Guest Post: The Quest.

By Patrick Vella

17 September 2015

It's difficult to determine and pinpoint the exact moment I started delving into my family history, and genealogy in general, especially on my maternal side, but having a mother who was a ‘Murray’ from Trinidad certainly helped. I was curious to find out more about my roots, having only faint recollections of what my mum had said in the past. Her father was Ken Murray, which sounded Scottish, and her mother was Belle nee’ Govia, which I later found out was Portuguese/Madeiran, thus providing two very interesting genealogical lineages.

I grew up hearing my mother talk about the carnival in Trinidad, the white sandy beaches, roti, corn bread, steelpans and the land she came from. Unfortunately, she became ill at an early age, and I never got round to asking her more in the short time we had together. She passed away in 1991 when I was 26.

A number of years passed. Some memories were forgotten, some buried forever, whilst others were resurrected by a children’s Christmas concert in December 2014. My partner, who is a school teacher, decided to have a Christmas sing-a-long for the girls in her class. This would include Christmas carols from a number of countries, and in memory of my mother, Trinidad was included. The concert came and went and was duly forgotten, however the seeds were sown and memories started rising to the surface again.

In February 2015 I woke up to a renewed enthusiasm to actually do something about my roots and maybe, in a way, honour my mother, my heritage and my ancestors. I was confident that social media could be used as a genealogy tool for tracing long lost relatives and re-establishing contact. 

I commenced my research by looking for an old family tree that was sent to us in 1993 by Ralph Weldon. Ralph had married Violet Mae Murray in 1948, in Arkansas, USA and was very active in the Union County Genealogy Society where he served as President for many years. I eventually found it, and luckily, it contained two pages with about 50 names of my mother’s paternal Murray line going back to a Walter Murray born in 1708. This list provided a vital starting point and laid the groundwork for researching the Murray side of the family. I made contact with the children and step children of Ralph and was saddened to hear that both he and his wife had passed away.  

Ralph’s documents showed that the Murray family background is Scottish and although still unproven, that they are descended from the Duke of Atholl, named after Atholl in Scotland. ( It is a title in the Peerage of Scotland, held by the head of Clan Murray and the Duke of Atholl's traditional residence is Blair Castle, near Blair Atholl in Perthshire, Scotland. )

I searched for Murray family trees online and also made contact with Alexandrina Murray, Project Administrator and Robert Burns, Project Researcher for Colonial America who maintained the Murray Clan website. They were very helpful but could not prove linage to the “Murrays of Atholl” that was mentioned in Ralph’s documents without a DNA test.

Information provided by Murray descendants who I made contact with online agreed with Ralph's family tree. "The Murray family left Scotland around 1745 at the time of the Jacobite uprising when bonnie Prince Charlie lost his attempt to defeat the King of England at the Battle of Culloden in Scotland in 1746. Thousands of people were slaughtered, and our ancestors left and escaped to Antigua, in the West Indies. Our earliest known Murray ancestors are Walter Murray Sr. (1708 - 1792) and his wife Bridget Murray who left Scotland around 1745 and settled in Falmouth, Antigua."

My search also turned up some very old digitized books about the West Indies and these also provided some additional information about Dr Stephen Murray who was mentioned in 1793;

"Dr. Stephen Murray, a practitioner of considerable eminence at Falmouth, in the vicinity of English Harbor, and at the time Surgeon to the Ordnance on the island, informed me (says Dr. Chisholm), that the malignant pestilential fever of the year 1793 was evidently imported from the Experiment man of war, the crew of which received the infection at Grenada. " (A History of the West Indies by Thomas Coke)

and Dr Walter Murray mentioned in 1812;

"I appoint John Crawford of Antigua, Surgeon, Walter Murray of Antigua, Surgeon, Adam Gordon of Antigua, Merch', & Lewis Smith of the Ordnance Office, G', my Attorneys in Antigua. At Elgin 13 May 1812." (The history of the island of Antigua -  Vere Langford Oliver.)

The Murray family seems to have stayed in Antigua until Henry Earle Berkeley Odlum Murray moved to Guyana and Harold Berkeley Murray moved to Trinidad. Harold was my mother's grandfather.

Over the next 6 months I continued to make contact with a number of Murray descendants spread all over the world, including Trinidad, Belgium, Canada and the United States. My tree flourished and grew, at least on the Murray side. Old books no longer in print containing family pedigrees and priceless information on early settlers in the West Indies, and in particular Antigua and Trinidad by Vere Langford Oliver, were found online and they provided invaluable resources and information.

On my mother’s maternal Govia line, all I had was my grandmother’s name, and the online searches I made didn’t turn up anything. She did not appear in any Govia family tree I could find. Was she an only child? Who were her parents?

I asked my father’s sister if she knew anything about my mother’s family, but all she remembered was being told that the Govia family had moved from Portugal to Venezuela and then to Trinidad.

Although this information seemed trivial, I realised that I would have to focus on the Portuguese migration to the West Indies. Almost immediately I stumbled upon papers and books written by a Dr Jo-Anne Ferreira of the University of the West Indies, who specialises on the Madeiran and Portuguese migration to Guyana, St Vincent, Antigua and Trinidad, having Portuguese roots herself. We exchanged some emails and searched through all the well known ‘public’ lists that were available online relating to Portuguese families, but again, Belle did not appear in any of them. Without even the names of her parents, it seemed an impossible task to trace her lineage. 

Weeks passed, and my frustration grew. My mother’s paternal Murray line was expanding rapidly as new information was coming in, and new contacts were being made – but her maternal Govia line was a dead end. Dr. Ferreira was kind enough to point me in various directions where I could possibly get help. The Church of Scotland was one. I knew my mother was baptised in the Church of Scotland so why not my grandmother? But again, this didn’t turn up anything.

During one of my numerous online searches, I stumbled upon an online blog created and maintained by Ray Agostini, and in this blog he had a short family history including a ‘John Emanuel Govia’ marrying a ‘Lola Camilla Ffrench' and having 

fifteen children.

My eyes keenly ran down the list in anticipation, but again there was no mention of ‘Belle’ on the list. It was yet another dead end but there was no harm in emailing Ray. 

Ray was kind enough to reply the next day. What was interesting is that Ray’s mother, Ena Govia had married into the Agostini family, thereby linking the Govia and Agostini families through marriage, but again, Belle did not appear anywhere. Ena was one of fifteen Govia children and to Ray’s knowledge, Ena’s father John Emanuel Govia Jnr. was married only once...so the trail stopped there. What was also important however, is that where the Govia family was notoriously difficult to trace, the Agostini one was more researched and documented, with books such as David Agostini's "The Ancestors" and "The Corsicans in Trinidad" by Anthony De Verteuil available. The Agostini family provided me with a vital link into the Govia family genealogy.

At this point I was losing hope in ever tracing my mother’s maternal Govia line. If my grandmother Belle did not appear in any family trees and nobody seemed to have any information about her, there was little I could do, especially with my parents and grandparents both passed. The trail was going cold again.

I spent some weeks exchanging emails with Ray. He proved to be articulate, friendly, and helpful and many of his emails were peppered with personal anecdotes and memories of the Trinidad he grew up in, which to me was priceless information one did not find on the internet. When we had both exhausted all leads, he directed me to his older brother Mike, who was 20 years older and with more knowledge of the ‘older’ generation. 

In 1950, aged fifteen, Mike Agostini had won the Trinidad National Open 100M championship. At 17, he broke the World Junior record for 100yds running it in 9.4 seconds, where he defeated the 1952 Olympic champion, Andy Stanfield (USA). He left Trinidad in 1953 at the age of 18 to study in America on a running athletic scholarship. On the 23rd January 1954, the same month that he enrolled at Villanova University, Mike ran 100 yards indoors in 9.6 seconds to break the world record. 

At the British Empire Games in Vancouver, Canada in 1954, Mike won gold for Trinidad in the 100 yards in 9.6 seconds. His international career continued for another six years. He collected silver in the 100 metres at the Pan American Games in Mexico City in 1955. In the 1956 Olympic Games at Melbourne he was 6th in the 100m (10.7 seconds) and 4th at 200m (21.1). In the 1958 Empire Games in Cardiff he won bronze and, representing the newly formed West Indian Federation, he won three medals at the 1959 Pan American Games in Chicago (silver at 100, bronze at 200m and sprint relay). He was also dubbed "World's Fastest Human" in 1954 and 1956. Mike retired from athletics in 1960 at age 25. He married and settled in Australia, where he became a successful businessman and prolific writer (seventeen books published) on a variety of subjects.

I wrote a long introductory email to Mike with all I knew about Belle, and sent it off, having little expectation.

The next day I received a long email in answer from Mike, and as I sat there reading it, I felt the first tingle of excitement and I knew that the long journey was finally coming to an end, but not quite over. Not only did he remember Belle, but she was his Godmother, and a cousin of his mother. He did not know who her parents were, but he told me that out of his mother’s fourteen siblings from John Emanuel Govia Jnr., one aunt, Lola Blanc was still alive, and if anyone would know anything, it was sure to be her.

Two other pieces of information emerged following a number of email exchanges with Mike. One was that John Emanuel Govia, his grandfather, had a father also called John Emanuel Govia Snr. who was married more than once. This was his great grandfather.

The second was that he remembered that Belle had a brother called Eddie who had a daughter called Brenda. Mike passed on Lola’s telephone number and Brenda’s email address.

The rest, as they say, is history. After a chat with Lola on the phone, who proved to be a lovely, charming, warm, elderly lady with an excellent memory, she confirmed to me the names of Belle’s parents – John Emanuel Govia Snr. and Virginia Mendes and that her grandfather had been married twice. Belle was the result of his second marriage. The last piece of the puzzle was determining how many siblings Belle had and if Eddie was the only one from her grandfather’s second marriage.

Two days later, a reply from Brenda came in and with it, a lot of information about Belle, her two sisters Carmen and Thelma and her brother Eddie.

Brenda knew that Eddie, her father, was married three times and had eight children before dying at the young age of 38. He had two boys from his first marriage, five children from his second marriage (Brenda included), and a daughter in Venezuela from his third marriage.

Around this time, an email out of the blue appeared in my inbox from an Elliott Govia. I had been sending emails out on a regular basis over the course of the last few months to any and every Govia family tree owner I could find online, but rarely got a reply, and when I did, there was always the same answer about not knowing this ‘Belle’. This email, incredibly, included an old Govia family tree – that had Belle and her siblings on it. The quest was complete. Elliott had made the connection between the Belle in an email I had sent to his father George some weeks earlier and a Belle in an old Govia family tree he had in hand linking me to the Govia ‘family’.

Coincidentally, these answers all came to me on my birthday.

The last couple of days have been intense, hectic and even emotional. I was invited into a Facebook group that focused on the Govia family and have been told that I caused a ‘Govia explosion’ with all the information I now had and shared. Many more have now joined, new photos and information are being posted continuously and more long lost Govias are being found and contacted.

This journey started as a wish to honour my mother’s memory and connect with my roots in order to honour her lineage. It has taken me in unexpected directions and enabled me to meet some helpful, warm people along the way and form new friendships and connections.

I would like to especially thank Dr Jo-Anne S. Ferreira of the  Department of Modern Languages and Linguistics at the University of the West indies, Ray and Mike Agostini, Marie-Therese Agostini , Brenda Hooft, Lola Blanc, and of course my partner Michelle who has supported my quest over the last seven months.

About the author:

"Patrick Vella is 51 years old and lives in Malta in Europe. He has been working in Information Technology since 1985 and holds a Masters degree in Business Intelligence. He has a background in martial arts and is an avid reader, lover of history and part time genealogist."

You can email Patrick at: patvella@gmail.com