THE DECORDOVAS: Finding our roots in Jamaica
The following is a contribution from Melissa deCordova, whose husband’s family is descended from Jacob and Joshua deCordova, the founders of The Jamaica Gleaner.
MY STORY about our family’s recent trip to discover our roots in Jamaica must absolutely, positively begin with a funny tale about something our daughter, Laney, said at the age of six.
While lunching with her kindergarten friend, hosted by the friend’s mother, she was asked whether she felt chilly in the air-conditioned restaurant and might she want to put on her sweater. Our girl is quoted as replying, indignantly: “I’m not cold. I have hot, Spanish blood!”
FAMILY TREE
Grand Capitán Gonzalo Fernández deCordoba – said Spanish general believed to be coursing through our daughter’s veins (or so her father has teased her since birth) – is my husband’s family’s assumed ancestor. Indisputably mighty, he was known for his campaigns in the Italian Wars and for the reconquest of Granada from the Moors in 1492. He singlehandedly invented trench warfare and influenced the generation of Spanish conquistadors that followed.
We say Gonzalo is the family’s assumed ancestor because he had no known sons.
Unfortunately, television programmes like Access Hollywood and social media searches into people’s personal lives didn’t exist back in the 15th century, so no one really knows. And, I do confess that we’ve allowed our daughter Lane, now 24, and also our son, Noel, 26, to grow up believing in their exceptionally powerful Spanish blood relative. We think they are better for it.
Grand Capitán was born in 1453 in Córdoba, Spain, the birthplace of many preceding generations of Córdobas and Cordovas. According to the research of several genealogists in the family, the first documented ancestor, Isaac deCordova pops up sometime in the late 1600s in Constantinople, Turkey. From there, Isaac’s son, Moses Raphael, and his son, Jacob Haim, are pegged in Amsterdam, Holland, having died in 1649 and 1712, respectively. Then, the line, led by Jacob’s son, Isaac, sets sail on the open seas and drops anchor in the early 1700s along the coast of your most beautiful Jamaica. It is here where my husband’s third greatgrandfather, Joshua, alongside his half-brother, Jacob, founded De Cordova’s Advertising Sheet, which eventually morphed into its first newspaper: The Gleaner, in 1834-1836.
Being a journalist by trade, you can imagine my intrigue when I learned about my future husband’s connection to the most prominent newspaper in the Caribbean. After marrying Noel deCordova III in 1989, I made ‘Trip’ (as he’s called) promise to take me to Jamaica and to Kingston one day. Trip’s second cousin, Gillian deCordova Davies of Surrey, England, rented a home near Ocho Rios every winter and many, many times she had invited us to join her.
So why did it take us nearly 30 years to make the trip in February? Let’s just say we took a circuitous route.