Fred Cassidy

[Laurence Horn]

>If you'd like to see a photo of Fred Cassidy, go to the DARE web page
>(http://polyglot.lss.wisc.edu/dare/dare.html) and click on "Tribute to
>FGC" on the left.
>The following is from my obituary for Fred in the 2001 volume of
>/Dictionaries/:
>
>"On his mother's side, Fred descended from the Gomes-Casseres family in
>Kingston, a branch of the Portuguese Gomes family that had taken refuge
>from the Inquisition

Is there a <+ Jewish> feature implied here?  Just curious.

LH

>by dispersing to France, Holland, and, in the 17th
>century, to the New World. The marriage of Manuel Gomes and Isabel de
>Caceres yielded nine children, one of whom settled in Curacao. He in
>turn had ten sons who became widely known as 'the ten Gomes Casseres
>brothers,' whose business enterprises spread throughout the West Indies.
>One of those brothers, Fred's grandfather, settled in Jamaica."
>
>Fred moved from Jamaica to Akron, Ohio, when he was eleven, but he spent
>many months in Jamaica later when he was working on the /Jamaica Talk/
>(1961) and the /Dictionary of Jamaican English/ (1967, with Robert
>LePage). When he was in his eighties he took his son and family to
>Jamaica for a visit; while looking around in a fairly deserted cemetery,
>he was accosted by a young Black man who tried to rob him. Fred's
>facility with the Creole had never left him, and he chewed the fellow
>out, saying his mother would be ashamed of him. The man fled.
>
>Joan Hall
>
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>The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org