 Geraldine Lane is the author of "Tracing Ancestors in
Barbados" and her website is another way of promoting the sale of the
book.
Researcher Geraldine Lane has compiled a comprehensive
guide to records held on the island and offers a family history research
service.
Records held in Barbados are good and the island’s
continuous ownership by Britain from 1627 to 1966 ensures continuity. By
the 1650s sugar had made the island the wealthiest colony in the British
Empire. Fortunes were to be made, and a variety of immigrants arrived,
from sons of the wealthy to indentured servants.
Convicts and political rebels were dispatched from the
UK to Barbados, and the need for labour on the island's plantations gave
rise to a trans-Atlantic trade in African slaves.
Many of the early white settlers and their
descendants, among them disenchanted farmers and former servants, moved on
to pursue new opportunities in other Caribbean islands and the Americas.
This migration continued over the centuries as new opportunities arose.
Following full emancipation in 1838, those formerly held in slavery joined
the ranks of the emigrants; in the following years thousands headed for
Trinidad, British Guiana, Suriname, and the Panama Canal project. Others
went to Cuba, Costa Rica, Curacao, Honduras and Nicaragua; by the 1920s
the USA was the most popular destination.
Descendants of these people will find Tracing
Ancestors in Barbados a comprehensive guide to all sections of society. It
is designed to guide the reader through the many types of records and
published sources that record the lives of the people of Barbados.
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