The next decade....what's in store?

I had a MOST interesting day today

My mission - to go to the Island Records Office at the Registrar General's Department and look up Deeds indeces for a particular person from the 1840's onwards.

From I entered the gate at Twickenham Park, the security said "Hi Miss Mc". (From the hotel days)
Only one of the guards inside was not pleasant but everybody else was so polite and helpful.

Paid the money to do the search (J$100 per hour), got my books, and my oh my....what a sight.

THE most perfect handwriting, all curly and well formed....until it got to the 1900's where standards seemed to have fallen off a bit, or maybe they gave a schooler a summer job!

The particular person I was looking up sure bought a lot of land.

I had a few minutes to spare, so asked for the Birth, Burial and Marriage records for St Thomas, to try and find my relatives on maternal grandmother's side. Very interesting indeed.

The RGD actually offers a package where they will search your family history for you, for a fee of course. So if you really want to know where you come from, and who your relatives were, you can go on their website.

Now most disturbing, was that they noted who was an illegitimate child, and worse, they noted your complexion. The range was black, brown, and sambo!
And in the Deeds Indeces, when they noted a particular land transaction, they had "coolie" in brackets beside people's names.

The reality of our history hit me like a ton of bricks. Fascinating. Now I know how I got a distinction in history, without studying too much. It's an inborn thing.

I will be back.

Posted by yamfoot at March 18, 2004 09:43 PM