Sargeant Family Reunion memories

Ivan Sargeant's Homegoing

Ivan Sargeant, the 7th of Alexander Sargeant's ten children, passed away at 79 following a year's illness.A reknowned achitect, an accomplished tenniss player, a Jazz afficionado, and all around good guy,he was , indeed a formidable person. Descended from Sargeants, Huggins' and Liburds, Ivan will be greatly missed.

The Honorable Constance Baker Motley

Celebrating the life, love and Committment of Laverne Elizabeth Sargeant

March was met with great sadness in the Sargeant family as we mourned the loss of Laverne Elizabeth Sargeant. A truly bright light, Laverne passed at age 56 following a five year bout with cancer. A funeral was conducted in Ft Washington ,MD with an interment days later at the family plot in Hamden Connecticut. The family shared coffee and reminisced at St Lukes.
http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/washingtonpost/obituary.aspx?n=laverne-e-sargeant&pid=140280440

Bertram Baker-Brooklyn's 1st Black Official

I was checking out "BLS the other day and the mentioned that Bertram Baker of SK was the borough of Brooklyn's first Black elected official. Check out the details........
http://www.caribbeanworldnews.com/middle_top_news_detail.php?mid=1273

Fruit of the Fig Tree

My Grandpa, James Foster Sargeant was born in Nevis on May 5, 1884 and arrived in New Haven Connecticut at the age of thirty in 1914.
He was a boatright by vocation, but eventually became proficient in all of the mechanical trades. He was a multi-talented man and was self taught in electronics, music and photography (the latter discipline having been passed down through three successive generations as of this writing). A tinkerer at heart, he would craft a living repairing the radios that had come to be such a vital part of life in the early part of the century.
A youthful relationship produced his first and only daughter Maxine, but he eventually married Olive Amory a teacher ,also from Nevis at the Fig Tree Church . His relationship with Olive would last a lifetime and produced three sons, Lloyd, Louis, and Bertram. A small, but thriving community of immigrants from the eastern caribbean was developing in New Haven that included the Bakers, the Hanleys, the Huggins the Gilfilans, the Pembertons and the Tysons. The would include the legendary jurist Constance Baker Motley, bass player Bill Pemberton. Also among them were the Sargeant and the Amory families.

Years later, they would leave New Haven, first for the Bronx, and ultimately settling at 48 macon street in Brooklyn. Legend has it that their stubborn island self reliance extended beyond their complete mastery over household maintenence; they would also entertain themselves and their neighbors, with a trio consisting of Grandpa on his beloved Gibson Harp Guitar, Uncle LLoyd on a Gibson mandolin and my dad, Louis on a traditional acoustic guitar. Uncle Bert, who was not yet old enough to play and had the unenviable task of carrying the instruments from house to house.

The "boys" were eventually conscripted into a Jim Crow army and served their time before assuming careers in law enforcement, and facilities management at the newly built Lenox Terrace complex in Harlem.
http://books.google.com/books?id=IzT8Nw8TtkYC&pg=PA179&lpg=PA179&dq=global+culture+Island+identity&source=bl&ots=LD2LwYgsY3&sig=RTLEvSef-Xu1HTmet5MtJjKhpHk&hl=en&ei=ywibS6SMLIP78Aan4dmSDg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CAgQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=&f=false