This archive series contains census lists and land registers for St. Croix from the period 1741-1755. The census lists and particularly the land registers were used for the calculation and collection of head tax and land tax. After the Danish Crown took over the colony from the Danish West India and Guinea Company in 1755 the land lists were renamed “matrikler”. The land lists 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 plantation. The census lists and land registers are usually organized geographically in districts, called quarters. The number of quarters on St. Thomas and St. John changed through time, however, and 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 Jens Mikkelsen Beck’s map of St. Croix from 1754. Held by The Royal Library, Denmark (see: http://images.kb.dk/present?id=dk001010)

Transcriptions