A remarkably happy ‘connect’ took place in Edinburgh, Scotland recently when Beldwin Smith, a prominent leader in the Masonic craft both in Bermuda and internationally, met for the first time a cousin he never knew existed. He was Wor. Bro. John Hardie, the Master of St. Clair Edinburgh Lodge 349, Scotland.Beldwin, a retired superintendent in Government’s Public Works Department, among other things is a marathon star in Bermuda Track and Field Association.Masonicly, he holds the lofty title of Most Excellent Grand Superintendent of Hamilton Royal Arch Chapter No. 745. For the past ten years he has headed a delegation of Bermudian brethren and wives to Edinburgh for the Supreme Grand R.A. Chapter’s annual convocation and installation of officers, and to indulge in the fabulous banquet and other social and cultural events.On this trip, Beldwin was accompanied by his wife Velda and fellow R.A. First Principal Alan Lugo. And he chose to invite to the banquet his cousin Rosemary Steed, who was born and raised in Leith, Scotland. Her great grandfather was a black Bermudian seafarer, Charles William Dowding Steed, who settled in Leith, and was twice married.Steed was tragically killed while working in a Leith dockyard, leaving a host of Scottish descendants unaware of their many cousins in Bermuda, two of whom are Mr Smith and St. Clair (Brinky) Tucker. Rosemary, having visited Bermuda as a guest of Brinky and his wife, and being fully aware of her Bermudian roots, had her second cousin John Hardie accompany her to the banquet.Now, here’s where the rationale begins for my having to dig into my archives for background to the newest chapter on this fascinating Bermudian-Scottish connection. John Hardie (pictured above top right) is due in Bermuda next Wednesday. He is a brother of Janet Steed, whose remarkable story about the discovery of her Bermudian roots was captured in the reprint of the feature first appearing in the November 10, 2006 Island Notebook issue of the Mid-Ocean News. It was headlined “Hold your horses! Another Steed rides into town to check on her roots”.FIRST it was Rosemary Steed, now it is Janet Steed, another lovely lady from Leith, Scotland, landing in Bermuda totally unaware until recently that she was the offspring of a black Bermudian, Charles William Dowding Steed.Janet, the 48-year-old married mother of three sons, was totally unaware of her cousin Rosemary, who is also 48, until we showed her a copy of the feature we did in the Mid-Ocean News just over a month ago.It was written when Rosemary was the houseguest of her cousins, St. Clair (Brinky) Tucker and his wife Lynn of St. David’s.Janet was absolutely exhilarated on learning that her great-grandfather was a Bermudian.“I feel so proud being a Bermudian. I am so happy, it is like a ton of bricks has been removed from my shoulders,” she said.The discovery of her roots earlier this year was totally accidental. It was somewhat different than the case of her cousin Rosemary. And further, since arriving here Thursday of last week for an overnight stay aboard the cruise liner Empress of the Seas, she was even more excited learning her ancestor was an honourable man from a distinguished Christian Bermudian family.Janet explained how it all happened.Her son was given an assignment at school relating to the Second World War. As Janet’s grandfather was a brave soldier, who had lost a leg in World War Two, she suggested he should patch his name into the internet and do a search.When he initiated the search, up popped a whole ream of information about Albert and, most significantly, about the woman he married. It showed her family tree; that she was a descendant of Charles William Dowding Steed, born in Hamilton Parish, Bermuda in 1852.When she found out the root of the family tree was Bermuda: “I wanted to find out if there were relatives that might possibly still be alive.”From as early as she could remember as a child, Janet had been groping for answers as to why the skin texture of her family was darker than the other white people in her neighbourhood.When she was old enough to question her mother, she only got vague answers.“My mother was a twin. Her twin brother was almost 18 when he died. He was white, my mother dark, a bit darker than me. If you talk in terms of black and white, she was black and he was white. Noticeably darker than I am. He had no colour whatsoever.“I imagine he took after his grandfather, who was of Polish descent and my mother after her mother. My three sons aren’t dark.”She went on: “I had never asked for this information on the Steeds. I was floored. I called my mother asking if she knew some of the persons listed. “Yes, so and so was your aunt,” and on down the line. I was really excited, and my brothers were quite pleased as well. My brothers are dark-skinned.”This writer deduced upon questioning Janet that the kinfolk she was terming “black” were in actual fact light-skinned, or what we in Bermuda sometimes called “high yella” or “yellow”.In any case, when the internet solved for Janet the deep mystery about who her ancestors were, she developed an obsession for Bermuda. She and her husband Scott Alexander booked a cruise to the Caribbean, which started in Boston and included Bermuda as the first port of call.When the Empress of the Seas berthed at Dockyard, she said feelings she could not easily explain overcame her. She and her husband set out straight away aboard the fast ferry to Hamilton, intending to go to the Archives.“Walking down the streets of Hamilton, a feeling of curiosity came over me. I was looking at everybody wondering if they were my relatives. Some of the faces looked familiar. Their eyes looked so much like my aunty’s and my granny’s.“I began to get concerned, suspecting everybody must was thinking I was crazy, the way I was staring at them; and I started feeling I might not even find anything helpful in the Archives. I felt disappointed before going to the Archives that I was not going to get anywhere.”At the Archives, a lady gave her the name of Gene Steede.“But I had some doubts when I noticed the ‘e’ at the end of his name. Then she gave me your name, Ira Philip,” Janet told me. She went to a public phone and called. We chatted briefly and Janet insisted she would take a taxi to my home in Somerset.Sitting in my living room with her husband, an emotionally-charged Janet unburdened herself. She unravelled the painful story of her life and the racial prejudice and discrimination she encountered as a young girl at school, and later as an adult, being as she put it, the only black person around, with eyes that were distinctly different, greenish.Janet was born in Leith in 1957, was raised there until age nine, when the family moved to another area and resided with an aunt. The ladies in the family never talked about their lineage.“When I was taunted at school and went home to my mother, she comforted me, but for some reason never told me about her background. She could have saved me a lot of anguish, if only she told me about my background. My mother is lovely. She has been a good mummy.“I just wanted to know where my ancestors came from. My mother gave me a rough idea, only that I came from people of a different country.“She was vague about where and what country that was. You ask me why my mother was so vague. I think she was embarrassed because of her colour and my colour.“She never sat me down and told me where my ancestors came from. If she had, she would have saved me a lot of heartache. It makes me so proud and happy now that I know where I come from.“Nothing hurts me any more. When you are ignorant you can’t defend yourself and say, ‘Look, my family come from Bermuda’. I used to be quite angry with my mother. I don’t know how she felt, but I know how I feel.”“How did they treat you growing up in school?” I asked.“Horrible, horrible They made jokes about me because there were not many coloured people around. I was the nearest thing to a coloured person. They called me half-cast, darkie, horrible things, nigger. I used to go home crying. My mother would say, ‘Oh, don’t worry about it.’“Now, I tell my sons, they are honoured to be descendants of people who were hard-working; and make them feel proud. It hurt me for years and years and years.“I had a terrible chip on my shoulders because people would say, ‘Who are you? or ‘What are you?’ making me feel like I was nothing. Now that I have found this (the family tree from the internet) I now tell people before they ask, I come from Bermudians.“I have travelled abroad quite a lot, and whatever country I visited I would be questioned about my heritage. For instance, I went to Malta. At the customs, they asked, ‘Are you going home.’ I said, ‘No, I am going on holiday’ and they all laughed, thinking I was Maltese.“I have been asked if I was Spanish, Greek, everything except if I was from a Scandinavian country. I was just foreign, Italian, a Pakistani, Indian, whatever. Before I knew about Bermuda I was ashamed. I knew my great-great granny was black. I have spent my life explaining myself. I don’t do that any more.“I tell them I am from Bermudian people. My existence was not quite right until I discovered that fact. I feel good. If only my mother had explained more to me.“Some people would comment, ‘You are half-caste; your skin is lovely’. I was embarrassed as a child. They used to make jokes about me, like, ‘What would happen if Janet fell off a cliff? You’d get a chocolate drop.’“That hurt to the bone. I had to try to be tough, but I never was tough. I cried.”After unburdening herself, Janet joked, saying: “Imagine me in Bermuda! All those years I spent in cold (blankedy, blank, my words) Scotland. I should have been here, under a palm tree.“I feel so proud, like I belong. I would like to come back and meet my cousins. Now I feel I belong. I feel better.”The next thing I did was to telephone Brinky Tucker, who had no hesitation in inviting us to his home in St. David’s for dinner. Because of time constraints, the Tuckers were the only two of the dozens of cousins Janet has in Bermuda she got chance to meet.Mr. Tucker tried unsuccessfully to telephone Rosemary Steed at her home in Scotland to connect her with Janet.The next day when contact was finally made with Rosemary, Janet and her husband were well on their way for the balance of their two-week cruise to the Caribbean.Rosemary’s father was Charles William Steed, a decorated World War Two veteran who served in the Royal Artillery as a bombardier, in France, Belgium, Greece, and after the war in Palestine. Shortly before his death in 1996, Charles William entrusted to Rosemary’s care certain documents. He made special reference to the log of his grandfather, Charles William Dowding Steed (CDWS), who was a seafarer.Her father’s concern that she take particular care of his grandfather’s log intensified her interest in it. It was an official leather-bound document from the Merchant Marine Office in the United Kingdom, containing page after page of his Certificates of Discharges, each listing his character of conduct as good; and character of ability as very good in whatever he was engaged.Rosemary, upon thumbing through its pages, discovered her great-grandfather was born in Hamilton Parish, Bermuda on September 28, 1852, and was baptised in the parish church there.Also that he arrived in Leith, Scotland in August 1878 aboard the 80-tonne vessel Ann. There was no reference from whence the ship came, but he signed off as a cook-steward.Somewhere along the line he met a Scottish lass, Isabella Cunningham. Three years later, in 1881, they were married at a Wesleyan Methodist Church in Leith.The log reveals that during the next several years CWDS’s voyages took him to Cork, China, Bombay, Iceland and Quebec, among other places. His last journey from Leith was in December 1894, when he signed off in Grangemouth, Scotland. By then he had graduated to classification as an able-bodied seaman.Charles William Dowding Steed secured a job in the Leith Dockyard. Tragically, while working as a journeyman shipwright, he fell into a dry dock sustaining injuries that put him in a coma for several days when he died at age 47 in August 1897. He was survived by his wife Isabella, who had borne him ten children, the last being a set of twin girls.One of CWDS’s sons was William Thomas Steed. He became Rosemary’s grandfather. William Thomas was a professional soldier, serving from 1905 to 1911 in the Royal Artillery. Upon the outbreak of the First World War,, William Thomas, along with other reserves, was called up for active duty.His unit was involved in one of the first major battles of the war, the Battle of Mons.As luck would have it, William Thomas was captured in August 1914. He was held as a prisoner of war by the Germans for the duration of the war. Three times he was recaptured while attempting to escape; the last time at serious threat to his life.After World War One, lady luck was more blessed to William Thomas. He lived until 1976, dying at age 85.As we stated earlier, William Thomas was one of Bermudian Charles William Dowding Steed’s ten children, and was Rosemary’s grandfather.Rosemary, being engaged in the IT field, followed her first impulse, which was to get on the internet and do a search. She hit on the web page of no less a resourceful person than Jean Simons, a Bermudian who hails from Devonshire.For several years Jean has held the prestigious position of City Clerk of Oberlin, Ohio. Jean, at the time, was heavily involved with her cousin Brinky Tucker, Edward Welch and others in regard to the historic reconnect of the Pequot Indian Tribe and Tall Oak with the St. David’s Islanders.Jean connected Rosemary to Brinkey. In 2002 Rosemary made a lightning trip to Bermuda with her companion of many years, Richard Morgan. He is a mechanical engineer and has become heavily engrossed in her roots efforts.A meeting with National Archivist Carla Hayward resulted in her acquiring a copy of Dr. Archie Hallett’s resource book on Births and Deaths in Bermuda. They also were introduced to Danny Richardson, president of Leopards Club International, who took them to the Methodist Church in Harris Bay and to Holy Trinity Church, Bailey’s Bay. At Trinity the Rector showed her the ancient font at which CWDS was baptised.Through the medium of census records in Leith, and Dr. Hallett’s book, Rosemary has meticulously compiled a 21-page family tree of her ancestors in Bermuda and Scotland.It shows her great grandfather, CWDS, was one of the ten children of Benjamin Steed’s two marriages. Benjamin was born in 1826. One of his daughters was Almanza Medora Steed. She was born in 1858. Her first husband was a Benjamin, and her second was Somers James Tuzo.A year ago Brinky Tucker and his wife travelled to Dublin, in connection with his role as Provincial Grand Master of Irish Freemason Lodges in Bermuda. The Tuckers made a side trip to Scotland to be Rosemary’s guests. It was then plans were made for her current visit to Bermuda.Rosemary said she had no inkling her ancestor was a black man. She recalled, as a youngster, shrugging off the fact that sometimes people used to take second looks at her and two brothers.One had curly hair. He became a policeman in London where he died a few years later. The other had straight hair. Also, her father had what she called ‘nice skin’ and so did an aunt.She was a platinum blonde with good skin texture. Her father always commented on the fact that he had 33 first cousins in Scotland.Rosemary was royally entertained by her Bermudian cousins, particularly Gene Steede, the entertainer and musician who has been dubbed Bermuda’s national treasure, the Tuzos and Cindy Steed Williams of Somerset.