Dr Rita Pemberton

Migration, forced and free, constitutes an important theme in the history of Tobago.

While the movement of people during most of the 19th century was related to an inward flow in the effort to support a dying sugar industry, the 20th-century movements reflected both inward and outward migration with both negative and positive consequences for the island.

There were two movements which were related to the demise of the sugar industry at the end of the 19th century.

First of all was the departure of many of the traditional planters and planter-related businesses from the island, which was related to their loss of economic power due to the failure of the sugar industry, and with union with Trinidad, the loss of the influence they previously wielded during the first half of the 19th century and their replacement with a new set of plantation owners.

The first outcome of this development was the decline of the old planter class. whose numbers were considerably reduced: at the beginning of the 20th century there were only 18 estate owners out of the 116 estates on the island.

Of these, white planters continued to own Franklyns, Green Hill, Blenheim, Lucy Vale and Grafton Estates.

By 1920 the main white planters were Robert Smith Reid and his son, the Turpins, Mayow Short, Robert Archibald, Thorleigh Orde (Manager), John Murray and Henry Smith.

Coloured families owned Mary's Hill, Orange Hill, Amity Hope, Crown Point, Milford, Smithfield, Adelphi, Castara and Craig Hall estates.

There were five black-owned estates on the island. which were: Golden Lane, Providence and Dunveygan, Parrot Hall and Hampden estates.

There were a number of new planters in the 20th century, who were mainly whites who came as part of syndicates or companies from Trinidad and the UK. In 1920, nine of these companies owned 21 estates and in 1940 they owned 16 estates.

Prominent among them was Gordon Grant and Company, a Trinidad firm which, in addition to owning properties in Tobago, also held mortgages over several estates.

Also included were Portuguese landowning families like the Mendez brothers, who owned Friendsfield, Goldsbrough, Bacolet and Invergordon estates, Ignatius Ferreira, who owned Johnsville, and Mary de Freitas, who owned Mount Dillon estate.

It must be indicated that the new white planter class retained the position held by its predecessor, of social dominance on the island.

Secondly, in the effort to stimulate the development of a cocoa industry to replace sugar, a scheme which encouraged Grenadian immigrants was implemented. As a result, a number of immigrants came to Tobago from Grenada and Carriacou.

Sometime-expired Indian indentured workers came from Grenada, St Vincent and Trinidad to Tobago, some under contracts with estates in Tobago east.

Also included among the immigrants were some black and coloured Grenadians who purchased estates in Moriah, Mason Hall, Montpel