Saint Vincent Deed Books

Saint Vincent Deed Books

September 5, 2022 0 By Anna Bayala

Locating records online is difficult for many due to unavailable digitized records. With the COVID pandemic, it has delayed project completion of records digitization. There are some project teams that I am familiar with that are just beginning to attain access to equipment to start the process after two years of no access. Luckily, the Saint Vincent deed books cover the slavery period of 1770 to 1838 are available for review. Therefore, researchers will be able to peruse these books and provide them a window into our ancestral past. The best thing about this is that we get to tell about our history.

The British Library has taken on the task of digitizing the Saint Vincent deed books. Completion of projects involving digitization of deed book is very important. Many elements play against the condition of these records. The heat, humidity, hurricanes, insects, and the poor quality of paper from these eras are leading to the deterioration of these records. It take special equipment and a delicate touch to even digitize the records. We hope that many will assist with helping to preserve that history.

Saint Vincent’s History

The Saint Vincent deed books contains slavery records that begins in 1770; after the island secession to the British. However, prior to the secession, we need to cover what led to it.

Saint Vincent, initially inhabited by the Ciboney, were joined, displaced, or conquered by the Arawak indigenous people. About a century later, the Arawak would be displaced by the Carib indigenous people.

In the 1600s, Black Caribs known as Garifuna, would form from intermarriages between the indigenous Caribs and Africans that managed to escape from plantations in Barbados, taken from raids of plantations, or were part of a slave ship shipwreck in the Grenadines from 1635 or 1673.

The Caribs resisted the attempts in allowing the British, French, and Dutch on settling on the island. However, the Caribs eventually would allow the French to settle on the west of cost in the 1700s. The belief is that they permitted to French to settle there in order to negate the British from settling the island.

British in Saint Vincent

The Britain attained control of Saint Vincent in 1763 via the Treaty of Paris. Saint Vincent would then becomes part of an administration called the Windward Islands. The Windward Islands included Saint Vincent, Grenada, Dominica, Tobago and the Grenadines with the administrative seat in Grenada. The British then began bringing in enslaved Africans and those enslaved from other regions. In the meantime, the Caribs refused to accept British sovereignty. This led to the Carib war against the British in 1772 that ended in 1773. In 1779, the French seize Saint Vincent.

In 1783, Saint Vincent returns to the British under the Treaty of Versailles. The Caribs would continue to refuse the British and had another war with them in 1795. The war ended in 1796 and leads to the exile of Caribs to an island off the coast of Honduras. The Carib indigenous people would eventually migrate to Belize and other Central American countries. Some of the Carib people did remain on the island of Saint Vincent but sought refuge in the interior of the island until they were pardoned in 1805.

In 1791, the Grenadines islands were partitioned between Grenada and Saint Vincent. Saint Vincent would have the administrative seat over the island to the north which remained in place until 1877. Slavery remains until the passing of the Emancipation Act of 1834. (Tolson et al., n.d.) Therefore, the deed books for this era are a great resource.

Saint Vincent Deed Books

The Saint Vincent deed books includes manumitted from enslavement records. Based on the short history provided above, it provides an explanation on why so many in the Caribbean are genetically related to other islands and those that descend from enslavement in the United States. Additionally, clue are provided on why many of us with indigenous DNA from a particular island carry indigenous DNA from multiple regions of the Americas. Hopefully these digitized records will help the family genealogist locate those missing ancestors.

The Saint Vincent deed books are as follows:

18th Century Deed Books

19th Century Deed Books

Will Book from 1806 to 1811 with 364 Images

Reference

Tolson, R., Niddrie, D. L., & Fraser, A. (n.d.). Saint Vincent and the Grenadines – History | Britannica. Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved September 1, 2022, from https://www.britannica.com/place/Saint-Vincent-and-the-Grenadines/History

CategoryAfrican Ancestry African Descendants Caribbean ancestry Caribbean slavery genealogy help indigenous natives

Leave a Reply