[Granville-Hough] 16 Mar 2009 - Cayman Islands

[Trustees and Executors for Granville W. Hough]

The mention of Cayman Islands as possible home for some settlers of the 
Natchez District of British West Florida from before 1783 only applies, 
so far as I know to four families which settled in Sullivan's Hollow. 
The Coles, Spell, and Carters. The four families were John Franklin 
Cole, Sr, his brother Mark Cole, Jr, his sister Susanna (Cole), wife of 
Hiram Miller, and his sister Hannah (Cole), wife of William Carter. The 
mother of these four was a Spell, so that the three surnames of concern 
in early Natchez were Cole, Carter, and Spell, of interest to 
descendants of Frank and Nora (Miller) Hough.. I believe Cole and Carter 
came on the seven flatboats down from Southwestern VA, and that the 
Spell family came from SC. I am simply not sure of the Hannah (Spell) 
who married Mark Cole, Sr, son of James Cole, the flatboater, but it 
seems that the entire Spell name in America for that era comes from one 
or more SC families. I have never seen a reference to Cayman Islands in 
any study of Natchez District History.
If you speak of the Tombigbee District of West Florida, from whence the 
Sullivans came, you get a different story. It was accessible through the 
port in Mobile as well as overland from GA . The origins of the people 
before 1797, when it passed to American rule are murky indeed. I have 
also never seen a reference to Cayman Islands in any study of that area, 
either.
Nor have I found any specific reference to Cayman Islands activity 
during the Revolutionary War. All the British, French, Spanish, Dutch, 
and Danish islands with good ports came into play in one way or another, 
but the Cayman Islands is not one of them. If the British sent someone 
to Cayman Islands for whatever reason, they would have been quite eager 
to leave it.
After the Natchez District passed into US control in 1797, there was an 
influx of "Jersey settlers." These came from New Jersey, and quite a 
number of descendants of people in that area came from this group. Their 
pre-New Jersey origins I do not know, but there were New Jersey settlers 
who had lived in the West Indies. I never found any of my specific 
relatives in that group, but it seems they became elite of the area. 
Their descendants had the "ante bellum" mansions where they charged 
admission in the 1960 era. When my family and I visited one of these old 
homes, the only person who had change for a $10.00 bill was the black 
guide. Maybe his ancestors came from Cayman Islands.