[Warning: Some of the content, language, and accompanying documents of this article may be uncomfortable to some. Nonetheless, the author chose to include these items to remain as accurate as possible to the story.]
Catch-and Keep and the White Police
This past February, we were visiting my old childhood homestead in St. Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands.
As my son, Josiah and his cousin, Asa raced off to explore ‘de bush’ in the hill behind the house, I called after them, “All-yo be careful ah de Catch…”.
It was too late!
My boy was caught by a couple of thorny branches in the scrubby undergrowth.
I teased, “Eh, eh! Yo’ geh chook by the Catch-n-Keep!”
Carefully working to free him, I told him our island ancestors once knew this plant by another name: ‘the White Police’.
What’s in a Name?
The look on Josiah’s face, initially quizzical, changed almost immediately to one of comprehension. “White police?!? Are you serious!?”
I nodded my head.
Catch and Keep was the name I always knew growing up. I’ve only seen the name ‘White Police’ in one reference, Baron H. F. A. Eggers’ ‘Flora of St. Croix and the Virgin Islands’ which was published in 1879.
Catch and Keep is a flowering plant that blooms with soft masses of white flowers, a species of shrub in the Fabaceae family.
It’s a climber, native to Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, and the Lesser Antilles.
Sometimes spelled ‘Ketch-n-Keep’, the plant was also called ‘Country Policeman’ or ‘Hug-Me-Close’ according to the author, Lito Valls in his book ‘What a Pistarkle!’.
The common names are all anthropomorphic.
While hiking and minding your own business, this plant seems to reach up and grab you unawares, almost unjustly. As you struggle to free yourself, you get even more entangled!
I first happened on the name ‘White Police’ some thirty-odd years ago while doing an island Botany project in college.
I wondered, What was my Black ancestor’s experience of the White police (the men, not the plant) in the mid-1800s in the islands?
Almost all historical records of the time were written by Danes and Englishmen when the islands of St. Thomas, St. John, and St. Croix were known as the Danish West Indies.
We need to rely on the extant records, understanding their limitations and the bias of the record-keepers.
“It takes a village to raise a child”- Mountain Village 1835
Despite limitations, an 1835 ‘Register of Slaves’ for Estate Mint and Mountain in western St. Croix provided details of my ancestors’ interaction with the Danish police.
This sugarcane plantation was owned at the time by Frederik von Oxholm who served as Governor for St. Thomas and St. John at the time.
On this ‘slave list’ was the village where my 3rd great-grandmother, Lydia Michaels was raised.
She was listed in the record as ‘Lydy’, a 5-year-old child.
Although I do not know Lydia’s parentage yet, the adult residents of the Estate likely included her parents or at least her family and kinship group.
Ten out of the fifty-two adults in the village at Estate Mountain at the time were sent to the authorities for punishment as criminals.
Discipline was not limited to men.
For example, one of three women offenders from the estate, Catharine (aka ‘Catty John’) was a 35-year-old mother of seven children and she was ‘punished by the Judge and sentenced 13 Aug. 1834.’
Presumably, the offenses were of sufficient gravity to warrant sending the slave into Frederiksfort to be sentenced and receive the punishment which often consisted of incarceration or public whipping.
The worst punishment noted in this record was that given to Andrias, a 22-year old male. While in the courtyard, “he was sentenced to be sold off the Island.”
Much like his forbears who were taken from Africa, he was to be exiled from his home, never again to have contact with family and friends.
Almost twenty percent of the adults in this village received punishment by the Danish State as ‘criminals’.
This number was surprisingly high given that official government punishments from one year prior were recorded.
No mention was made of sentences from prior years or discipline meted out for lesser infractions directly on the plantation without the involvement from the authorities.
The high percentage likely reflected a combination of factors:
- the resistance of the enslaved,
- overzealous overseer and owner, and
- a system of laws and enforcement meant to keep the enslaved in line.
Punishments were severe and intended to squelch any resistance through total domination.
Emancipation – 1848
The desire for freedom of the enslaved on the western Estates of St. Croix was palpable as they marched on the town of Frederiksted on the morning of July 3, 1848.
The enslaved destroyed the police office, and judge’s quarters, and uprooted the whipping post tossing it off the pier into the ocean. They threatened to destroy the town if they were not freed from slavery.
Governor-General Peter von Scholten arrived in Frederiksted that afternoon and met their demands in declaring Emancipation for the Danish West Indies.
‘My Emancipated Ancestors’ is a story that I wrote that details this event.
The Labor Act
The new-found freedom of Emancipation was severely curtailed by the ‘Labor Act’ of 1849.
Charles Taylor in ‘Leaflets from the Danish West Indies’ states: “there was every inducement for the country laborer to play his hand once again, and, as in 1848, by a rising, put an end to this remnant of slavery”.
Contract Day
On ‘Contract Day’ October 1, 1878, laborers from the West End plantations were peacefully gathered in Frederiksted.
Among their grievances were:
- the low pay,
- the annual contract that kept them tied to the Estates,
- the abuse of power by Estate managers to levy fines on them, and
- the difficulty with police issuing the necessary passports thus restricting their ability to leave the island.
Fireburn – 1878
The spark igniting the Fireburn of 1878 was a laborer being taken into custody and beaten by the police for drunken behavior.
When the police master and two deputies brandished their swords in an effort to disperse the crowd, the laborers chased them back into Frederiksfort.
Reverend J. C. DuBois, the British Vice-Consul, was able to calm the crowd, leading them away from the fort to the edge of town to hear their grievances.
A woman then ran up to the crowd reporting that the man earlier taken into custody had died as a result of his beating by the police. The mob went to the hospital where they found the rumor to be untrue, but passions were already incited.
They stormed the fort, throwing stones, and police responded by shooting into the crowd. The laborers retreated from the fort and proceeded to burn the town of Frederiksted and many surrounding plantations.
The Fireburn took several days to quell.
The death toll included 60 laborers, 14 women who died in an explosion, and 2 soldiers. Much of the town of Frederiksted was burned down as well as many of the plantations in the country.
The town of Frederiksted was rebuilt after Fireburn and for this reason, the architecture is distinctly more Victorian than other towns of the former Danish West Indies.
The Three Queens
Frederiksted and the western estates in St. Croix were a hotbed of dissent and rebellion. Women particularly stood out as leaders of the Fireburn, with three Queens memorialized with a modern-day statue on Blackbeard’s Hill in St. Thomas.
They were Mary Thomas, Adeline ‘Agnes’ Salomon, and Mathilda McBean.
The most famous Queen was Queen Mary.
She was also memorialized with a statue in Copenhagen, Denmark where she spent many years in prison for her role in the insurrection.
Crucian Clan McBean
Mathilda McBean, one of the lesser-known Queens, was born in 1857 at the Estate Mountain village.
Queen Mathilda’s paternal grandmother was Catty John (Catharine) mentioned previously as one of the enslaved women of Mountain punished in 1834.
My 2nd great-grandmother, Severina McBean was also born on Estate Mountain, her mother being Lydia Michaels of Mountain, the 5-year-old in the 1835 ‘Slave list’.
Queen Mathilda and my ancestor Severina had many commonalities other than a shared surname.
Both women’s fathers were named William McBean, but there were at least two men of the same name on contiguous plantations in that era, and the evidence suggests Mathilda and Severina were not sisters.
Both women were Catholic, of similar age, and born and grew up in the small laborers’ village of Mountain of parents who were previously enslaved.
Queen Mathilda and Miss Severina were from the lowest rungs of society being cane-field workers.
The two women may or may not have been blood relatives, but at the very least were close associates in the Mountain village kinship group.
The paths of the McBean women of Mountain Estate diverge after Fireburn.
Queen Mathilda was tried and convicted as one of the leaders of the rebellion. She was found in the 1880 census list of prisoners in Frederiksfort.
Severina McBean instead, was found in the police passport protocols of that era.
As a result of Fireburn and the end of the Labor Act, Severina was able to break free from the plantation, travel more freely, and left for the island of St. Thomas in 1879.
She became a seamstress and in 1882 gave birth to my great grandmother, Theresa Martis in St. Thomas.
Severina maintained her ties to St. Croix and is found in passenger lists traveling back and forth several times in the early 1880s.
Flora of St. Croix and the Virgin Islands
In early October 1878, Baron H. F. A. Eggers led a contingent of twenty-five soldiers of the St. Thomas Militia summoned to St. Croix to help suppress the unrest of the Labor Riot (Fyah Bun).
His ‘Flora of St. Croix’ was published some months after in May 1879.
Why did Baron von Eggers include the term ‘White Police’ in his flora?
Eggers’ career was spent as a high-ranking member of the Danish West Indies ‘White Police’, but his passion was Botany and collecting herbarium specimens.
He strived for accuracy in his work.
While the Linneas Classification System was European, Eggers relied on the local Black population for their expertise on common names, attributes, and locations of specific plants.
The common names in ’The Flora of St. Croix and the Virgin Islands’ are a cultural legacy and a voice for the majority Black population at a time when they had little voice.
The name ‘White Police’ refers to the plant ‘Catch-n-Keep’ as such is a form of protest.
History Repeats Itself
There have been many changes for the better since the mid-1800s of my ancestors in St. Croix.
Some ask why I bother to research these long-ago events of my island family history.
After all, “Slavery done dead and it mek no difference now”.
Quotes like Winston Churchill’s “Those who fail to learn from history are condemned to repeat it” swirl about in my brain, but I often simply reply that my ancestors have a fascinating story.
But, this is much more than just an interesting story. Lessons from my ancestors from Estate Mountain remain relevant and have their parallels even today.
I live in Minnesota some 2500 miles away and 140 years later, but these ancestor’s experiences help guide my understanding of the present.
Two months ago in Minnesota, an African American man, George Floyd, was killed during an arrest by police.
He was already handcuffed face down on the ground with a police officer kneeling on his neck for almost eight minutes and the incident was caught on video.
His death sparked protests against police brutality and racism across the country and the world.
President Barack Obama
Former President, Barack Obama issued a Twitter statement that in part reads:
“…we have to remember that for millions of Americans, being treated differently on account of race is tragically, painfully, maddeningly “normal”…
“It falls on all of us, regardless of our race or station, including the majority of men and women in law enforcement who take pride in doing their tough job the right way, every day to work together to create a “new normal” in which bigotry and unequal treatment no longer infect our institutions or our hearts.”
Until we can free ourselves as a nation from the thorny Catch-and-Keep of systemic racism, we will never realize the American dream ‘that all people are created equal.
About the Author
Dr. Dante Beretta grew up in St. Thomas and now lives in Minnesota. He has been researching his Beretta and Dinzey family history which stretches back at least 200 years in the U.S. Virgin Islands. He’s interested in hearing comments on this story and from anyone interested in finding or indexing the records now available online at the Danish Archives. You may click on his name to send him an email message. To see additional stories by Dr. Beretta, visit this link ==>Beretta Family Stories
Dr. Beretta manages brilliantly to interweave family history, a History lesson, the trickiness of genealogical research, and sensitive comments on our difficult modern dilemmas in this piece–I don’t know how he does it with such grace and modesty. I have learned much from him and from his stories. Thank you!
Thank you for your comments Elizabeth! I agree. Dr. Beretta has been researching his family history for many years and shares so many of his incredible insights. Lucky us. 🙂
Thank you! This story took some thought and time in the making and for awhile I wasn’t sure how it would come together. So, I appreciate your kind comments!
Danny
I enjoy all of your writings. It is obvious you have done a great job researching . Thank you for all of your efforts. Every time I read your writings, I feel as though I am right there. Again, THANK YOU!
Gail, I’m glad you enjoyed it- Thanks for the appreciation!
Very interesting. I’ve visited the Three Queens Fountain many times, but only now am learning the backstory. I’ve been caught by the Ketch n Keep and it’s no fun. Actually it provides a border to my property and offers a security perimeter. I’ve enjoyed reading and learning Dr Beretta’s story. I agree you can feel the account.