There are a number of online sources for genealogical and historical records for the British West Indies, among them the websites familysearch.org, ancestry.com, and the Endangered Archives Programme of the British Library. For those able to travel, there are on site archives like the St Kitts and Montserrat National Trust.…
Category: <span>Montserrat</span>
While researching an interesting historical figure in the Caribbean, the Wesleyan minister Thomas Meade Chambers (1824-1892), I came across a large number of newspaper articles about his relationship to the temperance movement in St Kitts. He seems to have lit a firestorm of controversy in the small British West Indian…
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…
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…
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,…
The vital records of St Kitts document births, deaths, and marriages, and are invaluable in genealogy research on my husband’s family tree. The birth records in particular usually list the mother’s name as well as the baby’s, and often the father is recorded along with the mother’s maiden name (if…
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 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…
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…