Miss Catherine Barker’s was the second. Her spouse was John Nicks, one of the servants of the Company. He possessed a good house in the fort, and, according to the custom permitted by the Company, traded in country goods, inland, as well as by sea–firewood, straw, oil, grain, salt, curry-stuffs, country fruit, and vegetables. For bona-fide country products there was no need to have a free-trade licence, which was only granted to those who were not employed in the service.
A great friendship existed between the Yale and the Nicks families. Children were born of both unions, and the parents stood sponsors for each other’s babies at the font. There were other circumstances which possibly served to rivet the bands. In each case only one son was born to live and rejoice the hearts of their parents, and very dear did those little boys become.
Mistress Kitty Nicks was the first to meet sorrow. Her son was taken from her at the age of three years. It is not difficult to imagine how that passionate nature grieved. She was a woman of unusual spirit, subsequently known to every servant in the Company’s service on the Coromandel Coast. The loss of her son and heir must have wrung her heart with anguish, and though she had many daughters, the vacant place was not filled till many years afterwards, when a Benjamin was born to her whom she named Elihu.
Barely a year after the death of little John Nicks, Elihu and Catherine Yale were called upon to part with their son. He died at about the same age, and was buried in the old cemetery where the present Law Courts stand. It was sometimes called the Guava Garden. The Dutch used to plant guava trees in their cemeteries, and their example was followed by the English. The old vestry records speak occasionally of the cemetery as the Guava Garden. Here, under the pink blossoms of the guava
