James Hyde

Agent for Honduras, London merchant of James Hyde & Co. (q.v.) and Hyde, Hodge & Co. In 1834 he was shown as agent for Honduras, Rectory House, St Michaels Alley Cornhill.

1. Will of James Hyde who died at Appley House 23/12/1858 proved 11/01/1859 by James Bartlet Hyde the son and John Hodge, effects under £800.

2. James Hyde of Appley, Ryde, Isle of Wight, married Susan Campbell daughter of Colin Campbell and whose second daughter Elizabeth married Capt. Colin Yorke Campbell RN (son of Rear Admiral D. Campbell of Barbreck Argyllshire) in 1847. In 1850 James Bartlet Hyde married Isabella, daughter of Rear Admiral Campbell of Barbreck, suggesting the families were closely tied. The 1841 census shows James Hyde Merchant born S (=Scotland) aged 65 living at Appley House with his wife Susan (born Scotland) and (presumably his children) James merchant (25) Susan (20) and Elizabeth (20). He is at the same address in 1851, age 78, "Mahogany merchant".

3. James Hyde's son James Bartlet[t] Hyde of Great St Helens left effects under £6000 at his death 30/05/1876 at 43 Priory Road Kilburn, resworn 11/1876 to under £300 1876. Will proven by Helen Grace Hyde of 43 Priory Road and Donald Cochrane Campbell of Brentwood MD two of the executors.

4. In January 1830 Superintendent Cockburn awarded a grant of a mahogany work in the Rio Hondo to a Mr. George Hyde, a "free coloured man" who was the son of a wealthy cutter James Hyde.

5. 'The legacy of James Hyde remains contested in Belize.'

From The Publisher

(Posted: 11/11/10) Bob Turton was the “biggest man” in British Honduras when he died in 1955. The Belize Estate and Produce Company, better known as “BEC,” was the largest business corporation in Belize at the time. Turton and BEC were antagonistic to each other, not only because they were competitors in mahogany, chicle and other businesses, but because BEC was the quintessential British firm, and Turton was, by the standards of his time, a radical. He disliked Englishmen, and he detested BEC. Turton was the illegitimate son of an English army officer and a member of the Lightburn family off Hyde’s Lane.

As I explained in my column on Tuesday, my great-great-great-great grandfather on my father’s side was a Scotsman by the name of James Hyde. He fathered a son in Belize with a colored lady, Adney Broaster; that son, George Hyde, was born in 1795.

About twenty years after his son’s birth, James Hyde married a white Canadian woman. He departed British Honduras for Great Britain in the late 1820’s. He left his son, George, in pretty good financial shape, because James Hyde had gotten rich in Belize. He became even more wealthy in Britain, because he became one of the “big men” in the BEC corporation which dominated the economy of British Honduras in the latter part of the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth. James Hyde never returned to Belize: he raised a white family in Britain.

Bob Turton grew up very poor, because he was, typically for the time, abandoned by his white father. As a matter of fact, on my mother’s side of the family, her maternal grandfather, George Lindo, is believed to have been one of those who assisted Bob Turton during his youthful struggles. George Lindo owned clubs on Albert Street.

George Hyde’s grandson, Absalom Bartlett Hyde, born in 1853, had to become a blacksmith and machinist to “make life,” because his father, David Hyde, had lost what inheritance his father, George, had bequeathed to him.

So that, Absalom Bartlett’s youngest son, James Bartlett Hyde, who was my father’s father, grew up poor in Belize in the early twentieth century. James Bartlett Hyde ended up becoming one of Bob Turton’s most faithful employees. He was the mechanic/engineer on boats which Turton sent to the United States Gulf Coast to do business during the Prohibition era and afterwards.

In his lecture on Monday night in the Bliss Center for Performing Arts, Professor Sir Hilary Beckles explained how the British became wealthy off the labor of their millions of slaves in the Caribbean. He showed that the island Britain’s growth rate had been modest, actually minimal, until they entered the West African slave trade and Caribbean plantation business big time in the seventeenth century. Over there in Great Britain there must be some very wealthy white Hydes whose patriarch got his “start” in the settlement of Belize in the late eighteenth century.

Rt. Hon. George Price is the son of an army officer who was considered “Belize white.” William Price was one of the elite against whom Belize’s black Ex-Servicemen revolted in July of 1919. George Price’s mother was of Maya descent, and her heritage appeared to influence Mr. Price substantially. It is said that Mr. Price, who wanted to become a Roman Catholic priest, ended up as Bob Turton’s personal secretary because he had to assist his younger siblings when his father died in the early 1940s. The point I want to make is that Mr. Price reportedly did not have a problem sharing some of Mr. Turton’s anti-British feelings, because BEC had abused Belizean Mayas terribly.

I am not a George Price fan, because I don’t like his style. But I respect Mr. Price as a great, great Belizean. There are family members of his who have major issues with me because of the various hassles between me and Mr. Price. The one thing I would like for them to acknowledge is that when I had anything to say about Mr. Price, I said it – me, myself and I. When Mr. Price had anything to say about me, there were surrogates of his who did the job. Mr. George was never as innocent as he appeared to be.

But, he was a winner. And, at the end of the day, that is a really big thing – the “W”. Respect, Right Hon. George Cadle Price.

T71/878 Honduras claim nos. 26, 46 and 176.

P.O. London Directory 1834.

1. National Probate Calendar 1859.

2. http://histfam.familysearch.org/getperson.php?personID=I236962&tree=Nixon; http://freepages.history.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~leighann/wfp/marriages/3.html; http://searches2.rootsweb.com/th/read/SCOTLAND/2006-03/1143481777; 1841, 1851 censuses online

3. National Probate Calendar 1876 p. 558.

4. O. Nigel Bolland & Assad Shoman, Land in Belize, 1765-1871 (Kingston JM, 1977), p.43.

5. http://www.amandala.com.bz/newsadmin/preview.php?id=10543 [accessed 02/01/2011].

We are grateful to Cynthia Gentles for her help compiling this entry.