This is a photo of my grandfather, the Rev. William Herbert Mayers, and grandmother, Agnes Jemmott Mayers, both families in Barbados since mid-17th century, close to its colonization.
In 1911 he decided to leave Barbados, with then 6 boys and 3 girls, because it's such a small island and opportunities for his children were so limited there - and (can you believe this then?) go to western Canada, where he'd heard there was much opportunity. My grandmother said she had never so much as washed a pocket handkerchief in Barbados, because everyone - not just wealthy folk - had plenty of servants, and she had to learn to do everything for that big family in Canada (where #10 was born)! They were there till Grandpapa's brother, the Rev. Campbell Mayers, who was then rector of Emmanuel Church, Middleburg, urged him to come to Virginia and I guess helped arrange for him to go to King George parish in about 1915.
I'm really so pleased to be able to have him represented there, because my best memories of growing up are the wonderful stories my father told me (almost every night) of his growing up times living in the Rectory at King George! Such tales you can't imagine, in a house full of 10 high-strung children, 7 boys and 3 girls (actually the oldest joined the Canadian Air Force in WWI) -- and doing the gardening/farming, tending the stock, helping their father with services at all 4 churches (riding there in a horse and buggy, being the acolyte, stoking the fire, pumping the organ for the organist, etc. etc. etc.). Punishment on a Sunday was memorizing an appointed hymn,all the verses (it was amazing how many times I stood by my Daddy in church while he sang every verse ofmany hymns without a glance at the hymnal!); and for weekday infractions there was serious contact with a belt!
Grandpapa (pronounced -pa-pa of course) was an eccentric and brilliant man, handsome and charming, and a Rube Goldberg to boot, evidently a superior preacher and story-teller, and a very hard worker. [He even acted as his own vet, castrating his stallion while two of his boys sat on the horse's head to hold him down!] The parishioners, being country folk poor in material things but rich in generosity and character, "paid" him with their eggs, chickens, produce, hams,whateverthey had, and the family grew the rest. But he saw to it that each of his children had a first-class education - girls included! - by seeking and finding them scholarships to all the best boarding prep schools (Choate, Groton, Stuart Hall, etc.).
My father was #8, and went off at 13 to a now-long-defunct school in Warrenton, "Stuyvesant." What a shock to the system his leaving that lively loving home must have been, especially as he boarded with a dour childless couple who had little or none of the "milk of human kindness," to be their farm helper. The Mayers were a very close family, with lots of kidding and teasing and laughing always, throughout their adult lives. No money to speak of, depression years and all that, but they had what was important! Most of the family ended up in Clearwater, Florida, and ALL of them are buried there in a family plot.
Judy Mayers Bryan