Published References to AMBARD
References to the surname AMBARD from various publications, both print and electronic.
From Sir Louis de Verteuil: his life and times. Trinidad 1800-1900, by Father Anthony de Verteuil C.S.Sp. Columbus Publishers, Inc, Port of Spain, Trinidad, 1973.
Chapter 6 – Anti-Colonialist, page 133. In a section discussing the drive for more self-rule and the conflicts between the British and Creole members of the Legislative Council in Trinidad in 1855 we find the following:
The Board had agreed to import five hundred Indian immigrants and the contract was entrusted to the firm of Ambard and Son which failed.
From Paria Publishing’s – The First Oil Well in the World
In a section about oil exploration in Trinidad circa 1865.
Walter Darwent was the next oil pioneer who came to our shores. He was an Englishman who had spent some years in Canada, where matters of the heart had taken him. After a stint in the Civil War in the USA as a captain of the Union army, he came to San Fernando, where he established the Paria Petroleum Company in 1865.This company included many influential men of the times: A. Ambard, J. Cumming, Leon Agostini, Charles Feez, A. Gray, P.C. O’Connor, G. Wuppermann and T.A. Finlayson.
From Memoirs of an Honourable Gentleman, by Dillon and Claudette Leotaud. The book is about Charles Leotaud, and is based on his handwritten memoirs.
In Part III, page 5:
In 1875, we left San Fernando, for I joined partnership in the business of A. Ambard & Son, in Port of Spain.”It continues:”We were four partners at A. Ambard & Son, Leon Agostini, J. Belle Smyth, A. Ambard, and myself. I continued to be with Ambard & Son until 1882. Whilst at Ambard & Son, I was dissatisfied with the conduct of one of my partners.
He never says which partner this was.
From an obituary entitled “THE LATE HON. CHARLES LEOTAUD”, published in The
Mirror, Monday, May 12th, 1913, Port of Spain, Trinidad, as reprinted in Memoirs of an Honourable Gentleman:
Mr. Leotaud came back to Port of Spain and joined the firm of A. A. Ambard and Son, at that time one of the most famous of the Trinidad commercial houses. In 1882, he retired from A. A. Ambard and Co. and having invested in some cocoa estates, started business entirely on his own account as a cocoa planter and shipper, at the same time securing the agency of the French Line of steamers etc., a position he has ever since retained.
In the section of the obituary that details the important people who attended, we find A.P.T. Ambard and W. Ambard.
From Extract from Trinidad Royal Gazette JANUARY 30th , 1884
NOTICE
TRINIDAD, JANUARY, 1884.Notice is hereby given that Mr. CHAS. LEOTAUD has retired, as from the 31st day of December now last past, from the businesses carried on in the town of Port-of-Spain under the firm of A. AMBARD & SON , and also under the firm of JOAQUIN COLOMER ; in the town of San Fernando, under the firm of LEON AGOSTINI AND COMPANY, and in the town of Arima under AMBARD AND COMPANY.
C. LEOTAUD
LEON AGOSTINI
J. BELL-SMYTH
LUCIEN F. AMBARD
Witnesses:
Francis Bath,
H. M. Iles.
The said businesses will be continued by the undersigned under the same firms of A. AMBARD & SON, JOAQUIN COLOMER, LEON AGOSTINI & Co., and AMBARD and COMPANY.
LEON AGOSTINI
J. BELL-SMYTH
LUCIEN F. AMBARD
Witnesses;
Francis Bath
H. M. Iles.
From The Making of Port of Spain, volume one, by Michael Anthony. National Cultural Council of Trinidad and Tobago, 1978.
Chapter 11 – “Street Names Changed to Mark New Era”, page 72. The year is 1902.
So far as commerce was concerned, these were the great cocoa days, too, and cocoa merchants were in formidable array on South Quay. Names like Agostini, Ambard, Bosseire, Centeno, Daniel, Gordon Grant, etc. – preovided a veritable roll-call of cocoa greats.
Chapter 13 – “Age of Reconciliation and Development”, Page 87. In a section detailing the houses found on the Serpentine Road south of Queens Royal College ca 1904:
Then came the home of Dr. Enrique Prada, businessman and Borough Councillor. After that came the residence of L.F. Ambard, a cocoa merchant, followed by the residence of the Catholic Archbishop of Port of Spain, Vincent Flood.
Chapter 31 – “Gradually a New Port of Spain Emerges”. Page 191. In a section about about the City Council election of November 1936. “She” refers to a woman named Audrey Jeffers:
People smiled at the daring of this social worker, but on Election Day she defeated the Editor of the Port of Spain Gazette, A.P.T. Ambard, to make history in Port of Spain. She was the first woman ever to serve as a City Councillor.
From Voices in the Street, by Olga J. Mavrogordata. Inprint Caribbean Ltd, Port of Spain, Trinidad, 1977.
Page 107, in the chapter called “Coblentz House 1877”:
The property actually belonged to Mrs. Bell-Smythe who was the sister of Mrs. Leon Agostini, both ladies being daughters of Andre Ambard.
Pages 133 – 134, “Ambard’s House – ‘Roomor’, 25 Maraval Road, 1904”
This house was built by Lucien F. Ambard in 1904 as a family home. It was designed by a French architect, and the rafters came from an estate in Erin owned by the Ambard family. The marble was imported from Italy and the tiles from France. This house is characteristic of liberated building in the French Baroque colonial style. The Renaissance iron work is very beautiful, particularly its elongated columns, all of which were made by the English firm, Braithwaites, and an illustration of it appeared in their sales brochure for many years. John Newel Lewis says: “The crowning glory of this great house is in its roof, whose towers, pinnacles, dormers and coupolas of unusual proportions, together with its roof galleries, form a sky-line unmatched in these parts” he considers it as a ‘queen of architecture.’
In 1918-19, L.F. Ambard lost his home on a mortgage to Gordon Grant & Company, and it was at this time that Pointz Mackenzie bought it from Gordon Grant & Co., where he lived with his family. In 1923, when P. Mackenzie went into bankruptcy, the house went back to Gordon Grant as one of the assets which he had pledged. In 1925 William Pettigrew Humphrey, an American businessman, rented the house from Gordon Grant & Company for $70 per month, and he lived there with his family until 1940. In 1940 the house was bought by Timothy Roodal of Fyzabad for $24,000 and it is still in the possession of his heirs. It is now occupied by his grand-daughter, Dr. Yvonne Morgan, by whom it has been named Roomor.
A picture of the house can be found here:
Andre Paul Terence Ambard was the publisher of the Port of Spain Gazette which was published from 1825-1956. Archives of the Port of Spain Gazette can be found at The British Library, The Public Record Office (PRO) in London, Tulane University in New Orleans, the University of Chicago, and the University of Florida. Seems like he was quite vocal in his beliefs.
Trinidad Express Newspaper, March 8, 1998. “On UWI’s 50th anniversary Carlisle Chang shares his vision”
In a section about an artist’s movement in Trinidad:
They were known as the Society of Trinidad Independents, although they were not a formal group, but were linked by their enthusiasm for modern French art. “We were all crazy about Gauguin-about anything new from France: Matisse, Braque, Picasso.
Another central figure in the group was Hugh Stollmeyer, whose family owned estates in the Santa Cruz valley and who grew up there among sugarcane, coffee and cocoa. As a result, said Chang, Stollmeyer was “a very special painter; he had a marvellous sense of the environment”. Stollmeyer was a surrealist painter who was also influenced by the art nouveau and art deco movements, and had had, said Chang, a curious upbringing: “He was supposed
to be a Shango Baptist.”
Stollmeyer’s eccentricity cost him dear. The Independents were in any case the targets of vilification, especially in the pages of the Port of Spain Gazette, whose owner, APT Ambard, considered himself a protector of the Catholic Church, said Chang. When the Independents posed nude for each other the paper denounced this as “licentious and lewd”.Stollmeyer’s family made him leave Trinidad, and for most of his life he worked in a wallpaper factory in New York, designing wallpaper and fabrics.
Ambard’s ourspoken manner once got him into hot water. The end result was a famous Privy Council decision. From http://www.mfg-law.com/sept2000_c.htm
In Ambard v. The Attorney-General of Trinidad and Tobago, the Privy Council dealt with the issue of contempt of court outside the court room and specifically with a publication that seemingly “scandalised or lowered the authority of the court”. In Ambard, a newspaper published an article commenting on the inequality of criminal sentences. The author expressly disclaimed the suggestion that a particular judge was habitually severe, and another habitually lenient. The editor of the newspaper was convicted of contempt of court and ordered to pay a fine. He appealed to the Privy Council and his conviction was set aside.
It continues:
In other words, while the public is entitled to criticize the judiciary, such criticism must be fair, reasonable and not based on “untruth” or “malice”, and should not “lower or scandalize” the authority of the judiciary. Lord Atkin in Ambard, said that, “provided that members of the public abstain from imputing improper motives to those taking part in the administration of justice, and are genuinely exercising a right of criticism
and not acting in malice or attempting to impair the administration of justice, they are immune.
From The Book of Trinidad. Page 324, in a section called “List of Trinidad Cocoa Estates are from Franklyn’s Year Book 1916”
CEDROS WARD UNION
Estate Owner
Annandale L.F. Ambard
Buenos Ayres L.F. Ambard
St. Michael L.F. Ambard