Royal Gazette: Amanda visits Bermuda in search of Gibbons heritage
Growing up in Texas, Amanda Akes-Cardwell loved hearing stories of her grandmother Ella Gibbons Jones’s childhood in Bermuda. Mrs Jones, born in 1925, lived in a house called Stone Hill on Tee Street, Devonshire, before marrying a US serviceman and moving to the United States.
“Her father, Joseph Watson Gibbons, was a plumber,” Amanda said. “He installed many of the pipes in Bermuda. He had rheumatoid arthritis, so he was bedridden from the time my grandmother was born. It got progressively worse until he was in a wheelchair.”
Amanda, who now lives just outside Washington with wife Sarah Akes-Cardwell and their five-year-old son, Sam, grew up with Bermuda as a kind of magical place in family lore.
“She would talk about Bermuda all the time,” Amanda said. “Bermuda has always been a place that I have wanted to visit.”
This month Amanda finally ticked that wish off her bucket list. She travelled to Bermuda with Sarah and Sam to celebrate their tenth wedding anniversary. The women, both Episcopal priests, decided to combine their anniversary trip with a pilgrimage into Amanda’s family history.
Before coming to the island, Sarah wrote to the Bermuda National Trust seeking information about Stone Hill.
BNT researchers Linda Abend and Margie Lloyd began digging into the records. Ms Lloyd reached out to Jeanie Flath, who lives on Leeson Lane, Devonshire, on the north side of Tee Street Hill. She and Amanda were hoping to connect with any family members on the island associated with the house.
“She asked if I knew of anyone named Gibbons who lived close by,” Ms Flath said. “The only person I knew was Gordon ‘Gordy’ Gibbons.”
It turned out that the house they were looking for was one that Ms Flath’s grandmother and father had bought years earlier.
“It has been renamed and my daughter lives there now,” Ms Flath said.
Mr Gibbons, 82, grew up on Tee Street and still lives there. His father, Ernest, was Amanda’s grandmother’s brother.
Ernest Gibbons cofounded Astwood Cycles with Colonel Sir Jeffrey Astwood in 1948 and later ran a Tee Street guesthouse called Grandview.
Royal Gazette: Amanda visits Bermuda in search of Gibbons heritage