg 500 acres

Sporksgift 500 acres

Alderat 340 acres 2 parts of the young beehive 918 acres

Vlaardingen 500 acres

Catharinenburg 212 acres

New: Acconoribo 1000 acres

Sunflower 1000 acres

1 part of Constantia 779 acre. In total 5749 fields or 2466 hectares.

While the Surinamese government originally intended to divide up the plantation into smaller farms to be farmed by Alliance’s former employees, that plan was eventually scrapped. According to the Dutch history of the plantation,

“Instead, by state decree of January 29, 1973, the State Enterprise Alliance instituted as part of the "national companies regulation" (G:B: 1971 no. 181), with….the aim of "planting citrus and other crops on a commercial basis”.

Remains of boiler from Alliance's sugar mill.

Government management has been poor. The citrus farm project has not been profitable. The sugar factory on site fell into disrepair and was torn down. The plantation house and the overseer houses were allowed to crumble. Sugar production has moved to other countries, and is no longer a significant part of Suriname’s economy.

Remains of the foundation of Alliance's sugar mill. 1980s.

Sources:

Surinaamsche Courant en Gouvernements Advertisement Sheet no. 14, Thursday 04-09-1879 no. 107 (N.A.S.)

 Suriname 1900-1940, A. Van Traa, W. van Hoeve; 1St Edition (January 1, 1946), p. 54

https://www.ucl.ac.uk/lbs/person/view/2146646367

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

“Vignettes of plantation life” by Ruth Shields McNiven, as quoted in De Suikerplantage Alliance aan de Matapica kreek .aan de uitvloeiing van de Matapicakreek in de Commewijne. Auteur: Philip Dikland, 2003, aangevuld 2004, 2010, 2011.

 

 

David Aird-- Fresh Off the Boat to Employed: 52 Ancestors 2021 Prompt “Working”

Working from Day Three In America
David Aird: 1897-1975

 

I was delighted to discover a news clipping about David Aird, my husband’s granduncle, that provided some background on how he came to get a job at the Detroit Free Press. The story was a perfect illustration of how David and his brothers came to America ready to work hard and build a new life, and how they arrived at just the right time to make that dream come true.

David Aird was born September 12, 1897 in Dundee, Scotland to parents James Aird and Jane Ann Robertson Aird. James worked as a cabinetmaker; David was the youngest of seven children. The family lived at 14 Peddie Street in Dundee, just down the street from Jane’s brother Thomas, whose family had lived at 10 Peddie in 1891, and at 12 Peddie after 1901.

Peddie Street in Dundee, early 1900s

According to John Aird’s memoirs, his grandfather James Aird was “evidently quite skilled at his trade, but he became an alcoholic, drank up much of his wages, and the family lived in poverty. They seldom entertained friends at home because [Jane] could not be sure in what condition her husband would come home from work. Sometimes the children had to be sent to retrieve him from the tavern. Eventually his drinking led to cirrhosis of the liver, and he then stopped drinking, but the damage was already done, and in two years he was dead. My grandmother later said those final two years (of sobriety) were the happiest of her life.”

To help support the family while her husband’s earnings were erratic, Jane arranged for the oldest boys to be apprenticed in a trade—James and William as electrician apprentices, and Harry first with a greengrocer and then with a hardware store owner.  William, the oldest son, married in 1904, and soon had a son of his own to support. Looking for new and better opportunities, he left Scotland for America in 1907. He, his wife and little son arrived in New York on May 12, 1907, a year before his father James died back in Scotland.

David was only ten when his father died in 1908. The family was left impoverished. Jane took in washing to support her children, and soon her children began emigrating one by one to America, following in William’s footsteps. John Aird said that each of them would arrive in America with “a handful of gold coins, required proof that they were not indigent. Once established in the new country, the coins were sent home so that the next brother cold use them to gain entry.” Harry was the first to leave, arriving in New York on November 13, 1910 at age 24. The eldest child, Isabella, followed, arriving July 17, 1911 at age 31, already an old maid. James followed May 2, 1913.

By 1914, the four oldest children were gainfully employed in the Detroit area, and were able to afford to send for their mother and the remaining siblings. Fortuitously, Jane and her children arrived in New York aboard the ship Campania on June 1, 1914, just barely a month before World War I erupted and made sea travel perilous. Sister Jean Aird was 22 years old, Andrew Aird was 19, and young David was 16.

RMS Campania

David described his arrival in the news article, remembering that they arrived on a Monday, and

“Friends met them and took them to Jersey City for Supper. Then they were put aboard a Detroit-bound train.

‘We arrived here (Detroit) Tuesday morning,’ Aird said. ‘That night there was an ad in the paper for a boy to work in the Free Press composing room. William told me how to get to the Free Press. I went down the next day and was hired. I had a job on my second day in Detroit and only my third in the United States.”

David worked for six years as an apprentice in the composing room, learning the linotype machine and other newspaper composition skills. He left the newspaper for a year but returned in 1921 and worked there until he retired. What an amazing story! His siblings had similar experiences, quickly finding gainful employment that provided opportunities for advancement into a middle-class life.

Detroit News Composing Room, painting by James Scripps Booth. Where David Aird worked.

David married Laura Streng on October 17, 1923. He was 26 and she was 24. They had two children, Kenneth, born June 13, 1925, and Marjorie Laura, born February 16, 1934. John remembers that David loved his children.

However, David’s life in America was not perfect. John Aird recalls that David got a reputation in the family as a bit of a mooch, never contributing to summer camping trip supplies or helping with fruit canning, but expecting to share in the products of his siblings’ efforts.

John also wrote:

“Uncle Dave seems to have been basically a weak person. In his middle years, he became addicted to slot machine gambling and loved to tell us how he walked up to a certain machine and put a nickel in it and pulled the lever and at first crack got back so many dollars’ worth of coins.”

John’s mother pulled John aside to explain that Dave’s attempts to repeat that little miracle led to dollars and dollars of losses thereafter. David’s poor wife, Laura, came to talk to John’s parents “about the fact that Uncle Dave was losing so much money at the slot machines that they hardly had enough to live on. She could not even get an accounting of his losses…she would have left him if she could, but had no way of supporting herself and the children without him. She asked my father to have a talk with Uncle Dave and try to straighten him out. Of course it did no good.”

After that point, David and his family pulled away from the other Airds, rarely joining family celebrations or visiting his mother. John and his side of the family knew very little about David, Laura and the children. Presumably David got his gambling problem under control at some point, as he continued to hold his position at the newspaper, and was admired in the community and in the St. Andrews Society enough to receive the award of merit and appreciation from the mayor of Detroit.

David retired from the Detroit Free Press in 1964 after thirty years with the company. He moved to Livonia, Michigan in 1973, and died there on March 12, 1975. Laura preceded him in death.

David’s story of how he got a job three days after arriving in a new country shows that he and his siblings arrived at a very welcoming time for American immigrants. David had no papers, no experience, and no references other than immediate family, yet even so, a large, respectable company like the Detroit Free Press immediately hired him. They trained him in a trade that would support him and his family for his entire life. 

I don’t believe that could ever happen in present-day America. Even the most menial jobs now require some sort of credentials. Companies would never hire a new immigrant today until the immigrant obtained a green card that would permit them to work in the United States. The only businesses that would hire someone fresh off the boat in this day and age would be businesses operating illegally, paying in cash under the table. Those jobs are only the most menial and most dangerous types of labor. And of course now immigrants are looked upon with disdain and anger by a large segment of the American public which makes their lives even more difficult. The “Build the Wall” people speak so disdainfully of how today’s immigrants expect a handout, ignoring the fact that our country now refuses to allow them to legally work. These people forget how just a century ago their own immigrant ancestors had opportunities that our country has now closed off to today’s immigrants. How quickly we forget.

Sources: 

Detroit Free Press, accessed through Newspapers.com

John Aird Memoir