This story dates back to the 1900s, where a young woman becomes the victim of circumstance in this tragic romance.
The lore says, in 1909 the daughter of a Spanish overseer on the Forres Park Sugar Estate, named Maria, fell in love with an Indian labourer who worked there. Maria’s parents, especially her father, did little to hide their disdain toward her relationship. One night, the overseer saw his daughter and her lover in what is described as a “compromising affair”, and became furious. So he waited, and when the young man left his daughter’s company, he made it clear to her that she wasn’t to see him again. But, Maria was in love, and had no intention of ending her relationship with the young man, and retorted that she’d rather die.
When his daughter refused to comply, he took an alternative approach calling upon his most loyal workers to execute the labourer. As the overseer of the estate, it was not difficult for him to persuade them to get the job done. However, word got back to Maria of her father’s plan, and was advised to warn her lover of his inevitable fate if he didn’t leave. Angry and terrified she left her home on a mission, determined to save her love. Unfortunately, Maria never makes it, on her way to him she is bitten by a snake but still she continued on, weakened by the venom, she falls to her death from the hill. Whether, the labourer is murdered by her father’s men, or they find Maria’s body before they could, is not known.
Grief stricken by the loss of his daughter, her father constructs a statue of the Virgin Mary in her memory, on the estate’s tallest hill where he pleaded for her forgiveness. Over the last century, since her death, people claimed to have seen Maria’s ghost trying to cross the Solomon Hochoy highway, where the statue still stands today, although decapitated.
