1. Ferdinand Paleologus was a 17th-century English-Greek freeholder, sugar or cotton planter and churchwarden and possibly one of the last living members of the Palaiologos dynasty, which had ruled the Byzantine Empire from 1259 to its fall in 1453.
Ferdinand Paleologus is first attested on the island in 1644 and he quickly integrated himself with its elite.
Ferdinand Paleologus cultivated cotton or sugar and possibly pineapples and was influential in the affairs of the local St John's Parish Church, for which he became a vestryman and then a churchwarden.
Ferdinand Paleologus constructed a great mansion called Clifton Hall, named after the home he had lived in with his family in Cornwall.
Clifton Hall, though radically changed since Ferdinand Paleologus's time, remains to this day one of the largest, grandest and oldest great houses in Barbados.
None of Theodore's and Ferdinand Paleologus's contemporaries doubted their imperial descent.
Ferdinand Paleologus had three older brothers; Theodore, Theodore Junior and John Theodore, and two older sisters; Dorothy and Mary.
Unlike Theodore Junior, Ferdinand Paleologus was not a commander in any capacity but a common soldier.
Ferdinand Paleologus built and owned an estate called Clifton Hall, named after the home he and his family had lived in while in Landulph, and owned a small cotton or sugar plantation.
Clifton Hall is located on the heights of Saint John, near St John's Parish Church, which Ferdinand Paleologus supported throughout his life.
In 1649, Ferdinand Paleologus was elected to the vestry of St John's parish.
Ferdinand Paleologus became known on the island as the "Greek prince from Cornwall", and was long remembered by that nickname after his death.
Various inaccurate dates for Ferdinand Paleologus's death have been provided over the years, mostly on account of the crabbed handwriting in some of these documents.
Ferdinand Paleologus was buried at the cemetery of St John's Parish Church.
The lead coffin was opened a second time, on 3 May 1844, to "test the truth of the tradition", wherein Ferdinand Paleologus's skeleton was again found to have been of exceptional size and imbedded in quicklime, sometimes used in burials to speed up the disintegration of corpses if there was fear that a disease might spread.
Ferdinand Paleologus's gravesite is used for publicity on Barbados today, with holiday brochures referring to the monument there as "one of the oldest on Barbados" and visitors to St John's church immediately being confronted with signs pointing to it.
The monument is recent however, erected in 1906, and since Ferdinand Paleologus's body was moved in the 20th century, it marks his current burial site, not the original 1670 site.
Ferdinand Paleologus was only survived by his son, Theodore, who in turn was only survived by his daughter, Godscall, who disappeared from history.
In 1958, Ferdinand Paleologus's tombstone caught the eye of the Cuban author Alejo Carpentier, who that same year published an article on supposed sightings of Ferdinand Paleologus's ghost on Barbados.
Ferdinand Paleologus's grave appears in Carpentier's novel Explosion in a Cathedral, which explores the impact of the French Revolution on the Americas.
Ferdinand Paleologus's son Theodore is a central figure in a series of novels by British author Jane Stevenson.