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A Brief History of the Turks and Caicos Islands
The Bahamas Platform, of which the Turks and Caicos are a part, was created by the shifting of the Earth’s plates, a process known as plate tectonics, approximately 11-25 million years ago during the era known as the Miocene. During the Pleistocene Era, about two million years ago, the rise and fall of the sea level segregated the islands of this archipelago. The cays themselves are basically limestone that was laid down as windblown deposits during the Tertiary, approximately 1 to 2 million years ago. Most of the current aspect of The Turks and Caicos Islands has been produced in geologically recent times by coral formation. The cays themselves are generally flat with few hills over a hundred feet high and their external limestone is worn razor sharp by the action of wind and wave. Several of the cays are honeycombed with caves and cave holes.
The first inhabitants of the Turks and Caicos Islands of which there is any record of were the Tainos. The Tainos were Arawakan in origin and sprang from South America where their descendants are still to be found in parts of Venezuela and the Guianas. The Arawaks colonized the Caribbean in dugout canoes, a specimen of which in Jamaica was 96’ long with an 8’ beam and may have carried as many as 150 rowers.
The relatively peaceful Tainos, although they were brave warriors, were forced to keep on the move by the presence of the far fiercer Caribs. The Caribs were a cannabilistic group whose chief purpose seemed to be murdering the Arawakan men, enslaving their women, and castrating the young Tainos and fattening them with rich diets and preventing them from engaging in any form of labor to ensure their tender flesh. The Carib religion promised a paradise for the courageous warrior wherein the Arawaks he killed would serve him as slaves while assuring the coward that he would be doomed to a hell wherein he would eternally serve a Taino master. A handful of Caribs survive to this day in Dominica though even less is known of their early culture than the Arawakans.
In their search for peace, the Tainos pushed their canoes northward into the Caribbean, reaching Hispaniola around 200 A.D. and then settling in Cuba and Jamaica over the next two hundred years. They reached the Turks and Caicos and the Bahamas sometime around 700-900 A.D. in the last wave of their migration. Here they became known as luddu-cairi or luko-kayo, meaning island people. We know them today as the Lucayans.
The Caribs were never far behind the Lucayans. By the time Columbus reached the New World, the Caribs had conquered the Lesser Antilles and were raiding Puerto Rico and Hispaniola. Columbus noted scars on the bodies of some of the Lucayans and through sign language was told that people on neighboring islands wanted to capture them and that they had defended themselves.
The Lucayans built circular, conical houses of wood and thatch, and survived on conch, fish, native game and plants. They were basket makers and were adept at manufacturing polished stone implements. Lucayan pottery is called palmettoware and it was tempered with bits of conch shell to improve the quality (Lucayan pottery has turned up at several archeological sites throughout the Turks and Caicos Islands since 1912, unfortunately, most of these early finds were removed from the country or simply turned up missing). With the exception of some small gold decorations, the Lucayans had no knowledge of the use of metal. They slept in hammocks, a habit that Spanish seamen soon picked up. And there seems to have been some commerce between the Lucayans on Middle Caicos and their Taino cousins in Cuba and Hispaniola.
The Lucayans were a handsome people, almost oriental in appearance, with broad faces and foreheads flattened in infancy by tying them to boards. This practice was designed to add distinction to their appearance as well as hardening the bone as protection against blows. Mayans and Egyptians shared this unique custom at one time, as did an Indian tribe in Montana called the Flatheads. Lucayans wore their coarse hair in bangs in the front and long in the back. For the most part they wore no clothing, although they painted their faces and sometimes their entire bodies with red, black, and white pigments. They decorated themselves with tattoos, necklaces, bracelets, bones, and feathers. Their chiefs, or caciques, were allowed to practice polygamy and served as chief, judge, and priest in their culture. The Lucayans had a class structure and the caciques enjoyed all the benefits afforded to their position. The cacique’s canoe was the only one that was painted; when traveling by land, they were borne on litters while their children were carried on the shoulders of their servants. After death, the cacique was buried along with sufficient supplies for the journey to Coyaba along with one or two of his favorite wives.
The Lucayans were lovers of peace and simple pleasures with a gentle and generous nature, sharing anything they had with Columbus and his men. Next to singing and dancing, the Lucayans loved batos, an organized ball game similar to volleyball and soccer. The remains of a Lucayan ball court were found on the island of Middle Caicos. Ball courts have been found in Puerto Rico and points farther south but never this far north.
Though they had no written language, their spoken language was described as “soft and not less liquid than Latin.” Some 20 Lucayan words and their derivatives survive to this day. Avocado, barbecue, canoe, Carib, cannibal, cassava, cay, guava, hammock, hurricane, iguana, maize, manatee, pirogue, potato, and tobacco all are Lucayan in origin. The Lucayans had their own names for the islands of the Turks and Caicos as well. The Caicos Islands were referred to as Yucayo while Providenciales was Yucacanuco, West Caicos was Macubiza, Middle Caicos was Aniana, East Caicos was Quana, and South Caicos was known as Caciba. The Turks Islands were called Babueca by the Lucayans while Grand Turk was known as Amuana (and if you accept the Grand Turk Landfall Theory, it was known as Guanahani), Salt Cay was called Canamani, Cotton Cay was Macarei, and Great Sand Cay was known as Cacina.
It was the Lucayans who taught Columbus’ crew their custom of smoking the cohiba plant in their strange y-shaped pipes called tobacco. The tubes of the Y were inserted in their nostrils and the smoke inhaled until the smoker fell into a stupor. The Spaniards quickly picked up this habit although they did not inhale to the point of intoxication. Although Columbus never reported seeing the Lucayans smoke, in his log he described a leaf that he found a native carrying in his canoe as being highly valued by the Lucayans.
Columbus originally thought the Lucayans had no religion and believed that they would readily become Christians. But the Lucayans actually had a highly developed religion with two supreme beings, a male and a female, and a belief in an afterlife. They also believed in numerous spirit beings called zemis who lived in sacred trees, carved images, and in the relics of the dead and these zemis had to be appeased with great festivals in their honor. To induce visions of the future, the Lucayans ground into a powder a potent narcotic called yopo that they then snorted up the nostrils. A similar drug is still in use by Amerindians in Venezuela to this day (I’ll give you three guesses as to what drug may be). A Lucayan chief, while under the influence of yopo, foresaw the destruction of his civilization by “…strange blonde men in winged canoes.”
The discovery of the New World by Columbus (who had blonde, almost white hair) in 1492, sounded the death knell for the Lucayan civilization. Columbus brought back seven Lucayan captives in chains, but two escaped en-route, some say on Providenciales. One returned to Europe with Columbus and was baptized at the Cathedral of Barcelona with the King and Queen of Spain standing as godparents. He took the name Diego Colón and returned with Columbus to the New World in the fall of 1493, where he served as Columbus’ interpreter.
It was not long before King Ferdinand of Spain authorized raiding parties to the “useless islands.” The Spaniards made some 500 journeys to the islands of the Bahamas and the Turks and Caicos to enslave the Lucayans for their mines and plantations in Cuba and Hispaniola. By 1513, within one generation, no Lucayans were estimated to be left in the Turks and Caicos Islands. The Spanish historian Herrera tells us that when Ponce de León arrived in Grand Turk in late 1512 he could only find one Lucayan to assist him in his search for the fountain of youth on Bimini. Maps of that period show Grand Turk called Del Viejo or Old Man. By contrast, in 1517 there were an estimated 20,000-40,000 Lucayans in the Bahamas and their price fluctuated at about 4 gold pesos each. The asking price skyrocketed to 150 gold pesos each for these excellent divers when rich pearl beds were discovered off Venezuela and Trinidad. The Spaniards played upon an Arawak superstition and enticed many Lucayans to board ships with promises of returning them to South America, their ancient homeland and the place where their souls would go when they died, Coyaba. Many Lucayans did not go willingly, choosing instead to fight the heavily armed Spaniards. Others, even mothers with small children, committed suicide by drinking the juice of the cassava plant to avoid a life of wretchedness at the hands of the cruel Spaniards. The rest died of starvation and ill treatment while in bondage and only a very few lived to old age. By the early 1520’s, this peaceful, innocent civilization, that had lived only to satisfy nature without all the trappings of laws and governments, was obliterated from the face of the earth and sadly reduced to a footnote in history.
After the time of the Lucayans, the Turks and Caicos had few visitors save a few Spanish ships stopping in the Turks Islands for salt. The first Englishman to make mention of the island group was Captain John Hawkins of Plymouth, a well-known privateer who passed by the Caicos group in 1564 in search of salt. The islands re-entered history in the middle of the 17th Century when salt rakers from Bermuda decided to use three of the Turks Islands for an entrepreneurial venture. In the 1640’s they created salt ponds on Salt Cay, Grand Turk, and South Caicos, and their endeavor was successful enough to create the basis for the local economy for the next two centuries. Even today, some consider the fine, white Turk’s Island salt the preferred preservative and seasoning. From about 1678 onwards, Bermudian salt rakers of British descent were populating the islands, at first only in the dry season, and later on, living on the islands full time. They immediately set out to destroy all the trees, seeking to increase salt production.
At first the salt rakers collected salt for their own use, but as their commodity increased in value it became the backbone of the Bermudian economy for over 100 years. Settlers on these islands during this time lived primarily off their salt production, fishing, and wrecking. While the Bahamas severed its ties with Bermuda in 1663, the salt rakers in the Turks and Caicos continued to maintain a link with the island. Several petitions were submitted to Parliament to annex these islands to Bermuda but all were turned down.
As Spanish shipping activity increased in the New World, the era of privateering began. Spanish ships laden with the riches of the New World would pass through the waters of the Turks and Caicos and the Bahamas on their way back to Spain making wrecking very profitable in these waters. It was said that if a crewman were lucky enough to survive the wreck, it was uncertain as to whether he would survive the wreckers. If the Spanish knew of the location of their wrecks they would send crews to salvage the valuables. Bahamian and Turks Island wreckers would drive off the intruders and loot what they had salvaged. As Captains became wise to the ways of the wreckers, wrecks became fewer and fewer, the privateers had to find other uses for their talents. This was not difficult, the era of the buccaneers was in full swing.
The original buccaneers (boucaniers), the forerunners of the pirates, were based just south of the Turks and Caicos Islands in northern Hispaniola. They were a wild group of men from France, Holland, and England, indentured servants, seafarers, and adventurers. They wore colorful, picturesque garb and hunted the semi-wild cattle and pigs on the island, descendents of escapees from Spanish farms. They roasted the meat over fires called boucans and would sell this smoked meat product, along with hides and tallow, to passing ships. Hispaniola soon became the location of a huge illicit meat and hides trade. The boucaniers quickly learned to live less off hunting and to rely more on their commerce with Spanish ships, first in canoes, then “acquiring” ships, and finally in small flotillas.
From 1629 to 1641, English buccaneers were organized as a company, using the island of Providence off the Nicaraguan coast as a base. The 1630’s were a prosperous era for the Providence based buccaneers. Their prosperity ended abruptly in 1641 when the Spanish invaded the island and massacred every settler they could find. The few who escaped shifted their base of operations to Tortuga, an island off the northern coast of Hispaniola just south of the Turks and Caicos Islands. Recruits from every European trading nation began to pour in. By the middle 1600’s the buccaneers formed armed bands who were accustomed to hardship, had strong codes of honor that they chose to live by, and were extremely well led. For over 75 years these buccaneers were the scourge of the Spanish fleet. In the 1640’s a buccaneer from Normandy who called himself Pierre Le Grand, often called the “Father of Piracy in the West Indies,” boldly captured a Spanish galleon in the passage between Tortuga and the Caicos Bank while her crew slept. Le Grand and his 28 men approached the galleon in an old dilapidated raft, not far from sinking, as the Captain of the galleon spied their craft. Laughing at the condition of their vessel and the ragtag crew, the Captain said he would not fear them even if they were the size of his own galleon. Le Grand had bored holes in the bottom of his boat to insure that his men were properly motivated, that either they would take the galleon or the sea would take them. Le Grand and his men pulled alongside the galleon and wedged the big ship’s rudder and climbed aboard just as their own little boat sank beneath the waves. Le Grand and his men took the ship without a shot and Le Grand himself burst into the officer’s cabin in the midst of a quiet card game. Le Grand took the ship to France after allowing those of the galleon’s crew who would not join his ranks to depart on the island of Hispaniola. Pierre Le Grand is believed to be the only pirate to have ever taken a galleon. After Le Grand and his men divvied up their spoils, they retired from the sea and Le Grand was said to have lived happily to a ripe old age.
Most prominent of the buccaneers were Edward Mansfield and the legendary Sir Henry Morgan. In 1664, Mansfield and Morgan set up a base in Nassau and were quite received quite favorably. Nassau came to be quite the haven for the wandering buccaneers. Mansfield’s early and untimely death created confusion in the leadership of the buccaneers and Morgan set them off on a course of plunder and profit. The years between 1671 and 1686 were a time of buccaneer ascendancy as the buccaneers gained major European finance against the Spanish Empire. After the capture of Jamaica in 1655, Port Royal, just outside of Kingston, became the headquarters for English buccaneers and remained so for 20 years. Under Sir Thomas Modyford and Sir Henry Morgan their achievements reached a climax. The Treaty of Madrid with Spain in 1670, the death of Sir Henry Morgan in 1688, and finally the destruction by earthquake of Port Royal in 1692 dispersed these Jamaican-based buccaneers.
There is no fine line as to when the buccaneers became pirates. Webster’s offers little difference between the two. History suggests that the code of honor of the early buccaneers was forgotten and the bands degenerated into piracy. The buccaneers had articles called chasseparties that allocated duties, rewards, and compensations. In all things, their brotherhood was expected to observe a rigid code of honor called la coutume de la côte, which roughly translated means, the custom of the coast. Despite their code and the chasseparties, the English and French buccaneers were always quarrelling. The number of English buccaneers at Tortuga having to rely on French protection increased year by year. The Jamaica and Carolina legislatures passed severe acts against them and the buccaneers became less and less particular about their prey. By 1685 their own people were even calling them pirates. Whatever unity there was between the British and French buccaneers dissolved when their two countries went to war after William of Orange ascended the English Throne in 1689. This struggle was to last 126 years with only one long break. Loyal English were no longer welcome in Hispaniola and when the Anglo-French fighting reached the Caribbean in 1691, the last of the English pirates left the safety of Tortuga and settled in areas of the Bahamas and the Turks and Caicos. Most of their activity was centered in the Nassau area but roaming pirates are said to have consistently used areas such as Parrot Cay, French Cay, and Grand Turk as bases from which to stage raids. By 1713 there were an estimated 1,000 active pirates operating in the waters of the Bahamas and the Turks and Caicos. One interesting theory about how the Turks Islands received their name suggests that in the 16th and 17th centuries, under the leadership of the two Barbarosa brothers, a band of Barbary pirates operated out of these waters. Originating in Constantinople, the brothers eventually settled on an uninhabited salt island that the Spanish later referred to as Grand Turk.
Some of the most notorious pirates to be found in the pages of history have been reported as lurking in Turks and Caicos waters over the years. Mary Read and Anne Bonney, the “lady” pirates who sailed with Calico Jack Rackham, Stede Bonnet the Gentleman Pirate, Benjamin Hornigold, Charles Vane, Captain Kidd, L’Olonnois, and Edward Teach who was much better known as Blackbeard. If any one pirate could embody the spirit of the era and of piracy itself, none would be better suited for it than Blackbeard. From 1713 until 1716 he teamed up with Benjamin Hornigold and was based in Nassau along with Captains Jennings, Burgess, and White. Blackbeard’s independent pirate career lasted only two short years, from 1716 when he acquired his first ship, the Queen Anne’s Revenge, until his death in the Carolinas in 1718.
Jean-David Rau, who named himself L’Olonnois after his birthplace in les Sables D’Olonne in Brittany, was one of the old guard, one of the last of the original boucaniers of Tortuga, and one of the most ruthless psychopathic pirates in history. He is said to have used French Cay, just south of Providenciales, as a hideout to wait on Spanish vessels heading northward through the Windward Passage. Recently the gentleman who started that rumor has since withdrawn his original statement though it is possible that L’Olonnois actually might have stayed there. Such a reputation did he create for himself that Spanish sailors would rather die fighting or drowning than to fall into his hands. If a captive would not tell L’Olonnois what he wished to know, L’Olonnois would often cut him to pieces and pull out his tongue. He had been known to hack a man to pieces one slice at a time, first a finger, then a hand, then an arm, until there was nothing left to remove, or the poor fellow died. He also practiced “woolding,” that is, tying a piece of rope around a man’s head and twisting it tighter and tighter with a stick until his eyes popped out. L’Olonnois was the scourge of Central and South America from the Yucatan to Venezuela. His most famous torment involved a Spanish crew that remained silent concerning a route into a town in Central America, the main road being blocked and heavily protected. L’Olonnois ripped open one man’s chest and began to gnaw on his still beating heart telling the rest of his hostages “I will serve you alike if you do not show me another way.” L’Olonnois met a fitting end. After an engagement with a Spanish flotilla that nearly decimated his band of buccaneers, he and some of his crew took to land working their way into the jungles of the Central and Southern America. Here cannibals made a meal of him and all but five of his surviving crew.
A stranger piratical trio than Calico Jack Rackham, Anne Bonney, and Mary Read would be hard to find. Anne Bonney and her penniless sailor husband moved to Nassau seeking employment. There she meet Calico Jack Rackham who soon swept her off her feet. She eloped with Rackham, heading off to sea in men’s clothes. Calico Jack put her ashore with friends in Jamaica when she became pregnant until such time as she gave birth and could rejoin him. She later accompanied Rackham on all his later exploits. Mary Read, raised as a boy by her grandmother, joined an army unit as a cadet and fought bravely. She fell in love and eventually married another soldier, who at first did not realize that she was a woman. After her husband died she again dressed up as a man and went on board a vessel bound for the West Indies. She soon joined up with a band of privateers under Woodes Rogers on the island of Providence. Mary Read claimed she detested the life of the pirate; however, when some of the crew mutinied and returned to their former lifestyle, with them went Mary Read. She wound up on board Calico Jack’s ship and no one had guessed she was a woman. And then along came Anne Bonney. Bonney thought Read was a rather handsome fellow and became enamored of her, forcing her to reveal her secret. Jealous Calico Jack, noticed the partiality Bonney was showing to Read and threatened to shoot him/her. Once again her secret was revealed. Mary Read later fell in love with another crewmember and revealed herself to him. When her lover fell into a disagreement with another crewmember and the two were to duel ashore in two hours, Read found out and engaged the crewmember in an argument and promptly killed him.
In 1719 Calico Jack was finally captured and removed from his ship. During the battle Anne Bonney, Mary Read, and one other crewmember were the last fighters on deck, the rest of the crew fleeing below. Mary Read tried in vain to rouse the crew, finally killing one and wounding another before the lady buccaneers were captured. Rackham, who at this point was estranged from his mate, had taken to enjoying a bush hallucinogen and was removed from his below decks hiding place in a stupor. In court, when asked how they pled, Mary Read and Anne Bonney promptly announced, “My Lord, we plead our bellies!” Both women were pregnant and English law at the time forbade hanging a mother-to-be, no matter how serious her crime. Mary Read later became ill and died in prison, thereby cheating the hangman. Anne Bonney, through the intercession of some notable Jamaican planters, escaped the noose and was never executed. Calico Jack, while awaiting execution, was allowed a brief visit from Anne Bonney. Instead of consoling Rackham, she only told him that she was sorry to see him here and that if he had fought like a man he would not have to die like a dog. Anne Bonney wound up in Virginia, married with children. Parrot Cay is said to be a corruption of Pirate Cay and is said to be one of Rackham, Bonney’s, and Read’s favorite hideouts. Legend also had it that in 1850, the English Captain Delaney recovered over $130,000 in pirate loot from Sand Cay.
When Woodes Rogers began to break up the pirate presence in the Bahamas, fewer and fewer brethren of the coast visited the nearby Turks and Caicos Islands. Some privateering and wrecking continued through the remainder of the 18th and into the 19th centuries. Details of this era are sketchy at best, but it is known that in 1725 Grand Turk was seasonally occupied by upwards of 1,000 laborers raking salt, fishing for turtles, and wrecking.
Spain occupied the Turks Islands in 1710, even as the salt rakers prospered. France claimed the Turks and Caicos Islands in 1753 and erected wooden columns on them bearing her coat of arms. The crew of a British vessel from Charleston, Carolina, destroyed these columns the following year. France later occupied Grand Turk and Salt Cay from 1778 to 1783 as the salt rakers continued their flourishing enterprise. During the American Revolution, Bermudian Salt Rakers ignored the British blockade and shipped salt to Washington’s armies.
In 1766, in spite of the Bermudian’s objections, the Bahamas government extended its jurisdiction to the Turks and Caicos Islands, while on the North American continent a rebellion was brewing. The Stamp Act of 1765 was the beginning of the end of British rule in the colonies. The American Revolution was getting underway and it was as much a revolt as it was a civil war. An estimated 20% of the population of the colonies was fiercely loyal to the Crown and hostile to the American cause.
Known as Tories, the Loyalists favored reconciliation with the Crown. Many stood to lose jobs, commerce, or prestige if the upstart rebels were victorious. Many Loyalists suffered greatly at the hands of the Patriots. Some were socially ostracized and their business boycotted; others who refused to sign loyalty oaths to the rebellion were accused of treason and often had all their land and possessions confiscated. Still more were tarred and feathered in the name of Patriotism. Many Loyalists were sent to the notorious Simsburg Copper Mines in Connecticut. They worked in holes 150’ below the surface and so many died there that the mine was known as the “Catacombs of Loyalty.” The Patriots became even more hostile and vengeful after the defeat of Cornwallis at Yorktown in 1781. Many Loyalists sought refuge in eastern Florida, as Florida was not involved in the American Revolution.
In 1783, just before the end of the American Revolution, a French contingent seized the Turks Islands. They successfully repelled a counter attack by the Captain of the HMS Albermarle, the young Horatio Nelson. The French had little influence on the islands and Treaty of Versailles on January 20, 1783 restored the Bahamas and the Turks and Caicos to England and gave Florida to Spain. The Loyalists in Florida felt cheated that Florida was being traded for the Bahamas and were irate at having to move again. No longer feeling safe in the colonies, the Loyalists looked elsewhere for safe haven.
Most of the Loyalists that arrived in the Turks and Caicos had holdings in the South Carolina and Georgia area. Probably the best known of these Loyalists was Wade Stubbs who emigrated from Gasworth in England’s County Cheshire to East Florida, near St. Augustine between 1775 and 1778. When the Loyalists fled the mainland, the Crown granted 72 of them approximately 18,000 acres on North and Middle Caicos. Stubbs received 860 acres, the second largest of the 332 grants given, fashioned from the 10,090 acres on North Caicos. He initially called his plantation “Bellefield.” In 1790 Wade Stubbs convinced his brother Thomas to leave Cheshire and join him. Thomas built a plantation called Cheshire Hall on Blue Caicos, what is today known as Providenciales
Thomas Stubbs started out growing Anguilla or long staple Sea Island cotton. Anguilla cotton grew to the size of small, bushy trees and produced a high quality cotton. Many of these plants still survive today in the bush on North and Middle Caicos. For several years the plantations flourished and were producing large yields; land values soared from £9,450 for a tract to over £70,000 per tract. Soon yields began getting smaller and smaller. The problems in production came from removing the sticky seeds from the cotton bolls, the chenille bugs that devoured the sweet leaves, and the fact that cotton quickly strips the soil of nutrients mandating long fallow periods of manuring to maintain yields. Eli Whitney’s cotton gin solved the first problem in 1793, but the other two problems caused the downfall of the cotton business in the Turks and Caicos Islands. Also, a devastating hurricane in 1813 added to the abandonment of the plantations. Thomas Stubbs’ Cheshire Hall cotton plantation was hit harder than most by the chenille bug and fertilization problems, and in 1810 he sold Cheshire Hall.
In 1791, Wade Stubbs was named a Justice of the Peace and as the years went by, added to his holdings of land and slaves, he was quite the Loyalist success story. He had purchased other plantations from other Loyalists who were deserting them and had so much land that he could leave vast tracts of land to fallow as yields fell. He purchased the Haulover Plantation on Middle Caicos after the original owners left. Cotton on that estate was still being raised within the memory of people still living today. Stubbs success was in part due to the fact that he raised enough stock to supply his fields with manure. So successful and important was this cotton trade that after the independence of Haiti in 1799, the British government built Fort George on a small cay just southwest of North Caicos to protect the cotton industry.
In 1800, 14 of Wades Stubbs’ slaves stole one of his sloops and escaped. After 1806, Stubbs referred to Bellefield as Wade’s Green, a name indicating his affection for the land and his prosperity. Wade Stubbs died in 1822 and was buried in a stone crypt behind St. Thomas’ Church on Grand Turk. At the time of his death Wade Stubbs owned over 3,000 acres on North Caicos, 5,000 acres on Providenciales, and even more land on Middle Caicos, including Haulover. He had 384 slaves, all but 8 of whom were in the Caicos Islands. Some of his estate went to his nephew Henshell Stubbs, a Grand Turk salt producer, but most went to his namesake cousin, another Wade Stubbs, who continued living at Wade’s Green until about 1850. After emancipation in 1833, the Stubbs slaves, some farming and some working in salt in the Turks, were freed and the plantations came to disrepair and disuse. In 1882 the government of the Turks and Caicos Islands purchased 1,800 acres of Wade’s Green for division into 25-acre parcels to encourage farming. In 1885 the Stubbs house was refurbished as a combination courthouse, jail, and quarters for a magistrate who was posted there to stimulate the faltering settlement.
Between the years of 1827 and 1847 a salt tax was producing a quarter of the revenue of the Bahamas and Turks islanders were indignant. None of the money they paid in taxes was going to help their islands and the price of salt dropped considerably though the Salt Tax stayed the same. Though they were represented in Nassau, the distance and travel time involved limited the time a representative actually sat in Assembly. Although a mailboat reached Long Cay once a month and Grand Turk only four times a year, the only Bahamians they ever saw were tax collectors. Several boats bound for Jamaica passed through on a regular basis however and the Turks islanders grew to feel more kinship with Kingston than with Nassau.
After continuing complaints to the Crown an investigation was in order. The Governor of the Bahamas, George B. Matthew, made a perilous 18-day voyage from Nassau to Grand Turk which convinced him of the difficulties in transportation, communication, and life in general in these harsh islands. Separation was recommended. In 1848, the Turks and Caicos Islands were granted a separate charter providing for internal self-government subject to the Governor of Jamaica, a more pleasing proposition for the Turks islanders than continuing Bahamian rule.
The next few years were marked by prosperity in the salt business and the new government seemed to be working well. Then, in the evening of September 30, 1866, a devastating hurricane hit Grand Turk. By morning 63 were dead, over 750 homes destroyed, and more than a million bushels of salt were washed away. The country and its economy were literally left in ruins and the salt market became depressed in the ensuing years. In 1872 the islanders petitioned Queen Victoria to annex the Turks and Caicos Islands to Jamaica, which she did in 1873.
Over the following years the Turks and Caicos islanders continued to run their own affairs to a large extent. Unfortunately, Jamaican rule became no more popular than the preceding Bahamian rule. In reality, little was gained in the islands by their bond to Jamaica. When Jamaica became independent in 1962, the people of the Turks and Caicos Islands overwhelmingly wished to become a British Crown Colony. They got their wish. Also in 1962, John Glenn, after his famous space flight, first set foot back on planet Earth at Grand Turk.
Today the islands enjoy autonomous internal rule although the Governor is appointed by the Queen. Since undergoing massive economic development from 1967, the Turks and Caicos Islands have emerged as a world-class tourism destination and a major offshore financial center.
In 1976, the first constitution was granted to the islands crating a ministerial form of government. The present constitution did not come into being until March 4th, 1988. The Turks and Caicos Islands are a parliamentary democracy implementing the traditional Westminster model. The government consists of a governor, appointed by the Crown, who acts as the Queen’s representative and is responsible for internal security, external affairs, defense, and certain judicial matters. The Legislative Council (LegCo) consists of 13 elected members serving four-year terms, three appointed members, a Speaker who is selected from outside or from the elected or appointed members who are not Executive Council (ExCo) members. The Executive Council, which is responsible for the day-to-day business of government, consists of the Governor, Attorney General, Chief Secretary, Financial Secretary, and the Chief Minister and his cabinet of four appointed ministers selected from the elected members of the Legislative Council. The Turks and Caicos Islands have a well-developed judicial system administered by a magistrate and by the resident Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. Presently there are four political parties: The People’s National Party (PNP), the People’s Democratic Movement (PDM), the Turks and Caicos United Party (TCUP), and the National Democratic Alliance (NDA).
In recent decades many Turks and Caicos islanders left their homes to find work in the Bahamas leaving huge gaps in the work force at home which are quite often filled by workers from Haiti and the Dominican Republic. With the huge tourism boom on Providenciales, this is slowly changing, as more and more native sons and daughters are finding adequate employment in their homeland. The tourism boom is increasing steadily with each passing year; one can only foresee prosperous times ahead for the Turks and Caicos islanders.