According to family lore, my great great grandmother Elizabeth Groves, the first wife of Jabez Hodgson, was from the West Indies. This was an intriguing story, but I could not confirm it. All the evidence indicated she was born in Scotland. The story became plausible when I learned that many Scots had emigrated to the West Indies, and in particular to Jamaica, in the nineteenth century. However, Elizabeth had a common name and I had no clues to help track her down.

In 2014, I added Elizabeth and her family to familysearch.org, a global family tree connecting millions of people.  I did this hoping that someone else might have some information on Elizabeth.  In 2018, my wish came true. Someone named Bob noticed that another couple (John and Ellen Watson) shared a dwelling with Jabez and Elizabeth in Blackstone, Massachusetts, in 1850.  Bob then found that Ellen's maiden name was Groves and we agreed that Ellen and Elizabeth were probably sisters!  This was a turning point--a break in what genealogists call a brick wall.  With Bob's help, I was able to piece together the following story, tracing Elizabeth Groves from her birth in Scotland to her arrival in America:

Elizabeth's parents, David Groves and Mary McCulley, were born in Ireland--probably in Ulster--he in 1790 and she in 1797.  By 1814, when their first child was born, they had moved to Scotland and settled near Glasgow.  Many others followed the same route, seeking work in the booming Scottish textile industry.  It's quite possible that David and Mary had Scottish roots and were returning to the homeland of their ancestors, as migration back and forth between Scotland and Ireland had been going on for centuries.

Elizabeth was born on August 27, 1829, in the town of Johnstone, Renfrewshire, about 12 miles west of Glasgow, and she was baptized nearby in the more famous milltown of Paisley.

At the time of Scotland's first census, held in 1841, Elizabeth was 11 years old and living at home, along with her parents and older siblings Ellen (20), Thomas (19), and David (16). These older siblings were all apprenticed or employed, like their father, in the cotton weaving trade. All three siblings would marry and would make their way to Jamaica and then America.  Elizabeth, while younger, would eventually follow the same path.

Shortly after the census, Ellen married John Watson, who also lived in Johnstone and was employed as a servant.  The next record we have of Ellen and John Watson finds them living at a coffee plantation named Lottery in Jamaica in 1843 and, upon the birth of their first child, naming him James Lyle Watson, in honor of James Lyle, the owner of the plantation.  Another 1843 record has brother Thomas Groves working as a laborer at Lottery Plantation and then getting married, with James Lyle and David Groves present as witnesses.  

Who was plantation owner James Lyle?  He came from the town of Houston, just north of Johnstone in Scotland.  His wife Mary Grove might have been related to my Groves ancestors.  Given the close ties between the Lyles and the Groves, I would not be surprised if Mary was Elizabeth's aunt.  James inherited Lottery Plantation from his uncle Robert Lyle, who died in 1839.  Robert had owned the plantation since 1817, and had owned slaves up until emancipation in 1834.  Ownership of the plantation remained with the Lyle family until a bankruptcy in 1885.

Elizabeth's brother David Groves left Jamaica in 1844 and, by the time of the 1850 U.S. Census, was working as a weaver in Warwick, Rhode Island, married to Janet Sutherland, and living in the home of her father Alexander.  Thomas Groves and his wife remained at Lottery Plantation until at least 1845 and had two children there.

We don't know when Elizabeth arrived in Jamaica or what she did there, but she must have been there, along with her mother Mary, because a passenger list shows that they both sailed from Jamaica to New York in 1845.

Copies of selected original records are attached below:

1829 Birth Record - Eliza (Elizabeth) Groves - DL means daughter lawful (parents lawfully married).

1841 Census - David Groves Household - Family living on Macdowall Street includes David, wife Mary McCulley, and children Thomas, David, Helen (Ellen), and Elizabeth.  Ages were usually rounded down to the nearest multiple of 5.  Ditto is abbreviated do.  The census taker made many errors, some of which were crossed out and corrected.  The identity of Mary (age 2) is unclear.  She may have been a daughter or granddaughter of either a Groves or a McCulley.