This archive series contains land registers of St. Thomas and St. John from the period 1755-1915. The land registers were annual lists used for the calculation and collection of head tax and land tax. Before 1750 these registers were called “Landslister”. The land registers contain information on both the household (number of free and enslaved individuals, number of men and women) and the plantations (size and application). Furthermore, they contain the name of the owner of the town house or the plantation and after c. 1800 also the name of the plantation. Before 1800, the plantations did not have permanent names. The land registers are organized geographically in towns and countryside, and both of these units are subdivided in districts, called quarters. However, contrary to the situation on St. Croix, the number of quarters on St. Thomas and St. John changed through time and in addition the name of the quarter is not necessarily present in every annual volume of the list.

The task in this archive series is indexing (tagging). This means, that we focus primarily on transcribing personal names, place names and dates. By transcribing these data you will make it easier for others, for instance genealogists, to find a document that contains a certain name they are looking for without transcribing the entire document. Exactly what we would like you to transcribe and how, you will see in the transcription guide.

You find the specific transcription guide for this series here: https://www.sa.dk/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/land-registers-and-land-lists.pdf

The image is a detail of Peter Lotharius Oxholm’s map of St. John from 1780. Original held at the Danish National Archives (see: http://www.virgin-islands-history.org/en/oxholms-west-indies-maps-and-drawings-st-jan/

Transcriptions