In 1791, Alexander Hamilton was the Secretary of the Treasury in the brand new United States of America. Hamilton proposed a tax on distilled spirits production to help pay down the national debt incurred during the Revolutionary War. In spite of opposition from people like Thomas Jefferson, congress approved the…
Read More The whiskey rebellion – defying Alexander Hamilton
In the current pandemic era, countries worldwide have developed policies to prevent the introduction of the Corona virus. St Kitts and Nevis has its own version; they are now allowing passengers from a limited number of cruise ships to enter their country for short, strictly regulated visits referred to as…
“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…
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…
Period newspapers can provide some very interesting reading as historical backgrounds for family research. My husband’s great-great-grandmother, Lillian Gracey Macauley (abt. 1836-1920) was a comfortably situated, upper middle class, Irish Catholic housewife living in Belfast in the 19th century. I found an article from the Belfast Morning News from November…
The Washington Post uses a rating system for statements made by politicians – the more Pinocchios earned, the less truthful the statement. That kind of analysis might be used in genealogy, to rate the accuracy of old family lore passed down through the generations. Is the old story completely wrong…
A 1764 diary of one Jabez Fitch provides a quick glimpse into an episode in one of my Brewster ancestor’s history. Jabez, a cousin of my 6th great-grandfather William Brewster, wrote about meeting William when he traveled from his home in the Oblong area of Dutchess County, New York to…
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…
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…
I have written before about my husband’s Cabral ancestors who came to St Kitts from Madeira in the 1850s as indentured workers. I’ve looked at different aspects of the Madeirans in St Kitts, such as the conditions that led to their immigration, the need for workers in post-emancipation British Caribbean,…
Read More The dollars and cents (or pounds and shillings) of indentured workers from Madeira
