Dear Editor,
The Hukumchand family in Guyana is very large; they are lawyers, judges, doctors, engineers, ambassadors, Guyana scholars, businessmen and anything you can speak about.
Hukumchand was born in India in 1819 and came indentured to Guyana in 1854. He was about 35 years old and single. I could not say when he got a wife; his eldest daughter, my great grandmother, Mangee, was born in 1862, and she had five sisters and four brothers. The last was born in 1900 when Hukumchand was 81 years old; the mother of the child was a young African woman.
Hukumchand became a head shovel man and a driver on Bath sugar estate, West Coast Berbice. During the early eighties he bought No 23 estate which was a mud flat from Africans, and used Bath Estate shovelmen to fence it. He sent Indian immigrants from the Bath Estate to live at his estate; he had hundreds of sheep, cows and horses.
During 1890, his son-in-law Paraboo bought the western half of Brahn; Mahabir bought Yeoville Estate, West Coast Berbice; and Jagdat bought half of Brittania, West Coast Berbice.
There were a few men who came from India for betterment; they were smart and saved their money to buy land. Some of the immigrants who settled in Guyana could barely buy a house lot, but I believe there were many like Hukumchand who did make good in Guyana during the 19th century.
Yours faithfully,
Bramdeow Singh
