BEFORE READING "THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALFRED H. MENDES 1897-1991" WE ALREADY HAD THIS:
Joaquim Mendes
& -
| Antonio Mendes
| & -
| | Edward Oswald Mendes
| | b. 27 Aug 1887, Port of Spain, Trinidad
| | d. 17 Nov 1975, Port of Spain, Trinidad
| | & Amalia Elizabeth Sheppard
| | b. 14 May 1887, St. Joseph, Trinidad
| | d. 4 Apr 1975, Port of Spain, Trinidad
| | m. 18 Jan 1913, Port of Spain, Trinidad
| Virginia Mendes
| & Manuel de Silva
| Francis Mendes
| & Rose d'Andrade
| | Louisa Mendes
| | & Raymond Vierra
| | Albert Mendes
| | & MaryKin Pereira
| | Rose Mendes
| | & Manuel Gomez
| | Isabella Mendes
| | Alfred Mendes*
| | & Belle Jardine
| | Alfred Mendes*
| | & Leonora Franco
| | Alfred Mendes*
| | & Emmeline -
| | Alfred Mendes*
| | & Ida -
| | Frank Mendes

"THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALFRED H. MENDES 1897-1991”:
"My mother's people moved to Grenada, a smaller island distant two or three days' sail to the north. My father's folk remained in Trinidad. Francisco, my grandfather, was now a grown man and in 1868 had mariied the daughter of a family called d'Andrade. I never knew her for she had died before I was born . . . .

. . . . Her photograph, taken after she had her six children, three boys and three girls . . . .

. . . . His (grandfather) store - he called himself a provision merchant - faced the Almond Walk, a green verge which, in turn, extended down the middle of the short, broad street (it is now called Broadway) to within a few hundred feet of the sea front . . . .

. . . . The eldest of her three sons, Albert (Portuguese first names were already being changed for their English equivalents), was snatched from school at the early age of sixteen. The very next morning she went to the store, sacked the clerk and took charge of the business with her son, leaving her eldest daughter to perform the domestic duties . . . .

. . . . My grandfather died around 1912 at the age of sixty-four, too young altogether for the longevity genes that he must have donated to his children . . . .

. . . . My grandfather had two brothers, Antonio and João, both older than he . . . .

. . . . My earliest memories are of my mother, whose baptismal name was Isabella . . . .

. . . . Very early in his business career, around 1895, my father, whose name was Alfred and who was then twenty-one years old, sailed to Grenada to join a relative of his in a provisions business in St George's, the capital. While there, he visited the Jardim family who had anglicized their name to Jardine . . . .

. . . . And then my father met my mother at the Jardines' home one evening and the whirlwind impetuosity of his infatuation-at-sigth swept all obstacles aside. In less than a year he had taken her out of the convent and back to Trinidad as his bride, joining his brother, Albert, in the Almond Walk store . . . .

. . . . By 1906 all of us five children, one girl, the other boys, had been born . . . .

. . . . A few months before my mother died - she was already bed-ridden - my father entered into a flirtation with an attractive Portuguese woman, a member of the choir in his church, who had recently been widowed and left with a young son. My father married the widow fifteen months after my mother's death . . . .

. . . . Throughout his long life (he died of oild age at ninety-six) . . . .

. . . . He was back in Grenada with us all on what had become a regular annual holiday. My mother's health was slowly deteriorating and the doctors considered these holidays good for her complaint. We were again with my father's cousin John Franco, and his, by this time, even larger family - another girl baby. His wife, whom we called cousin Clementine, had migrated to Grenada, above all places, from Malta, also above all places.

DAILYMAIL.CO.UK/NEWS/ARTICLE:
BY CLAUDIA JOSEPH AND SASKIA HUME FOR THE MAIL ON SUNDAY
PUBLISHED: 23:21 GMT, 7 DECEMBER 2019 | UPDATED: 16:12 GMT, 8 DECEMBER 2019.
THE WWI HERO WHO WAS AS BRAVE ON THE BATTLEFIELD AS HE WAS BOLD IN THE BEDROOM! RACY MEMOIRS REVEAL TRUE STORY AND VERY COLOURFUL LOVELIFE OF SAM MENDES’S GRANDFATHER, THE INSPIRATION FOR HOT NEW MOVIE EPIC 1917.
Directed by Sam Mendes and shot in what appears to be one remarkable single take, 1917 tells the story of two young lance corporals given the perilous task of crossing no man's land to deliver a vital message with the lives of 1,600 men in the balance.
For the script was inspired by Sam Mendes's late grandfather, Alfred Mendes, who was awarded the Military Medal for his bravery and to whom the film is dedicated.
Alfred Hubert Mendes was born on the Caribbean island of Trinidad in 1897.

. . . . After the war, he returned to Trinidad, where he met his first wife Jessie Ferreira, 'a gorgeous girl in the Latin mould: dark eyes and hair and a sad, tender smile'.
The couple married in 1919, but their union was cut tragically short. 'Jessie was a delightfully gay person to live with,' he wrote. 'Our son was born a year after our marriage. Four months later, she was again pregnant, and in her sixth month of pregnancy, she went down with double pneumonia.
'The doctors obviously did not know how to treat this affliction: they ordered the cold treatment one day, and the next day the hot. One week later, she was dead. I was then 23 years old with a baby son.'

Within years, Mendes married his second wife, Nita Gouveia, but later admitted he had been looking for a surrogate mother for his son.

'Our marriage was doomed before it had begun,' he wrote, referring to the clashes caused by her devout Roman Catholicism. 'Moreover, I soon discovered that my new wife was barren and cold. Sex, as her church had taught her, was synonym for sin.'

By 1928, the marriage had disintegrated. It was only in 1935, when he met his third wife Ellen – mother of Sam's father Peter and uncle Stephen – that he finally felt fulfilled.

Remarkably, Alfred had first met Ellen when he was a 23-year-old war veteran and she was a seven-year-old circus performer for the Olympic Troupe.

The couple were reunited at a party in New York in 1935. 'We met each other 16 years ago when you were seven and I 23,' he told her.
'I bought a picture of yourself from you. I was a member of your audience in the Olympic Theatre in Trinidad.'
'She considered this for a while and, with a smile, said: 'It looks as if we are intended for each other.' '
The couple married three years later and their son Peter, Sam's father, was born the following year. Another son Stephen followed three years later.

PHOTO:
Alfred Mendes is pictured with third wife Ellen Perachini, right, and friend in 1936. Mr Mendes went on to write his own life story in a compelling memoir published 11 years after his death.

WIKIPEDIA:
He began writing his autobiography in 1975 and his unfinished drafts were edited by Michèle Levy and published in 2002 by the University of the West Indies Press as The Autobiography of Alfred H. Mendes 1897–1991.
Mendes and his wife Ellen both died in 1991 in Barbados and are buried together there in Christ Church Cemetery.