On July 16th Ancestry.com, in conjunction with the Virgin Islands
Social History Association (VISHA), launched the 1st installment of
newly digitized St. Croix-Virgin Islands slave records.  Part of the
St. Croix African Roots Project, the two databases now available,
St. Croix Slave Lists (1772-1821) and Population Census (1835-1911),
will be freely available until July 31st: http://bit.ly/IbxiE

For some background information on this project, check out:
http://bit.ly/18jsf2
Genealogy for African Americans presents its own unique sets of challenges, largely because records like these are hard to come by. If you are African American and interested in your family history, but not sure where to start, Black Roots: A Beginners Guide To Tracing The African American Family Tree, is a great place to start. You can find it, and many other genealogy guides in the Genealogy Research section of our virtual bookstore.

The Brooklyn Paper’s going Dutch this week? The newspaper’s title banner has been changed to the Dutch spelling of the word (or at least a version of the Dutch spelling) and is replete with an animated windmill. Jasper Danckaerts would be thrilled – though perhaps not as much with reporter Shannon Gies’ “good riddance” send off of Danckaerts and the Labadists.

As for the Breukelen/Breuckelen spelling of the Dutch-settled land – this is something that BHS debated about during the preparation of the Pages of the Past exhibit. After all, BHS has a t-shirt that uses the spelling with the ‘c’, and yet Danckaerts’ very diary from 1679, around which the exhibit is centered, drops the ‘c’ consistently in his descriptions of the new land. After consulting with the scholars who were assisting us with the exhibit we learned that both spellings were used in the middle-Dutch writing of the day. We decided to be consistent with Danckaert’s usage of the word and retain his spelling. So keep that tidbit in mind when you’re around town at other events celebrating 400 years of Dutch influence in New York.