Profiles: Heroes, Role Models and Pioneers of Trinidad and Tobago - by Nasser Khan

34 W. H. SCOTT (WILLIAM HENRY) (1885-1972) H e started off in business in 1905 with a bakery on Prince Street, Port of Spain and later set up a grocery. In 1924, he started William H. Scott Limited in Port of Spain which included a hardware section as well as a grocery. Years later it became a hardware store only. CARLOS, LUIS AND ALFREDO SIEGERT T heir father J. G. B. Siegert (1796-1870), a German, founded his family firm manufacturing ‘Dr. Siegert’s Aromatic Bitters’ in the town of Angostura, Venezuela, in 1824. After his death, his sons Carlos, Alfredo and Luis Siegert decided in 1875 to relocate the firm in Trinidad because of political turmoil in Venezuela. The three brothers bought Woodbrook Estate and turned it into a housing settlement around 1900; three streets there still bear their names today (Carlos, Luis and Alfredo Streets). Angostura Bitters is known all over the world as Trinidad’s most famous manufactured product. In 1985, Angostura received the Hummingbird Gold Medal. CONRAD STOLLMEYER (1813-1904) H e was a pioneer in the asphalt industry, German-born, who arrived in Trinidad in 1845. He is the great-grandfather of noted cricketer Jeffrey Stollmeyer. In the 1850s and 1860s, he shipped asphalt to England. Stollmeyer believed that the proper way to make use of Trinidad’s petroleum resources was to distill oil from asphalt rather than to drill for oil. From 1888, the three major parties involved in exploiting Trinidad’s asphalt were the government, Stollmeyer and the Trinidad Lake Asphalt Company. He was also a director of Trinidad’s