To forget one's ancestors is to be a brook without a source, a tree without a root.

The Franco and Gomez families were to become even more connected, when on 10 August 1916, just two months after Audrey's and Louis' marriage, Audrey's brother Joseph Gomez wed Louis' sister Caroline Franco in Grenada!  According to the newspaper article above, Joseph had performed the duties of bestman at his sister's wedding.

 

Audrey and Louis happily settled into married life in  St. Georges, Grenada where Louis ran his wholesale provision business. His father John Franco was a successful and wealthy wine merchant who owned several properties including a hotel called The Halifax Inn in St. Georges.  Family stories relate  that  John owned twenty-five buildings in the town of St. George and that his nickname was "30,000" - he made that much selling wine!  In his day, he was considered the wealthiest person in Grenada - so it is said.   Louis' mother was Clementine Pace, a lady with roots in Malta.  It is remarkable that she owned and ran a bakery next door to their Halifax Street home, although she was the mother of ten children!

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Two years after their marriage,  Audrey and Louis welcomed their firstborn child, Wilfred Louis Franco.  But tragedy and grief was to strike just six years into their marriage.  The beautiful Audrey died in childbirth with her second son George, when she was only thirty-two years old.  The entire family was devastated. Louis was left to care for their four year old son Wilfred and infant George - how would he ever manage?

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Family came to the rescue.   Louis remarried, but it seemed  that the situation with the little ones and their stepmother was an unhappy one.   The family relates that my grandfather Charlie Sheppard went to Grenada and returned to Trinidad with young Wilfred.  It had been arranged that Audrey's younger sister Ivy Gomez would take care of him.  Ivy was single, and lived with her widowed mother Christina.  Nurtured by these two loving women, Wilfred grew up in Trinidad, where he lived for the rest of his life.

 

In Grenada, little George was embraced into the Franco home in Halifax street where Louis' maiden sister Louise became his foster mother.  Family members recall that she affectionately called him “my boy Georgie” and that they lived in the attic.  Her sister  Agnes and her three children - Monica, Gordon and Audrey - also lived with their father John in the Halifax Street family home, as her husband had died young.   As was often the custom in those days, the Franco family shop occupied the bottom floor, and their home was above, with large windows overlooking the street.   My father visited his family there and related a hair-raising experience they had at Morne Jaloux.

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In "The Autobiography of Alfred H. Mendes, 1897–1991", Alfie recounts: "We stayed with my father’s first cousin on his father’s side, John Franco, and his large family of girls, two or three of my age.  The family lived in a spacious house in St. George’s, as quaint a little town as I have ever seen.  The atmosphere was quiet, peaceful, benign".  He also describes a fire that took place in Clementine Franco's bakery at Easter time.   Alfie's stepmother was Leanora (Lea) Franco, another of John Franco's daughters and Audrey Gomez's sister-in-law.

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All colourful tales of  intertwined families and their dramas - I'm sure that there are many more of these, just waiting to be told.

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