|
The establishment of the Lawaetz
clan in the Danish
West India Islands is a romantic tale, a
mixture of dreams, optimism
 and
vision. That St. Croix was even considered by a 26 year old cattle farmer
from Denmark is surprising. The Crucian
cane sugar industry was dying due to lack
of laborers, high costs, horrible weather and not least, depletion of the
land. At the time Carl immigrated,
as a highly disciplined, religious young man with almost 11 years of
apprenticeship in farm management, Denmark was thriving and the leading
exporter of farm products in the world. The problem with Denmark was a
lack of land and opportunity, for the population had grown as quickly as
its expertise following the Napoleonic Wars. Carl left to secure a future
for himself as so many other young Danes did at that time, but instead of
America, he took his cousin's
advice and gambled on coming to St. Croix.
His first job was as assistant overseer at
Sion Farm and Peter's Rest, sugar cane estates, earning about $13 a month.
By Christmas of that first year, 1891, he was promoted to head overseer at
$16 month. Enough of a raise for him to buy his ftrst "very own nice bed."
Carl's real love was cattle, and when cattleman Nelthropp of Granard died,
he agreed to work for Nelthropp's widow as manager of Granard and
Cane Garden, with a fee of $25 a
month starting in January of 1894. Closer to town now, and to conserve
funds for the eventual purchase of his own farm, Carl gratefully took his
meals with his cousin Herman, pastor of the Lutheran Church in
Christiansted. Herman and his wife Ingeborg provided what little social
life Carl allowed himself during those years. Carl spent much of his free
time looking at estates likely to be put up for auction. The second half
of the 19th century was financially hard on most owners, and lands which
had absentee owners changed hands with much regularity. Because of his
active interest in buying a good estate, Carl was finally offered a
two-estate purchase, sight unseen, on the 7th of April in 1896; he took
it. The mortgage was affordable, $12,000 for 450 acres, $2,000 down, and
$1,000 annually thereafter; and his confidence was high. Carl also trusted
the seller, but in fact, Little La Grange and Jolly Hill were not in good
condition at all. He stated in his children's baby books, "I moved down
from Granard on April 9th and on April 11, 1896, took over full operation
of Little La Grange." At the age of 31, Carl was finally his own boss.
Little La Grange had ten different recorded
owners before Carl, all of whom grew sugar cane. The first, Jakob Fibiger
in 1776, lasted just ten years. The longest to hold it
 were
the fourth and fifth owners: first Mesdames Hester Stevens and Elizabeth
Yard from 1803 through 1833, then Major Adam Logan and several partners
until 1866. The ladies saw both the peak of King Cane and its decline
through adversity. Logan was there through Emancipation, earthquakes and
droughts. After his death it moved through the hands of Major William
Moore, 1866-79; John Russel 1880-84; and then to H. MacDonald between
1884-1895, who lost it at auction to J. P. Jorgensen of St. Thomas.
Jorgensen kept MacDonald on to farm his purchase but it was unsuccessful.
When Carl bought the estates, all of the roofs were a shambles, the
overseer's house no rented, and the new government experiment with
pineapples was a failure. Furthermore, a world wide depression in effect
between 1893 and 1897 kept markets depressed in sugar cane and its
products.
By the end of 1898, tax records on Carl's
properties showed the effect of good management and frugal living. He had
invested in Senegal cattle from St. Thomas. The greathouse at Jolly Hill
with its 5 horse stables was repaired and rented, he was selling milk,
grasses and wood to town, and had income from the sale of fruits, pigs and
cane. All of the village houses had new roofs, windows and doors; their
walls and floors were repaired. Because of that work, 18 village units
were rented and the overseer's 3 apartments were as well.
 Carl
was ready for a wife and looking when 8 months later, on the 8th of August
1899, a terrible hurricane ripped through the island and tore
away the last two roofs
scheduled to be replaced: that of his own house and that of the sugar
factory. He was over his limit for borrowing and suffered hard times to
get galvanized sheeting for his home. The factory roof was never rebuilt,
he hauled his cane to Sprat Hall instead. But he had recovered by the end
of 1899, and the estates were valued at $16,000, although he wrote he
would take no less than $24,000 for them, double his purchase price just
four years before.
Carl found the wife he was looking for on
his first visit home in 1901-02, an artist and teacher, Marie Nyeborg, 8
years younger than he. Their families were close, Carl's eldest sister had
been the second wife of Marie's father. They became engaged in Copenhagen
on the 17th of January in 1902. Marie and Carl were married in
Christiansted by Carl's cousin, Pastor Herman Lawaetz, on the 30th of
September in 1902, and the clan on
St. Croix was begun.
Between 1904 and 1917, Marie gave birth to
seven Danish children, all in Carl's "very own nice bed." Carl began to
keep intensive cattle breeding records in 1901, and had one of the most
productive milk herds on island. He began buying a few Red Pol mixed with
Senegal from the Nelthropps, a more docile and drought resistant breed.
Through good times
 and
bad, the five children who survived childhood began raising gardens and
livestock as soon as they could toddle. All of the children could ride
and each took care of their own donkeys. The family were very active in
church and its social events, and Carl served as a member of the Colonial
Council as well. Marie's young sister lived with them for many years.
Carl's brother was a pharmacist in Frederiksted for many years. The
children in the village and the overseer's apartments played with the
Lawaetz children all the usual games of childhood: cricket, tag, foot and
donkey races and of course, cart races with goats in the traces. Marie
always managed to find enough sandwiches and punch
to
cool them off at the end of the day's play no matter how the economy
behaved. And Christmas was as much a church event as was the roast bull
party for all of the estate.
In 1922, the three eldest were sent for
further education to Denmark. Anna went to study nursing, Else, household
management. Frits, then 14, was sent to Stenhus Academy in Denmark for
higher education (St. Croix classes ended at 8th grade), and then apprenticeship training. Two
years later, Kai followed and then Erik, in 1928. Marie's household
emptied quickly.
Frits had a love of cattle and farming from
infancy; he would return to the islands, working first in Puerto Rico
before returning to St. Croix. He signed on as manager of Annaly in 1940 and perfected the breeding
characteristics of the Senegal-Red Pol mix into Senepol cattle for Ward
Canaday at Annaly before buying the operation out in 1973. Kai studied
horticulture and planned to work in the
United States, but he returned temporarily
to Little La Grange. Erik, trained in the merchant marine service,
eventually returned to pioneer the conversion of estates into home sites
and build his hotel called St. Croix By the Sea. Anna completed her
education, and came back to St. Croix but a bad time with malaria left her
unable to handle the intensity of hospital nursing. Eventually she moved
to the United States and into child
care. Else stayed in Copenhagen.
By the late 1930s, three main factors were
killing the small farmers: increased
wages due to American labor laws;
mechanization in farms meant they no longer sold steers to Puerto Rico
for
plowing; and the availability and
popularity of canned milk. The family was forced to consider more drastic
measures. A hundred acres of land
were sold, for a mere $5,000. Kai had been delayed in moving to Florida
to work in horticulture there, but as Carl was feeling his age, Kai
finally cleared land belonging to his parents and began raising vegetables
for the local market. To make ends meet, most of the cattle were slowly
sold off. As she had done in earlier years, Marie again hand painted
cards, made doorstops, dolls and cushions and carved calabash into an
assortment of holders for extra cash. Carl became ill with cancer during
the second world war, and died on the 20th of May, 1945, at the age of 80.
Anna returned to the island shortly before his death. The family farm
was kept going, this time under Kai growing fruits and vegetables.
Kai was married in 1956 to Irene Magras, a
lady of horticultural interests from St. Barths and within months they
began a successful secondary career in hybrid hibiscus at Little La
Grange. Their work was more a labor of love than of profIt although many
superior crosses were bred at the farm. Their daughter Susie was the
second Lawaetz generation born at Little La Grange, in May of 1957. At
the end of 1964, Marie died at the age of 91 and was buried beside her
husband in the garden. In her will she left individual parcels of land to
each of her children, but the house was left in joint ownership. This
arrangement worked for a time as Kai and Irene took care of ailing Anna.
When supermarkets came to the islands in the 1960s, it meant some
drastic changes. Unable to compete in price, Kai switched to ornamentals,
then in 1972 added extensive gardens of herbs to satisfy the needs of the
down islanders who had moved to St.
Croix. By 1980s, Kai and his wife Irene wanted to slow down, the estate
was planted mainly in fruit trees. Then one large
.
hurricane in 1989 did what many smaller ones in the had not: devastated
the land and ripped the roof off Carl had put on himself in 1898.
 Irene
and Kai moved into the little cottage for the next years. Luckily
insurance covered the repairs to the farm house. However as Kai tried to
get his financial house in order, settling the family ownership status
with multiple heirs in the second generation was necessary. The Cousins
met over Christmas in 1989, and soon after Else and her son came in from
Denmark to confer with her siblings
over the division of property. After many discussions, the two sisters
settled for property, the three brothers took over the farm house. As
Irene and Kai determined to build their own house next to the mill, Anna
was installed in the farm house with Irene primary caretaker and the
others taking turns.
Else died in Denmark in July of
1993, followed by Anna that October. With an empty house and much
interest from Danish visitors in seeing it, the brothers Kai and Erik
voted to convert it into a memorial to their parents, in recognition of
one hundred years tenure on their land. In 1996, the Lawaetz family
signed a management agreement with the St. Croix Landmarks Society to
operate the house and surrounding land as a
farmstead museum. Visitors see the house just as it was under the fine
management of Carl and his son Kai, with the now antique furnishings
lovingly cared for first by Marie, then Irene. A wonderful legacy that
was begun with a dream. |
