Saint Croix, US Virgin Islands. Taino, Carib, Dutch, French, English, Spanish, Danish and now American (Afro-Caribbean?). The whole island was pretty much one big sugar plantation. The main harbor at Christianstaad was once painted around the White House pool. On the Wikipedia page I find this image, labeled:
Mary’s Fancy plantation on Saint Croix, owned by George Ryan
Reading about George Ryan. An interesting career. We speak not of the Illinois governor and convicted bribe taker, but of the Irish Danish banker and board member. Just the real estate he was involved with would keep you busy for an hour, if you admire Danish architecture. Ryan part-inherited his plantation, got his plantation as payment for a loan.
Ryan never married. In 1815, he had a son out of wedlock with Sophie Cecilie Puckendahl (1788–). The boy was born on 8 March 1815 at Fødselsstiftelsen, an institution where it was possible for unmarried women to give birth anonymously.
The institution was created for women to give birth anonymously and receiving free medical care. The purpose was to avoid infanticide. The woman was offered eternal anonymity, however this ruling was changed in 2007, and the archive is now accessible, mostly for genealogy purposes.
What family secrets were revealed in 2007? Back to George Ryan. He was born in Ballinakill, Co. Kildare.
The town was besieged and plundered by Irish rebels, including the Earl of Castlehaven and Lord Mountgarret, during the 1641 Rebellion. When the castle and town surrendered much was robbed, including cattle, sheep and cloth. Remarkably, this information survives to us through an account from a native American Patagonian from present day southern Argentina/Chile ‘but now a Christian’ who had been a servant to Captain Richard Steele for twenty years and lived in Ballinakill.
What?? I research further, and find this may be a confusion. The blog of Nicholas Whyte, of Brussels and Northern Ireland, looked into the matter. .
Some researchers have assumed that he was an American Indian, taking Pethagorian to mean Patagonian. This is wrong. His account is pretty clear that he had for twenty years been a servant to Captain Richard Steele, who was one of the early representatives of the British East India Company, and indeed left a description of his journey from the Moghul Emperor’s court to Baghdad in 1615-16. Although he does not name any of his servants, it is notable that he still uses “we” after he parts company with the other Englishman in his party, so he was not travelling alone. (His wife Frances came with him on later journeys.)
I reckon that John Fortune was recruited by Steele at some point in the journey. Most likely he was a Pathan (not so far phonetically from ‘Pethagorian’, though perhaps that’s meant to be “Pythagorean”/”Zoroastrian” given that it’s cited in a religious context), probably recruited in Lahore where Steele appears to have hired extra staff during his trip (though the text is not clear), and sticking with him through war in Germany and rebellion in Ireland. That fits the dates rather well; if he had worked for Steele from 1616 to 1636 or so, and had followed him to Ireland, he then had seven years to build up £30 in capital before it was wiped out by the rebellion. I’m sorry to say that there seems to be no other documentary evidence about John Fortune or his fate.
Helytimes 