"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 . . . .

"THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALFRED H. MENDES 1897-1991":
. . . . My earliest memories are of my mother, whose baptismal name was Isabella . . . .

. . . . 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 . . . .

. . . . 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 . . . .

. . . . He (father) 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 . . . .