I have written in the past about a Cannonier relative on my husband’s family tree from St Kitts. She was born Blanche Wentworth Cannonier in 1862, daughter of Thomas Tobias Cannonier and Anna Maria Gould Cannonier. Blanche was married in 1894 to a Kittitian planter (sugar estate manager), whose name…
Category: <span>African ancestry</span>
A very interesting document I saw during a recent visit to the St Kitts and Nevis National Archives was a will from the year 1886, written by a widow with a married name that I’ve done extensive research on. Her name was Mary Cannonier (maiden name Delves), a woman of…
I have been reading a fascinating thesis about the history of the middle class in Antigua. The author described ties that bound the Antiguan middle class in the 19th and 20th centuries, including common schools, occupations, businesses, social organizations, and marriage connections between similarly situated families. These ties existed throughout…
I have written quite a bit about the Cannonier family history in St Kitts, Montserrat, and Dominica. This includes a connection between the Cannonier and Chambers family names in St Kitts that I’ve been able to flesh out somewhat recently. There is a St Kitts vital record from 1899 that…
An interesting newspaper article in a September 1839 issue of the St Christopher Gazette and Charibbean Courier reported that a petition had been submitted to the House of Commons in London, by an MP named Sir Stephen Lushington. Lushington (1782-1873) was the Oxford educated son of the chairman of the…
A distant cousin of my husband was labor leader, historian, and scholar Edgar Oscar Challenger (1905-2000), through a shared ancestry of two Madeiran sisters who immigrated to St Kitts. I recently stumbled on a fascinating collection of letters that Challenger wrote in the 1930s to someone he always addressed respectfully…
I have traced my husband’s Cannonier ancestors back to the British island of Montserrat. His 2nd great grandfather, John Henry Cannonier, was born about 1832 and died young in St Kitts in 1868. I have yet to establish a definite link between the Cannoniers of Montserrat and John Henry Cannonier,…
Tracing a man who lived in the 18th and 19th centuries in the Caribbean can be quite difficult, but the roadblocks to research can pale in comparison when uncovering the life story of a woman from that time and place. As part of my project of untangling the Cannoniers of…
I am fortunate to live in the neighborhood of Smithtown, NY, on Long Island. It is the home of Caleb Smith State Park. The park features 543 acres of nature preserves with hiking trails, bird watching, a pond stocked with fish, and the main house and museum. It was home…
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…