s island already
had a name, this name was Guanaca giving to the land by the natives that
inhabited it. As early as 1511 on a map drawn by Peter Martyr this name appears
and it was later corrupted by English pirates and privateers and settlers and
it was pronounced Bonacca. This name does not apply to any one part of the
island but it is the named used by us when referring to the whole island. There
have been other names placed on the island over the years before the Bay
Islands were turned over to Honduras, the English the Dutch and the Spaniards
modified the name to their liking. Upon gaining possession of the Bay Island
the Honduran government made Guanaja the official name of the island but we
maintained the old name for as long as we could and all the older heads
throughout the islands still refer to our island as Bonacca. The main
settlement is called The Cay and that’s an abbreviation of the original name
Lower Cays. It was first settled by the Haylocks and it was quite by accident
because they move to the two little cays that lay about a half kilometer off
the south shore of the main island to get rid of the flies that plagued them
during calm nights. They eventually stayed and later they sold the southernmost
cay (Hog Cay) to the Kirkconnels. The Boddens, the Phillips, the Woods and many
others came later and by the 1880s they had a thriving community. The village
of Savana Bight was founded by families from Olancho; they were the Escalantes,
Peraltas and Zunigas and later the Watlers from Caymans. Later on and also from
grand Caymans came the Tatums, the Merrens, the Bennetts, the Forbes and
others, these people set up residences east of Savana Bight and called it East
End. The Parchmont inhabited some the upper Cays. The first to establish them
in North East Bight were the Ebanks, the Hydes and the Greenwoods. Angelo
Elwin, son of the first magistrate of the Bay Island with residence in Roatan,
was the first person to settle
