James Sullivan Martinez

James Sullivan Martinez was born in British Honduras, on 28 August 1879 according to a 1928 notice, around 1860 according to a 1986 anthology. The son of a mahogany cutter, he followed his father into the logging camps, learned woodworking and became a cabinetmaker; the woodwork of St John's Cathedral in Belize City is credited to him. Self-taught, he served during the First World War in the colony's territorial force and then began to write songs. A recent study calls him Garifuna, from the Toledo district.

In the catalogue 1

• PoetryCaribbean Jingles: Dialect and Other Poems of British HondurasJames Sullivan Martinez · 1920Literature