My husband’s great-grandfather Burchell Edward Marshall (1873-1951) was the son of a school teacher who became a prosperous businessman and landowner in his native St Kitts. During the first half of the 20th century, he owned a number of sugar cane estates on the island, which was not typical for…
Published October 8, 2022
My husband’s DNA covers a broad range of Northern European roots, with some Southern European and African thrown in as well. This reflects, in part, his diverse paternal ancestry from the West Indies, from places like England, Wales, Madeira, and areas of Western African where people were seized and sold…
Published July 23, 2022
I’ve written many times about my husband’s ancestors from the tiny Caribbean nation of St Kitts and Nevis, including the use of surnames as middle names in his Mallalieu tree. This can be very helpful in looking for the names of ancestors going further back. His great-grandfather, John Nicholas Faxivo…
Published May 28, 2022
I have looked in the past at the documents and background details surrounding the manumission of two young enslaved people, whose freedom was purchased by my husband’s 3rd great-grandfather, Frederick Walton Mallalieu of St Kitts. No relationship is specified between Frederick and the two young people. In my research into…
Published February 1, 2022
My husband’s great-grandmother was Margaret Johanna Cannonier (1868-1940) of St Kitts. Documenting her family tree back past her father John Henry Cannonier (abt. 1832-1868) has presented a brick wall. There were a number of Cannoniers in St Kitts in the first half of the 19th century, but their relationship to…
Read More Tracing the Cannonier family tree further back – Pirates of the Caribbean?
Published October 2, 2021
“Six degrees of separation” is an esoteric math concept that began with a short story written in 1929. The idea is that in an ever shrinking world, the connections between any two people might be reduced to no more than six associations. A popular exercise is to find six degrees…
Published August 18, 2021
In researching my husband’s Cannonier ancestors from St Kitts, I have come across connections to Cannoniers from Montserrat. I’ve also found one Cannonier who appears on the small West Indian island of Dominica. Originally populated by the native Ortoroid, Arawak and then Kalinago (also known as Carib) peoples, it was…
Published May 13, 2021
An online book selling marketplace is offering for sale a letter written in 1831 to my husband’s 3rd great-grandfather from St Kitts, Frederick Walton Mallalieu. In the letter, a London banker named William Wilson is pushing the services of his newly formed firm of Hankeys, Plummer & Wilson, in the…
Published January 13, 2021
My husband’s 3rd great-grandfather was Frederick Walton Mallalieu (1802-1851), who was born in Lancashire, England, and came as a young man to the British West Indian island of St Kitts about 1820 and worked as the manager of the Belvedere sugar plantation. Only just leaving his teen years, his duties…
Published November 30, 2020
The voices of enslaved people of the past can sometimes be heard, albeit rarely and in painfully brief snippets. On the island of St Kitts, once part of the British West Indies, slavery existed until the 1830s. While the enslaved were brutally treated and had precious few rights, one avenue…