A Bermudian woman is looking for $10,000 to publish a book on how St David’s Islanders were stripped of their land.

Eugene “Jean” Foggo Simon said her family only received $422 after they were kicked out of their Cooper’s Island home — nowhere near the property’s true value.

They were relocated along with many others during the Second World War, to make way for the American baselands.

Ms Simon, who now lives in Ohio, is fundraising to make her great-grandmother’s story public.

Rosa Elizabeth “Dolly” Fox went before an arbitration board in 1941 in hopes that her family would receive fair payment for the property they once owned.

“My great-grandmother appeared before the arbitration board in hopes that her family’s claim would receive equitable consideration,” the 76-year-old said.

“She told them: ‘It does not seem fair to me, as they are putting me out of my home where I have lived for years’. She noted that her husband, Solomon, was disabled and unable to work and that it would be impossible to start a new life.

“I was born in 1938. I was a child when many St David’s Islanders were relocated so that the American base could be built.

“I remember living in a barracks at Cashew City, St George’s with other displaced families, while the authorities tried to find somewhere else for us to live.”

Her great-grandparents died a few years after they were moved.

“I want to highlight the successes of the St David’s people, and to see their story told in Bermuda schools,” Ms Simon said. She said that she first read her great-grandmother’s statement to the arbitration board in a 2008 book, Base Colonies in the Western Hemisphere 1940 to 1967.

Ms Simon believes her roots in St David’s extend back to the 1600s when captive Native Americans were first brought to Bermuda from the East Coast of the United States.

“My book will tell just a few chapters about the Native Americans in St David’s,” she said.

“However, I am concentrating more on my family’s actual lives on St David’s to give them honour.

“There are some who have been forgotten through the years, but did so much to build up Bermuda from its inception. We were people who kept to ourselves, and did not reveal much about our families. I just want a chance to get it published before it is too late.”

Ms Simon said she hasn’t yet chosen a title for her book.

“The best part of writing the book was releasing my inhibitions,” she said. “I have been wanting to tell the story since I was a young person.”

Ms Simon and her niece Raygina Fox, are trying to raise funds for the book. She plans to include many photos of her family and St David’s in it.

“The book has been written awhile, and then rewritten and re-edited,” she said. “I think it will be ready for publication in the summer.”

Donate to their cause here: www.gofundme.com/St-Davidsisland. Contact Ms Simon at foggo@oberlin.net