29/07/2016
Listenmi News Facts: The Devon House Story: George Stiebel, Jamaica's first millionaire of African descend.
- Born the son of a Jamaican housekeeper and a German Jew in the 1820s, young George was subjected to harsh treatment due to his mixed parentage.
- At 14, he left school and went to work as a carpenter's apprentice.
- At 19, was involved with the reconstruction of the famous Ferry Inn, between Kingston and Spanish Town.
- In the 1840's, George's father gave him funds to buy a ship and he began transporting cargo between North and South America.
- After having three ship wrecks he started trading with the other West Indian islands.
- He then realized that there was a market for guns among rebel slaves in Cuba, he even became involved in gun running, a lucrative endeavour that came to an abrupt end when he was briefly thrown into a Cuban jail.
- In his twenties, George met and fell in love with Jamaican Magdalen Baker, the daughter of a Moravian missionary.
- They got married in 1851 and later went on to have a son, Sigismund, after George's father, and a daughter, Theresa.
- Five years after their marriage, his ships were caught in a terrible storm, which destroyed the vessels. Unfortunately Stiebel was aboard one of the ships which sank off the coast of Venezuela.
- He survived only to discover that he had lost everything, except the money belt he had had the foresight to tie around his waist before abandoning ship.
- George became a peddler in Venezuela and saved until he could buy a mule to expand his business. George soon began to amass a fortune by buying gold and successfully transporting it to Caracas. He invested in a gold mine with friends and soon became the majority shareholder. George remained in Venezuela for 15 years until the mine was producing at a profit. He refused to return to Jamaica until he was truly a man of great wealth.
- In 1873, George Stiebel had become Jamaica's first millionaire of African descend.
- Now in his early 50's, his teenage son Sigismund's died of an unknown illness while George was in Venezuela.
- George began to invest in Jamaica, buying two sugar estates, a wharf at Church Street, Great Salt Pond among others. All were bad choices except for Great Salt Pond, but his Venezuelan gold mine had made him more money than he could ever have imagined.
- It is reported that he purchased 99 properties (it was illegal to own 100 properties during the period).
- He built a lavish home at Minard, which became the family’s favorite vacation getaway.
- George's daughter Theresa married a prominent young Jamaican solicitor named Richard Hill Jackson and soon after their much-celebrated nuptials, in 1881, George purchased Devon Penn and began to build his dream house, to be called Devon House, for his wife, daughter and son-in-law.
- The builder was the half-Lebanese, half-Haitian, Charles P. Lazarus. The land included wells, a fountain, a racetrack, tennis courts, and a 10 ft by 10 ft concrete swimming pool. Bricks and a cast iron gate were brought in from Scotland.
- The house included a library, a gaming room, ballroom, sitting rooms, a sewing room, dining room, bedrooms, a balcony that looked across to Trafalgar Penn and verandahs on different floors. The kitchen was located in the back (where the Brick Oven now is) because it was thought dangerous to put a kitchen near to the wooden main house. The Steibels did a great deal of entertaining especially after George became Custos of St. Andrew in the mid-1880s. They therefore employed a large staff including four gardeners, two house maids, a butler, cook, laundress, grooms and a coachman. Servants' quarters were located in the space now occupied by shops adjacent to the present day Brick Oven. Although much of the furniture and carpets today are not part of Steibel's original décor (having been sold at public auction following the death of Theresa Steibel Jackson) the original chandelier, like the cherub and floral ceiling decorations, remain.
To read the full history visit: http://www.yardflex.com/archives/002281.html
http://old.jamaica-gleaner.com/pages/history/story0028.html
