Fred Cassidy

[Joan H. Hall]

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 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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