In 1865 Moses Samuel Rayner (1831-1895), a stonemason, became a co-owner along with his father George and brother Thomas Lusher Rayner of the Whale House on the South Shore. Shortly afterwards he purchased from Joseph Francis Darrell a small house on land bounded by the waters of Riddell’s Bay, now the area of Raynor’s gas station. He also bought property across the road from Robert Davenport’s estate. In 1870 he would begin 20 years of service as a juror at the General Assize Court.
Rayner was active in the Union Sports’ horse, donkey and foot races along with ‘other amusing feats’ that took place at a field near Warwick Camp. Among the other judges and committee members were Whale Bay area residents William Vickers and John Newbold Bascome Sr.
In November 1889 Rayner brought a court action against Mary Matilda Dickinson to recover damages for breach of contract and the wrongful conversion of property in her possession. In June 1885 he had entered into a written agreement with Dickinson to cut stone in the quarry on her land and pay her the usual ‘toll’ of ten percent in cash. He had cut three lots of stone between 1885 and the end of 1887 regularly paying the toll. He had a quantity of cut stone in the quarry along with some tools when, in July 1888, he received a written notice from Dickinson notifying him that she had sold the property to Thomas Pewtherer. When he went to claim his stone he learned that it had been removed by the new owner with the consent of Dickinson.
Through his attorney, Ormond Middleton, Rayner demanded the return of the cut stone and his tools which had also gone missing. The case went to trial with Dickinson claiming she told Pewtherer that she couldn’t tell him to whom the stone and tools in the quarry belonged. In the end it came down to a case of his word against hers; and the jury found for Dickinson, a co-heiress of the estates of her father Richard Dickinson and grandfather William Newbold Sr.
Thomas Pewtherer did not own the five-acre quarry property for very long. In 1901 he defaulted on his mortgage and it was sold to Robert Bishop Munro and then Bernard William Matthews. It was eventually purchased by John Ernest Peniston Vesey and adjacent land was acquired.
In 2008 the nearly eight acres stretching from Middle Road to the waters of Little Sound became the Vesey Nature Reserve when it was generously donated by Sharon Vesey to the Bermuda National Trust and the Bermuda Audubon Society jointly. Toward the south end of the property can be found the remains of Moses Samuel Rayner’s quarry.
Bermuda Architectural Heritage Series: Southampton published in Bermuda in 2022 available from the Bermuda National Trust www.bnt.bm
