Archaeological evidence suggests that in the area known as Perriman Corner, Delhi Road, Fyzabad, a settlement of Amerindian peoples existed as far back as 350 AD. The coming of Europeans in the 16th century may not have impacted them since there is nothing to indicate that the community lasted into the colonial period.
The district became part of the Ward of Oropouche in the County of St Patrick under the local government system established by Governor Lord Harris in 1849. Heavily forested and of rugged geography, it was not cultivated until the 1860s when some indentured Indian immigrants whose contracts had expired, settled on the fringes of the Oropouche Lagoon in the area known today as Avocat and here, cultivated rice, vegetables and ground provisions .
The village itself was founded in 1875 by the Rev Dr Kenneth Grant of the Presbyterian Church’s Canadian Mission to the Indians (CMI). As part of the conversion process of the CMI, Rev Grant arranged for a number of former indentured immigrants (who had served their five-and ten-year contracts on sugar estates in Oropouche and Rousillac) to settle on ten-acre blocks in an area where there were lands suitable for cocoa cultivation and rice production.
In paying homage to India, the settlement became known as Fyzabad. A chapel and day school were established first on the junction of the path that later was called Delhi Road and the bridle track that connected the settlement to St Mary’s Village, Oropouche which was then a small town and the location of the district court, warden’s office and police station.
Gradually, a mixture of ethnicities settled in the area including a few Chinese merchants. Cocoa was king, and almost every substantial resident of Fyzabad owned cocoa lands which covered the Delhi Road, Guapo Road and Oropouche Road. A description of the multitude of people in Fyzabad was written in 1912 by H M Saville as follows:
“On our way back we passed through a small settlement called Fyzabad, a name which clearly denotes the origin of many of its inhabitants. While waiting in the buggy until Mr Fitzwilliam had transacted some business here, I was interested in watching the school-children as they passed, and a more mixed lot I never saw. Some were coloured in all shades from nearly white to nearly black, many were East Indians, some were even Chinese, to say nothing of other combinations of these different strains. A few of the best mannered ones spoke to me as they passed. Most of these were East Indians, by race if not by birth; while, however, there was no foreign accent in their nicely pronounced salutation, “Good morning, sir,” there was something decidedly foreign in their manner, a kind of retiring diffidence not often found in these democratic days, even among negro children, who readily assimilate English manners.”
The purely agrarian nature of Fyzabad was to make a dramatic about-face in the early years of the 20th century. As early as 1910, a number of prospectors led by Arthur Beeby-Thompson began prospecting lands near the village in the area known as Forest Reserve as part of a larger survey begun some years earlier in the Guapo-Vessigny region to determine the presence of large oil deposits.
The initial exploration in the latter district was marred by some controversy in the acquisition of leases from estate owners (in those days, it was legally possible for landowners to retain all mineral rights except those for coal and gold and these could be sold or leased). It appears that a relationship developed between the oil men and Thomas Geddes Grant, a commission agent and the son of the Rev Dr Kenneth Grant to whom Fyzabad owed its establishment.
The younger Grant quietly began acquiring leases from the cocoa proprietors in areas indicated as being potentially rich in oil. In order to save the expense of purchasing the land outright, only the mineral rights were bought for a fraction of the value of the oil that would later be extracted from the properties. Grant was to sit on the board of directors of the resulting Apex Oilfields (one of the largest oil companies in Trinidad when incorporated in 1919) until his death in the 1930s.
Simultaneously, another syndicate was leasing lands in Forest Reserve from the colonial government. This company became known in 1913 as Trinidad Leaseholds Ltd and operated a refinery at Pointe-a-Pierre as well. The oil age had begun in Fyzabad and it was to change both the physical and social atmosphere forever.