New Slavery Records Trace Caribbean Routes

Researchers Unveil Documents about Former Slave-trading Hub of St. Croix

(AP)  A collection of slavery records newly available over the Internet may help thousands of people trace their families back to Africa through St. Croix, a former slave-trading hub in the Caribbean.

The records, which went online Thursday at ancestry.com, already have helped Susan Samuel of Houston discover the story of an ancestor who was freed after persuading officials that she had been illegally sold into slavery.

"Even though she came from a very horrible situation, she decided not to be defined by it," Samuel said of her great- great-great-great-grandmother Venus Johannes, who was captured as a 12-year-old girl in what is now Senegal in West Africa.

More than 50,000 enslaved Africans were taken to St. Croix during the island's Danish colonial rule, said George Tyson, who led a seven-year effort to gather documents from archives in the Virgin Islands, Washington and Copenhagen.

Many of the slaves spent their lives toiling on the island's sugar plantations. Others continued on to slavery in such places as Cuba or the United States, which bought the Virgin Islands from Denmark in 1917.

Columbia University historian Eric Foner called the collection "a big step forward," with great potential for research.

"St. Croix was an important slave center for a long time, but maybe because people don't know Denmark, it hasn't gotten the attention it ought to," he said.

Family researchers have aggressively pursued information for years about the slave trade in St. Croix, an island where most residents are descended from slaves. A local group, the Virgin Islands Social History Associates, sought out the documents to build on that work and learn more about how slaves lived, said Tyson, the group's president.

The records will be searchable for free until the end of July on ancestry.com, a subscription-based Web site that provided some financing for the researchers. Tyson said his nonprofit group plans to eventually make the records available for free on a Web site it is working on.

Johannes' story comes partly from an account she gave to authorities that helped persuade them to free her.

After marrying an American sea captain on Goree Island, a holding area for slaves off the African coast, she agreed to join him on a voyage to the New World with the understanding she could later return. But he sold her off as a domestic servant to an American woman as soon as they reached St. Croix.

"Whatever passion was in the relationship did not overcome the issue that the captain wanted to get some money," Tyson said.

Johannes won her freedom in 1815 after three decades in slavery, Tyson said. She had remarried by then and borne four children. A slave uprising on St. Croix led the colonial governor to finally ban slavery across the Danish West Indies in 1848.

Samuel, a 62-year-old aide to mental health patients in Houston, said she felt in awe of her ancestor this week while touring the overgrown ruins of colonial buildings on St. Croix, the largest of the three islands in the now U.S. territory.

"I have decided to look more at the positive and recognize how much she overcame, because you can choose to be angry or you can choose to more forward," she said.

The documents, spanning from 1734 to 1917, include shipping records with names and prices of enslaved Africans and property inventories. Among the most useful pieces are interviews conducted by the Moravian church, which, upon converting Africans, recorded their place of origin, Tyson said.

The collection has more than 700,000 records. Some of the physical documents are available in St. Croix. Others were scanned in foreign capitals by researchers who brought copies back to feed the database of the historical group's St. Croix African Roots Project.

Tyson said some islanders who helped enter data found an emotional resonance while recording information on the long-ago slaves who were forced to come to St. Croix.

"Even if they are not related they are spiritually connected because of what they had to endure," he said.

[RRS12]

Enslaving people is a terrible injustice. However, I wonder how many African Americans think about the fact that if there had never been slavery in the Americas and their ancestors had not had to endure it they would not be Americans today.

[edward1975-2009]

Slavery is horrible, but there isn't a person alive today that was a slave, knows a slave, or has been a slave. Quit using it as a crutch. Many African Americans have gone on to to incredible things, achieved remarkable things, gone on and used all the programs out there to better themselves and their people, it is the 10% that must blame all their failures on ancient history. It's that 10% that needs to look in the mirror for the true cause of their problems.

[whatithink-2009]

Most Africans would rather have come to America like everyone else. Slavery didn't help anyone. And slavery also lead to Jim Crow that was in many ways even worse than slavery...at least the slaves had some value to their torturers. Under Jim Crow that was very overt all the way until the 1970s, nothing was the case.

[whatithink-2009]

"edward1975-2009 July 17, 2009 4:14 PM EDT - Slavery is horrible, but there isn't a person alive today that was a slave, knows a slave, or has been a slave. Quit using it as a crutch."


What is your mental malfunction?

Do you tell Native Americans to forget about their history?

Do you tell Italian Americans to forget about their history?

Do you tell Irish Americans to forget about their history?

Do you tell Jewish Americans to forget about their history?

Whether YOU like it or not (and it doesn't really matter either way), SLAVERY IS A LARGE PART OF THE AFRICAN AMERICAN HISTORY. It will NEVER be forgotten. You can get over it. Slavery lead to the Black Codes that lead to Jim Crow that lead to the Civil Rights Movement.

If we are honest LBJ is the closest president to freeing the slaves and you see how many Democrats turned to Republicans in the South because of it?

If you want to fix something, start with your circle of friends.

But, slavery will always be a part of American history. The time to not make it a part of American history has long gone...and that was not the decision of those who were slaves.

Dig up some grave and complain to someone who made that decision.

[rushlimpdrug]

Don't see any Africans descendants moving back to Africa.

Wonder why?

[edward1975-2009]

It was their own race that sold them into slavery, somehow that always gets forgotten. This guilt trip that they have laid upon the white race is a farce. It has been used by the black community as a whole for every roadblock in life they encounter and it's getting old. It's a built in excuse for failure and have kept them as slaves only in their minds. You don't like it here, go back to the motherland. Things are SO much better there.

[whatithink-2009]

I have a better comment. If you don't like the topic, then ignore it. Otherwise, you don't know anything about me. I appreciate and respect all cultures. YOU OBVIOUSLY DO NOT. And you didn't seem to get the memo - the end of official slavery didn't stop people from treating others like third class citizens OR have you forgot the reason for the Civil Rights Movement? Are you saying the Civil Rights Movement had nothing to do with slavery? Are you saying the people who opposed the Civil Rights Movement or supported Jim Crow were not influenced by slavery? You really are stupid.

[whatithink-2009]

Every trace of Africa was beaten out of the Africans and the Africans have every right to be here. They foughts for that right with their sweat. Too bad Europeans didn't also leave Africa alone. Are you not aware of colonialization? Are you not aware that economic colonialization STILL exists today?

[whatithink-2009]

edward1975-2009 - You are the one dealing with a guilt trip as most racists do. You are so afraid of feeling guilty about something that you are PROJECTING.

Psychological projection is a common problem of racists.

"In classical psychology projection is always seen as a defense mechanism which occurs when a person's own unacceptable or threatening feelings are repressed and then attributed to someone else."




This story was not even about blaming anyone, but you bring up blame. People have a right to learn more about themselves. This is harder for Africans as they were not allowed to keep any trace of their cultures. It was not their free-will to make this decision.

[cleric60]

Let's focus on these words from this article:
"I have decided to look more at the positive and recognize how much she overcame, because you can choose to be angry or you can choose to more forward," when we review the history of slavery. We can't undo the past, but we can learn from it's evils and mistakes for our future.

[whatithink-2009]

edward1975-2009 - What a nice article and you come up with this? You seem to be the one who needs to move away from the past and as soon as the South takes down all of those Confederate monuments, you can ask others to move forward. Go back under your rock, Rush Limbaugh. You are no better than anyone you are talking badly about. If you don't want people to remember something, DON'T GIVE THEM ANYTHING TO REMEMBER!!

[whatithink-2009]

Nice story. Too bad the first post is coming from a IN ORDER TO AVOID FEELING GUILTY ABOUT SOMETHING, I WILL PROTEST AGAINST IT member of our country.

[edward1975-2009]

Of course you're against anyone else's history but your own. Slavery has been dead and is still today used by many as an excuse for everything wrong with their lives. The black community as a whole needs to move beyond this and let it go. And it is people such as Jackson and Sharpton, and groups like the NAACP that make a living off of exploiting this sad time in American history. This nation has done more for the betterment of the black race than any other nation on the planet. Time for them to move on.

[edward1975-2009]

This should fire up all those who can't move beyond the past. I'm sure Jackson, Sharpton and the NAACP are already calling press conferences. Anything to self-promote themselves, at the expense of the African American community.

[whatithink-2009]

edward1975-2009 - What a nice article and you come up with this? You seem to be the one who needs to move away from the past and as soon as the South takes down all of those Confederate monuments, you can ask others to move forward. Go back under your rock, Rush Limbaugh. You are no better than anyone you are talking badly about. If you don't want people to remember something, DON'T GIVE THEM ANYTHING TO REMEMBER!!