Introduction to Caribbean Family History
The Good and Bad News......
Tracking family history is challenging anywhere but the Caribbean region is particularly difficult. Regardless of family origin, records were often poorly kept or they have been recorded haphazardly. Between 1621 and roughly 1700 there were only minimal requirements by the English colonial authorities regarding parish records and many of those kept have suffered a great deal from neglect, hurricanes, fires, leaky roofs....... all the perils of life. Despite this many of the Antigua parish registers did survive and are noted by Vere L Oliver in his reference "The History of Antigua" where they are usually described and noted. The LDS also filmed records but did not complete all the work they wished to do at the National Archives (specifics not available on this).
Records in the early period were kept at the local parish level. They applied mostly to Europeans. The records also focus primarily on "Freeholders" not "Freemen" the distinction being freeholders owned property. Freemen and Indentured are inconsistently noted in these records. On most islands in the early period poor "freemen" or women were observed being treated worse than good slaves...and the indentured are often described as such. As time went on status was based increasingly on race first, birth and economics next.
Until Emancipation slave birth, death, and marriage records etc were kept at the individual plantation, or if you are lucky, by nonconformist churches or missionaries. In the three decades leading up to emancipation there are increasing notations in Jamaican and other island parishes pertaining to free blacks and also to slave baptisms. In different islands there are considerable variations on this. Free Blacks, people "of color" are often mentioned in the wills, and other legal documents of white planters. Therefore apart from an astute use of oral histories, and parish or missionary records, a thorough study of the plantations your ancestors may have worked on is one of the key means to learn about them. Key resources are the apprenticeship lists and Slave Compensation records.
Oddly enough the focus on properties leads to an approach useful whether you have the daunting task of tracing your African ancestors or are tracing a European.......Cast a wide net, watching for family associations, business or name links, and always study the plantations and people associated with an area your relatives may have occupied in one way or another. tracking a particular family member to a certain "Freetown" just past emancipation would suggest study of certain plantations in that area for any luck going back farther.
Study.....the reading lists provided on the Resources page are there because without a very good general sense of the local history and a notion of what is taking place at a given time you will miss much of what you may learn about the world your people lived in. Their are manuscripts, plantation records, correspondence etc located all over the world which are only now becoming accessible thanks to the internet. Don't hesitate to browse history websites colleges, academic journals etc But most of all jot down everything you KNOW or have been told. Interview relatives. Food habits, ways of celebrating a particular holiday, an odd recipe, any thing could prove helpful to your search but only if you register it! And when someone tells you something, qualify it carefully: expressions like "cousin" have been casually used back to Adam and mean little without detail.
Finally use the Carib-L and AfriGeneas Mailing lists for guidance and help. There are some real pros on those lists including authors of current Genealogical texts for the Caribbean. No one is a master of this subject and we are all learning daily.
Keep an open mind about locations. There was far more movement between islands than is commonly understood. After you survive a voyage across the Atlantic (by whatever means) a brief sail between islands is nothing. People went where opportunity or relations drew them. There were slave sailors and free Afro-Creole sailors.....Planter families moved to acquire patent lands for children etc. So when studying don't immediately discount a possible relation on another island.
Finally about NAMES: General "rules" about naming practices are to be dismissed, especially as applies to "slave names" ....between 1790 and 1828 thousands of slaves whether African, Afro-Caribbean or other ethnic variation chose or were given names as they were baptized, usually in very large groups. There is some real fine work on the topic and it will help anyone in their search. Sadly a surname may not be a certain indicator of bloodline but it may imply a region or plantation to research for further leads. Although ethnicity and race are crucial to good research, tracking all people can be tough in the Caribbean islands and it helps to be direct about ethnicity.