Today the Department of Culture presents a profile on Mr Edgar Challenger and the Challenger lineage. The Challenger lineage goes back to the days of slavery and is rooted in the soil of St. Kitts and Nevis.
Clement Challenger of Nevis was a free coloured who was employed to fatten slaves for the market. After the African Slave Trade was abolished in 1808, the plantations had to rely on locally produced slaves for labour. In many of the Caribbean Islands, an entrepreneurship developed in the local culture of human beings who were bred, fed and matured for the auction block.
Clement Challenger did well at this enterprise for he was able to acquire eleven acres of land in Nevis and set up himself as a merchant. However, when a growing conflict with his brothers threatened to put him out of business, he sold his land and came to St. Kitts to make a fresh start. He went to Old Road where he established a. grocery and met Hester Osborne who became his housekeeper.
Hester was the daughter of Lucretia, a very pretty black woman who was the house-slave of Mrs Osborne. Mrs Osborne's brother, a lawyer was Nester's father.
Hester Osborne bore four children for Clement Challenger who bequeathed his property to the children. One of these children, John Challenger, continued in his father's business and by 1836 has accumulated enough money to buy 79 acres of land at the Hole.
John Challenger's son, John Oscar, inherited this land from his father and moved to Basseterre where he acquired property on Central Central Street as well as on the corner of Princess and Church Streets. He called his business place "International House" and traded in household hardware and builders tools.
He married Antiguan Louisa Wynter, a close relative of Mr Thomas Manchester. Together they had six sons of whom Percy was the oldest and Edgar the youngest. John Oscar Challenger died in 1916 and, having bequeathed his land and business to his sons, left the eleven year old Edgar in the care of his widow. "A so ee go." | 
Culture 
