Whether it's the general apathy towards historical research or a history of poor record-keeping and documentation, it's safe to say that genealogical lines in T&T have been blurred over the years.
Many in T&T don't have any idea of their true ancestry, especially those descended from African slaves. This sentiment has been echoed a lot recently, as T&T has just commemorated Emancipation Day. For family history enthusiasts, genealogical research involves weaving together hundreds of years' worth of details and stories to unveil the tapestry of their ancestry.
But are people in T&T interested in their family lineage? How difficult is it to trace your family tree and what does that process involve? To get a clearer picture, the T&T Guardian spoke to author, historian and publisher Gerard Besson and historian and researcher Angelo Bissessarsingh.
Both agreed that the major roadblock in local genealogical research is that records and documents have been destroyed or lost or are in terrible condition.
Bissessarsingh said there are almost no remaining official records from the period of Spanish rule, since most were destroyed in the Red House fire during the Water Riots of 1903.
What little had survived that Water Riots fire, he said, was destroyed in 1948 when the Port-of-Spain Town Hall on Knox Street was burnt down. He said for many years, major reference documents have been kept at the Red House in conditions that were not at all suitable for the historic preservation.
"For years," he said, "a collection of books called the Blue Books were kept at the Red House in a room with a leaking ceiling and no temperature regulation. These books recorded transactions from the late 1700s right up to the 1840s. They contained invaluable information like wills, land transaction and property transfers with names, dates and details that were very specific."
These books are now stored at the National Archives on St Vincent St and the T&T Guardian made a visit to view the Trinidad Blue Book from 1874. While the first page of the book was detached and its spine was tattered, pages have been restored and text is legible.
Besson said another problem is that the Registrar General's Department on South Quay is not equipped for people coming in to do genealogical searches. This department is responsible for documents such as birth, death and marriage certificates as well as company and land registrations. He said while it should be "dead easy" for the attendants at the department to facilitate such an enquiry, the records are not easily accessible to visitors.
"What I found at the Registrar General's Department is that there was a certain level of disorder. About five years ago, I was doing some research and as a historian I had to get special permission to access certain records. I was allowed five days at the registrar's office to do a piece of research that I should have perhaps been given two months to do."
He said the National Archives better accommodates in-depth research, adding that it is the first place many people check when researching their ancestry.
National Archives
Among the documents stored at the National Archives are land ownership records, parliamentary proceeding records, council papers, census reports, indentured labourers' immigration records and a newspaper collection with copies of the Royal Gazette and the T&T Gazette.
The process of viewing reference material at the National Archives begins with filling out a form, after which the book or record is brought out from the search room by one of the vault attendants. Visitors must wear latex gloves to peruse the material and are advised to be particularly careful in their handling of it.
When the T&T Guardian visited last week, archive assistant Andrina Rivers said old newspapers were among the most common reference materials that visitors requested. Also popular are the immigration records for East Indian indentured labourers which date back to 1845.
These records include immigrants' names and ages, where they came from, the name of the vessel they arrived on, the location of any bodily marks and the estate to which they were assigned.
She said there are also registers for Chinese and African immigrants, although these are much fewer in number. Most of the African immigration records at the National Archives are for Tobago and they list the names of the plantation owners and the names of the slaves they owned. These records have been reproduced on microfilm and are organised by year.
Old Newspapers
Bissessarsingh said copies of the early Trinidad Gazette, The Chronicle and the San Fernando Gazette are a great point of reference for researchers because apart from news stories, they offer birth, death and marriage announcements. Unlike the obituaries which appear in newspapers today, obituaries from years ago went into great detail and might even have included the school someone attended or where they worked.
Cemeteries
Death and burial records are very important in genealogy but very few cemetery records in T&T date back to the 19th century. Bissessarsingh said the earliest public cemetery records left at the Paradise Cemetery in San Fernando are from the 1950s.
He said records from the Lapeyrouse Cemetery in Port-of-Spain have most likely been kept since the 1840s with the oldest legible records dating back from the late 19th century to the first decade of the 20th century.
Church records
Old Roman Catholic and Anglican churches can be a great source of reference material.
Bissessarsingh said the parish registers at the Santa Rosa RC Church in Arima date back to as far as the 1700s and contain records of births, deaths and marriages.
"If you can lay your hands on them, these records are very helpful in tracing your genealogy.
"The problem here is that many of the registries have either gone missing or they have not been taken care of to the point that their usability has been significantly compromised," Bissessarsingh said.
The Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception and the Holy Trinity Cathedral in Port-of-Spain are also suggested starting points for research.
Oral tradition
Besson said the best place to start genealogical research is with oral tradition. He suggests sitting with a older family member and asking them to share all they know about the family lineage. He said it is however important to consider that oral histories can at times be plagued with inaccuracies.
"The problem with oral history is that it is often wrong. What your grandmother and great-grandmother tells you or what your great-uncle remembers is told via the prism of recollection. But it is very valuable because it contains the essence and feeling behind where they came from and how they came here."
Having gathered this information, he says, it is up to the researcher to use it to delve into other repositories.
Genealogical research is considerably simpler for Tobagonians than it is for Trinidadians. With an area of 300 square kilometres and the history of small, nuclear family units in Tobago, Bissessarsingh said it has always been easier for Tobagonians to maintain oral traditions. He said Trinidad, by contrast, has never had a strong documentary legacy in this way, adding that recordkeeping has always been very haphazard and "tenuous at best."
He went on to explain that there were far more public records for the formerly-enslaved of Tobago. After emancipation in 1834, ex-slaves in Tobago did not stage a mass walk-off as was the case in Trinidad, because in Tobago, almost all arable land was owned by planters and there was no free crown land for squatting.
This led to the implementation of the metayage system–a sharecropping agreement through which the formerly-enslaved worked the land of the estate owner and received a percentage of the cultivated crop in return. He said because of this, these sharecroppers or metayers were able to form an independent peasant class with an "established sense of self and identity."
"Because of this metayage system, many records of birth, death and marriages in Tobago dating back to the 18th century can still be found in Moravian, Methodist and Anglican church registers. So there are actually official records documenting the purchase of lands by free coloured people as well as the passing down of this property to their descendants. The independence they achieved by establishing this peasant class made it possible for the creation of these records."
In the case of Indo-Trinidadians, records of their arrival to T&T as indentured labourers were relatively well kept. He said because of the extended family units in East Indian homes, with three and even four generations under one roof, there were strong oral traditions and families kept original documentation issued to their forefathers. Earlier this year, he visited the home of an East Indian family in Rousillac, south Trinidad where family members still had the certificate of exemption of labour issued in 1894 to a relative when he ended his contract of indentured labour.
Asked whether or not there was local interest in genealogy, Bissessarsingh said he believes it's growing. He runs a Facebook profile under the name Virtual Museum of T&T which in the last year has gained considerable popularity and now has over 5,000 followers. On it, he posts photos of historic sites with long, detailed captions and followers are quick to offer their thoughts, comments and questions. He said each week he receives between 900 and 1200 Facebook messages from people requesting his assistance in doing historical research.
"Of course," he said, "there is still a very wide-ranging apathy with regard to historical research but I think that if you stimulate a love of history and heritage, people will start to ask questions."
Bissessarsingh said there needed to be greater effort in T&T to create a genealogical database. He made reference to Ancestry.com–a company based in the US, which allows customers to access millions of genealogical and historical networks in order to discover their family history. He said establishing a similar comprehensive and accessible database for T&T would require a multi-agency approach involving researchers, preservationists, translators and genealogists as well as a serious input by the Government.
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The T&T Guardian also spoke to Sandra Solomon-Cole, who, after her grandmother's death in 1978, traced her maternal family lineage all the way back to an educated West African man from an elite family who was captured sometime around 1805 and brought to Trinidad. His name was Jonas Mohammed Bath and according to the Caribbean Archives, written by Besson, he was a Muslim who came directly from the African coast and was regarded by the Mandingoes in Trinidad as the "chief priest and patriarch." He was said to have been a person of eminence in his country before he was captured.
Solomon-Cole began her genealogical research by looking through a small black book her grandmother left behind containing names of deceased relatives. It was then that she discovered she was of the Bath lineage. She sought the help of author and historian Michael Anthony, who put her on to an elderly woman she knew only as Miss Sandy. With the help of Miss Sandy who was more than 90 at the time, she was able to make contact with other Bath descendants in Woodbrook and St James.
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