The history of the deCordovas
MUCH OF what I know about the deCordovas is courtesy of research conducted by Trip’s late father, Noel deCordova Jr of Poughkeepsie, New York; cousin Diane deCordova of New York City; cousin Bryan Ashenheim of Grand Cayman; cousin Vann deCordova of Texas; and our newest acquaintance, Ainsley Henriques, of Kingston. My father-in-law, and later, Diane, were initially inspired to research the family tree by Noel, Jr’s discovery in mid-1960s of his cousins Gillian and Col John deCordova, the latter of whom resides in Bath, England.
The two British deCordovas shared the same grandfathers, Joshua, and Noel, Jr’s grandfather was Joshua’s brother Raphael, all born and raised in Kingston. The cousins celebrated birthdays, weddings, and holidays together and travelled often between the United States, the United Kingdom, and Jamaica.
Our family of four from upstate New York was fortunate to visit Gillian in Surrey in the early 2000s. Our host threw a large party for us, where we met her sisters, Iona and Valerie deCordova; their husbands and respective children and grandchildren – the Cornishes and the Mains – and Col John’s three daughters. A second trip to England found us in Bath, where Lane and Noel sat in a deCordova family crest chair that was rescued from a termiteinfested storage warehouse in Kingston.
TRIP TO SPAIN
Three years ago, we travelled to southern Spain during Lane’s college semester abroad and searched the village streets of Córdoba to find the Grand Capitán memorialised in bronze astride a large Andalusian horse. We toured the infamous Mosque of Córdoba and headed to Granada, where we tip-toed around the capitan’s tomb, which was featured centremost in the Royal Monastery of San Jerónimo.
When Gillian, who is still cheerful and able at 97, sent us an invitation last summer to join her in February of this year for a deCordova family reunion in Ocho Rios. We knew it was our time.
Thirteen family members would be expected, so we booked rooms at Moon Palace and requested a tour of The Gleaner. Diane hooked us up with the charming Mr Henriques, who put all of the various branches and 12 generations of the Jamaica deCordovas together for us during tours of the The Shaare Shalom Synagogue and restored cemeteries in downtown old Kingston. A Chinese Jamaican acquaintance of ours from Toronto, music promoter Bobby Chong, then met us and took us out to see Port Royal.
How do we happen to know a Jamaican Chinese Canadian music promoter, you might ask?
Answer: Reggae. Back in 2000, Trip coincidentally roomed at a soccer certification camp in Pennsylvania with Bobby, who, when catching a ride with Trip to practise the first morning of their training, was astonished to hear Toots and the Maytals playing in Trip’s car. Ever the consummate storyteller, Trip proceeded to tell about Bob Marley and the Wailers riding unicycles and playing soccer in 1979 at Colgate University (Hamilton, NY), where he was the junior varsity soccer coach. You can imagine the smiles and ‘Ya, man’s’ when they shared their Jamaican heritage. A year ago, we drove up to Toronto to hear Bobby’s friends play a concert to commemorate Jamaica’s 55th year of independence from England.