Old Stone Bridge

Fredriksdal and the Old Stone Bridge
The following photos were taken at the Fredriksdal ruins, easily accessible by a trail through the thorny sweet limes right off the main road in the Annaberg Area. The old stone bridge (above) can be found at the end of a short trail on the other side of the road.

History
Fredriksdal was named for Frederick Von Moth who lived on St. Thomas. He purchased the property from Reimert Sødtmann, magistrate of St. John in the early 1730s. (Sødtmann and his stepdaughter were among the first victims of the slave rebellion in 1733.) Von Moth was commander of the civil guard on St. Thomas and later became governor of St. Croix.

The grand entrance and stairway of the Fredriksdal Ruins are the remains of the estate house, which served as living quarters for the owners of Annaberg Plantation and are visible from the road. There are extensive ruins extending back into the bush. They include the remains of an oven, a well, a horsemill and other old structures and walls.

Looking up through the well tower on the old Fredriksdal Estate

Stone stairway once leading to the Fredriksdal great house

Well tower at Fredriksdal ruins

St. John Live Music – Thursday April 19

Banana Deck – Steel Pan by Lemuel Samuels – 6:00 – 9:00 – 693-5055
Castaways – Dance Party – 11:00 – 777-3316
Driftwood Dave’s – Just Mike – 7:00 – 10:00 – 777-4015
High Tide – Inner Vision – 8:00-11:00 – 714-6169
Island Blues – Ike – 7:00 – 10:00 – 776-6800
Morgan’s Mango – Mark Wallace – 6:00 – 9:30 – 693-8141
Ocean Grill – Chris Carsel – 6:30 – 9:00 – 693-3304
Shipwreck Landing – Slammin – 7:00 – 10:00
Skinny Legs – Lauren – 6:00 – 9:00 – 779-4982

See Weekly Schedule

Cruz Bay Branch of Chase Manhattan Bank 1965

Cruz Bay, St. John US Virgin Islands (USVI)
It wasn’t until 1958 that St. John had its own bank. Before that year, people had to go over to St. Thomas to do their banking. Largely through the efforts of St. John administrator, George Simmonds, and Senator Julius Sprauve, the first Virgin Islands senator from St. John, the West Indies Bank and Trust Company was persuaded to open a branch on St. John. Senator Sprauve sweetened the pot by offering rental space to the bank at a reasonable rate.

In 1962, The West Indies Bank and Trust Company was taken over by Chase Manhattan Bank.

The photograph above was taken in 1965 and was provided by Bob Garrison, aka the Trail Bandit.

Statue of Christopher Columbus located in the Plaza Mayor in the Old City of Santo Domingo.

In the ship’s log and in his diary Columbus made the following observation concerning the Taino: “They are a very loving people and without covetousness,”…”They are adaptable for every purpose, and I declare to your Highnesses that there is not a better country nor a better people in the world than these.”…They are so ingenious and free with all they have that no one would believe it who has not seen it; of anything they possess, if it be asked of them, they never say no; on the contrary they invite you to share it and show as much love as if their hearts went with it…”

Father Bartolomé de Las Casas, who wrote extensively about the Taino culture and their interaction with the Spanish invaders, sailed to the West Indies with Christopher Columbus on his second voyage. The Spanish fleet also carried more than 1500 adventurers, former prisoners and ex soldiers with battle experience in the wars against the Moors of North Africa.

Father Las Casas wrote:
“…God made all the peoples of this area…open and as innocent as can be imagined. The simplest people in the world, unassuming, long-suffering, unassertive, and submissive. They are without malice or guile…Never quarrelsome or belligerent or boisterous, they harbor no grudges and do not seek to settle old scores; indeed, the notions of revenge, rancor, and hatred are quite foreign to them…They own next to nothing and have no urge to acquire material possessions. As a result they are neither ambitious nor greedy, and are totally uninterested in worldly power…They are innocent and pure in mind and have a lively intelligence…

“It was upon these gentle lambs, imbued by the Creator with all the qualities we have mentioned, that from the very first day they clapped eyes on them the Spanish fell like ravening wolves upon the fold…The pattern established at the outset has remained unchanged to this day, and the Spaniards still do nothing save tear the natives to shreds, murder them and inflict upon them untold misery, suffering and distress, tormenting, harrying and persecuting them mercilessly.

“They forced their way into native settlements, slaughtering everyone they found there, including small children, old men, pregnant women, and even women who had just given birth. They hacked them to pieces, slicing open their bellies with their swords as though they were so many sheep herded into a pen. They even laid wagers on whether they could manage to slice a man in two at a stroke, or cut an individual’s head from his body, or disembowel him with a single blow of their axes. They grabbed suckling infants by the feet and, ripping them from their mothers’ breasts, dashed them headlong against the rocks. Others, laughing and joking all the while, threw them over their shoulders into a river, shouting: ‘Wriggle, you little perisher.’

“They spared no one, erecting especially wide gibbets on which they could string their victims up with their feet just off the ground and then burn them alive thirteen at a time, in honor of our Savior and the twelve Apostles, or tie dry straw to their bodies and set fire to it…The way they normally dealt with the native leaders and nobles was to tie them to a kind of griddle consisting of sticks resting on pitchforks driven into the ground and then grill them over a slow fire, with the result that they howled in agony and despair as they died a lingering death.

“It once happened that I myself witnessed their grilling of four or five local leaders in this fashion (and I believe they had set up two or three other pairs of grills alongside so that they might process other victims at the same time) when the poor creatures ‘howls came between the Spanish commander and his sleep. He gave orders that the prisoners were to be throttled, but the man in charge of execution detail, who was more bloodthirsty than the average common hangman (I know his identity and even met some relatives of his in Seville), was loath to cut short his private entertainment by throttling them and so he personally went round ramming wooden buns into their mouths to stop them making such a racket and deliberately stoked the fire that they would take just as long to die as he himself chose. I saw these things for myself and many others besides.

“…It is reported that the butcher-in-chief arranged for a large number of natives in the area and, in particular, one group of over two hundred who had either come form a neighboring town in response to a summons or had gathered of their own free will, to have their noses, lips and chins sliced from their faces; they were sent away, in unspeakable agony and all running with blood…”

In the United States of America and in the Caribbean, Columbus Day is celebrated on the twelfth of October.

If you’ve been to Trunk Bay lately, you’ve probably noticed the that the ruins of the old Trunk Bay sugar mill have not only been cleared, but also are undergoing a stabilization project headed by the Virgin Islands National Park.

The Trunk Bay area was first claimed and settled by Adrian Runnels even before Denmark laid official claim to the island of St. John in 1718.

But Mr. Runnels and his enslaved entourage were not the first people to live on Trunk Bay. That honor belongs to descendants of indigenous Americans who first came to St. John around 1000 BC.

Archeological findings indicate that Trunk Bay was settled by these first Americans who called themselves Tainos around 700AD. Here they lived, planted yucca, fished, gathered fruit, fabricated pottery, tools and weapons and conducted their social and religious ceremonies until about 900 AD.

It seems that around that time these settlers left in a hurry, evidenced by the finding of cooking pots, which were still filled with food.

When Christopher Columbus sailed past the north shore of St. John on his second voyage, he either did not see, or at least did not report, any signs of the island being inhabited. This seems quite strange in that archeological evidence indicates several rather large villages along that coastline that existed until sometime around Columbus’ voyage.

The question is, what happened to the Tainos of St. John? Did they flee advancing Carib warriors? Were they in fact still on the island when Columbus passed by and were later wiped out by the depredations and diseases brought on by the European onslaught? Were they forced off the island by some natural disaster such as a hurricane earthquake or tsunami or did they just move on seeking greener pastures.

Perhaps the answer lies buried under the soil of St John waiting for an archeological discovery or perhaps we will never know what happened.