Bueno Intento. I guess it means the place to do good deeds. The Spaniards was thinking about some place, thing or event in Spain. But nothing can beat the town of Hardbargain. How they come up with a name like that.
Re:
HardbargainThe Moruga Road passes through a series of villages known as Third, Fifth and Sixth Company. These names are the result of the settlement in Trinidad in 1815 and 1816 of six companies of negro soldiers who had fought alongside the British in the American war of 1812. These men had been slaves on American plantations and the British had offered them freedom if they would defect and fight for the British. At the end of the war the British brought them to Trinidad. In 1815, 50 men were brought to Trinidad, then in 1816, 34 men, 15 women and 7 children were brought.
The soldiers were each given 16 acres of virgin land for married men and 8 acres for single men. They were settled together in the companies under which they had fought in the war, hence the names of the villages and their being called The Company Villages. This area was chosen because it was remote country and far from the plantations. The planters did not want these men with a military past to be near their slaves for fear that they might lead the slaves in revolt.
The other soldiers from the companies were settled in other parts of Trinidad: the First Company was settled in Hindustan; part of the Third Company was settled in North Manzanilla. The Fourth Company was settled near to Hindustan in an area that came to be called HardBargain. The soldiers protested about the poor soil conditions in the area and said that they had been given a "hard bargain". After the protestations about the land condition part of the company was moved to an area that was called New Grant because these soldiers had been given a new grant of land.
According to Besson and Brereton in the Book of Trinidad, part of the Second Company was shipwrecked off the coast of Tobago and swam ashore and settled in Tobago.
There are however another group of Company Villages that are not as well known as those in the Moruga and Hindustan areas.
In October 1818 it was decided to disband part of the Third British West India Regiment which was comprised of Negro soldiers. According to Professor Brereton these were " free Africans who had served in the West India Regiments created by the British to defend the colonies during the long period when Britain and France were at war (1793-1815)". The British had intended to send these men back to Africa however the soldiers made it clear that they did not want to be repatriated to Africa. Thus in 1819 these soldiers were settled along the Cuare River in the companies they had fought in. The area in which they were settled became known as the Cuare Village and is today called Valencia.
The remainder of the Third British West India Regiment was disbanded in 1825 and 376 men, 35 women and 34 children were settled in Trinidad. These soldiers were again settled in companies and they were placed in four groups in a line from the Cuare River pointing in the direction of Manzanilla. The Cuare River (shown as Quare on some maps) in the area these soldiers were settled runs parallel to what is now known as the "Valencia Stretch" of the Eastern Main Road. One of the other areas where these groups were settled was known as Turure and another is the area now called Cumuto.
Part of the reason for settling these men in this area was again to keep them away from the slaves on the plantations. The other reason for this area was that they were expected to create and maintain a road that would run from Arima through Cuare (Valencia) to Manzanilla.
All of these soldiers were expected to remain in the villages in which they were settled. One group however ran away from Manzanilla and went to live in Fifth Company. This group was comprised of Mandingos and the area they settled in was and is still called Mandingo Road.