Many memories as historic house gets a new ‘home’

By Stuart Wilson

As far as historic homes go in the Cayman Islands, there are few with the history and tales to tell as Miss Tit Tit’s home on Shedden Road in George Town.

Miss Theoline Seymour, affectionately known as ‘Tit TIt’, who is 98 years ‘young’ - as she loves to remind us, was born in the home in 1928. She suspects the house was built some time before her birth, estimating it to be between 125 and 150 years old. .

There’s a house next door that belongs to her aunt which was built around the same time.

Miss Tit Tit recounted how both properties were worked on interchangeably during their construction, with workers switching from house to house.

“Everything was built with wattle and daub in those days. They never had no blocks,” she remarked while recalling that as time went on, different sections were added.

FAMILIY AND COMMUNITY HISTORY

“My mother’s name was Geradyne Seymour and my father’s name was Percy Seymour. They had two children; myself and my brother Ferdinand, who passed away roughly 10 years ago,” she remarked, noting that growing up the area was very quiet and there wasn’t a road. “It was a grass piece where cows grazed.” She can still remember how the owner of the cows would drive to the area of the house to milk them, then load his milk and go from there.

“Those days, if anybody died, you didn’t stay outside; you went to hide under the bed,” she joked, noting that it was a more superstitious time in Cayman’s history.“You used to hear that dead people walked in the night and there wasn’t any streetlights back then.” However, there were plenty of mosquitoes. In the morning you could wake up and rake up a bucket of dead mosquitoes.”

When they were frying fish, they had to shut the door and have a smoke pan handy.

Miss Tit Tit’s father was a butcher who used to slaughter animals in the backyard. “He spent a lot of his time in Cuba and when he would return, he used to set up oranges, potatoes, and grapefruit to sell on the porch here. My mother did crochet and made the Queen’s wedding gift on behalf of the Cayman Islands,” she proudly remembers.

Another of her recollections is that both her mother and her aunt painted sheets for the deceased. “There wasn’t any caskets from overseas on the island. You would make the box from the trees that were around and make the sheet to wrap and bury the person in.”

Though Miss Tit Tit doesn’t have any children of her own, she is highly regarded as a mother figure to many in the community. “See one right there,” she pointed out, looking squarely at Mrs Sharon Brown-Ebanks, who had come to live with her upon arriving in Grand Cayman - as many did when they first came from Cayman Brac or Jamaica.

HOME AWAY FROM HOME

Miss Tit Tit’s house was one of the original boarding houses in George Town which share a special history of lodging that set the tone for early life in Cayman. It also reflects how visitors adjusted, as there weren’t many hotels or any Air B and B accommodations in those days.

“I started living here in January 1966,” said Mrs Brown-Ebanks. A favourite memory is that when she arrived in Grand Cayman, Miss. Tit Tit had a telephone but she could not call her family in Cayman Brac because the sister island did not have phone service then.

“We walked practically everywhere” - except when taking the bus service to school. “Mr Barnes had the bus service back then.”

Further sharing her part of that period in Cayman’s history, she recalled starting work at Citibank when George Town was still very quiet (compared to nowadays). However, Miss Tit TIt’s house was just as it is today; retaining its old-style ambience. The floors were polished with coconut husks for a shiny finish, and it served as a place where people in the George Town community would go to get rainwater from one of the largest cisterns around - which still stands in the yard today.

At one point, water was also sold to the Flowers enterprise, which went on to become the purveyor of Flowers Bottled Water, as it is known today.

In those days the water would also be taken to the port to be used on ships. Another contribution to the memory lane conversation came from Judith Witter, who came to the Cayman Islands in 1972 with her aunt, Ms Joanna Clarke.

“I was born in England and moved to Cayman with my aunt in 1972,” said Mrs. Witter. “In those days, when you came from Jamaica as a teacher, you stayed in boarding houses.” She and Miss Tit Tit were heavily involved with the Cubs youth group and worked with many youngsters in the community. In fact, the Joanna Clarke Primary School in Newlands, Savannah, was named in her honour.

Today, Miss Tit Tit’s house is on the National Trust for the Cayman Islands’ (NTCI) Historic Register and stands as a symbol of Caymanian ingenuity and architecture.

“These homes will never be seen again, and like the blue iguana, the Cayman parrot, and other endangered species, these homes are also endangered because the materials used to build them can no longer be sourced,” noted representatives from the National Trust.