In a show of determination to maintain and showcase their rich German heritage, hundreds of residents of Seaford Town in Westmoreland turned out last Friday to celebrate their annual homecoming garden party, with representatives of Spruce Up Jamaica and the Tourism Product Development Company (TPDCo).

Organised by the Seaford Town NGO, the event, which residents hope will become a focal point of their community tourism product and cement their status as a heritage tourism site, featured a range of indigenous cuisine including traditional roast pig, shrimp soup as well as art and craft.

According to co-ordinator of Spruce Up Jamaica, Marlene Stephenson-Dalley, the development of the programme will include the refurbishment of the 19th century Sacred Heart rectory, which along with the Sacred Heart Roman Catholic Church and Convent, were declared national heritage sites by the Jamaica Heritage Trust earlier this year.

Dubbed “Seaford Town: A Jamaican German Village”, the project will also see the establishment of a new museum to house the artifacts now on display in the present museum at the Seaford Town All Age School. The community is also hoping to expand its over 100-year-old homecoming garden party into a much more expansive event to lure both local and overseas visitors.

“There is tremendous potential there,” Dalley said. “And we are working with the community to establish and implement the standards they need to make it a successful venture.”

Seaford Town was established following the arrival of the first German settlers to Jamaica in 1835. Like the Chinese and Indians they arrived shortly after slavery to supplement the workforce when planters could not lure the recently freed slaves back to the plantation. They subsequently establish Seaford Town on 500 acres of land, located at the foothills of the Montpelier Mountains, donated to them by Lord Seaford,

then owner of the then Montpelier Estate.

By then scores of the settlers had died or left the island for Canada and the United States when conditions here proved too much for them. In fact they received the land 15 years after they landed in Jamaica and a decade after they were originally promised to receive it.

Few German traits now remain in the community of Germans descendants but the area is still home to a majority of light skinned blue-eyed people, evidence of its rich

cultural diversity.

The museum now displays many artifacts used by generations of German descendants including the contracts, which gave them land a century ago. A registry of the immigrants who arrived in the island in 1835 shows persons between the ages of 20 and 65 with families of up to nine persons. A 1987 census said that 157 caucasian descendants, predominantly of Roman Catholic faith, remained in Seaford Town, At present TPDCo is providing training for residents in the community and helping with capacity building and the development of stated standards for the industry.