Joseph Rudolph Bernard Edwards was born into a world split by the lash and the lie of civility. Around 1869, he entered a world divided by chains and drew his first breath on a sugar plantation in Jamaica, a land scorched by sun and cruelty. His mother, Rizalda (he believed that was her name), an enslaved woman whose spine bent from labour but never broke in spirit, bore him under a tree. His father, Thomas Barnett Edwards, was a white man who owned both the plantation, and the bodies that toiled upon it. And though Joe bore the Edwards name, it did not shield him from the iron rule of the man who gave it. In fact, Joseph would carry his name like a scar. His birth, like so many of his time, was not marked in ledgers or baptistry books, but in the silent witness of trees.

Plantation life was harsh and intimate in its cruelty. Joe’s earliest memories were saturated with contradiction. The scent of molasses in the wind, the rhythmic hush of the crop swaying in the breeze, the sound of machetes slicing the cane, the shouts of overseers, and the cold presence of his father, a man who walked with a rattan cane in hand, ready to strike on a whim. Thomas Barnett Edwards was a tall, pale spectre with steel-coloured eyes and a cruel line to his mouth. When he walked the fields, the slaves straightened and held their breath. The cane he wielded wasn’t just a symbol, it was a weapon, often brought down with venom on anyone who drew his ire. There was no mercy in him, only order. Joe, as his mother affectionately called him, feared him deeply, even more so when he watched Thomas dote on his white children, kissing their foreheads and lifting them into his arms like precious heirlooms. They were the clean, happy, cherished half-siblings he never approached. Their mother, a pale woman, once glanced at Joseph and then rode away in a buggy, her face unreadable. The contrast burned deep. Joe was the shadow child. Present and seen, but ever acknowledged.

It was a life lived under the yoke and the whip, but not without the small, fierce acts of love that sustained survival; the low, defiant hymns sung by enslaved women in the darkness, and his mother’s stories whispered at night. Rizalda was his sanctuary. She gave him tales from her mother’s mouth, songs from the hills, and knowledge passed like contraband. She couldn’t teach him to read, but she taught him the seasons, the stars, the names of herbs that soothed wounds. Each year, at Christmas, she carved a small notch into the sacred tree, the place of his birth, marking his age and defying a system that sought to erase even the passage of time. That tree bore silent witness to her love, a living ledger of survival, a quiet rebellion against enforced ignorance.

At eleven or twelve, Joe made a choice that would sever him from all he knew. No one can say for certain what sparked it, whether it was the memory of his mother’s tears or a burning story told to him in hushed tones by older field hands. Perhaps it was the knowledge that the whip would one day come for him too, but under the cover of night, with nothing but a piece of stale bread cradled in his shirt, and Rizalda’s last blessing pressed into his cheek, he fled. He followed the road until it disappeared, then the coastline, until he found and stowed away on a merchant vessel, tucked like a secret among crates of sugar and salt cod bound for a land whose name he couldn’t pronounce—Singapore. He would never see Rizalda again.

The voyage was long and perilous. Days without food, sickness that clung to his ribs like a ghost, and the constant fear of discovery threatened to undo him. But Joseph, born into bondage, knew how to survive silence and pain. When the ship anchored in the sweltering port of Singapore, he slipped away under a moonlit sky and headed toward his future.

Singapore in the late 19th century was a mosaic of languages and commerce, a tidepool of merchants, coolies, colonial officers, and exiles. It was a city unlike any he imagined, bustling, strange, and full of languages he didn’t understand. But there was freedom in its chaos. He found work as a messenger, then a dockhand, then a porter, eventually gaining a place in the thriving trade networks of the island. His dark skin and foreign tongue set him apart, but Joseph presented himself with a dignity forged in suffering. He grew into a man with quiet intensity and broad shoulders. The boy from the plantation was gone, replaced by a survivor with a name that carried no privilege, but a spirit that refused to bow.

Joe met Louisa Gloria Gregory, a local woman of fierce warmth, quiet strength and grace. She was sharp-eyed and kind, the daughter of a local trader, and whom he called his compass. Together they built a family, bringing forth sons and daughters. Joseph’s home filled with laughter, something he had only known in hushed tones as a boy. Joseph told his children little of Jamaica, but sometimes, when his eldest son, Duncan, sat beside him under the mango tree, he’d tell stories about a magical place where trees bore fruit sweet enough to make a boy forget pain, if only for a moment. Sometimes, when the monsoon winds howled and lightning streaked the sky, Joe would sit alone under the tree in his yard, running his fingers along the bark, tracing invisible notches, remembering his mother’s sacred tree, scarred with love. The pain of separation never left him, but neither did the love that marked his earliest memories. In his children, he instilled the fire of independence, the value of learning, and the need to remember where they came from, even if the world tried to erase all of it.

Time moved on, and sorrow followed, as it does. Louisa died young, too young, and left a hollow in Joseph’s chest that even the laughter of his children couldn’t fill. But life continued. In 1928, Joseph remarried. Florence Lee was a young Peranakan woman, 20 odd years his junior, known for her elaborate kebayas and laughter like temple bells. She brought warmth back into Joseph’s twilight years. From this union came two more children, whose melodic laughter reminded Joe of the songs Rizalda once hummed.

Though his bones ached and hair greyed, Joe never stopped moving. He taught his children dignity, discipline, and to always remember their history, even if it came wrapped in sorrow. He spoke of Rizalda with reverence; how she carved her love into bark when the world gave them nothing else.

Joe died in 1944, under the same sky that once welcomed him as a fugitive, far from the land of his birth, but never far from the memory of his mother’s hands and the scars on the tree that told the story of his becoming. From the brutal fields of Jamaica to the multicultural pulse of Singapore, he carved a path with blood, fire, and love.

He was not born free, but he died a father, a builder, and a witness to a life unimagined by those who once sought to break him. Joseph Rudolph Bernard Edwards lived a life that defied his beginnings. From the crucible of slavery to the freedoms of a new land, his story is one of flight, resilience, and legacy, a bridge between worlds, built not with stone or mortar, but with memory, love, and unbreakable will. He was not bowed by the weight of history but lifted by the generations that followed him and I am proud to claim Joe as my great grandfather.