Transcript Death & Taxes Danish West Indies Tax and Probate Records as Genealogical Resources A Presentation by: David W.

Death
&
Taxes
Danish West Indies Tax and Probate
Records as Genealogical Resources
A Presentation by: David W. Knight ©2011
Heritage:
1. property that is or can be inherited.
2. (a) something handed down from one's ancestors or
the past, as a characteristic, a culture, tradition, etc.; (b)
the rights, burdens, or status resulting from being born
in a certain time or place; birthright.[1]
•[1]Webster's New Twentieth Century Dictionary of the English Language, The World Publishing Company, Cleveland
and New York, 1955.
It has been said, "the land is the heritage," and indeed the pattern of a
growing population competing for an ever-diminishing share of the land and its
resources has indelibly marked Virgin Islands history. As far back as the
seventeenth century, “development” did not yield an equitable distribution of
property. Once the arduous task of colonial occupation had been achieved,
competition for the island's limited resources began in earnest.
Even while much of the colony's land remained unclaimed, St. Thomas'
inhabitants had already begun to vie for control of the few established holdings in
an effort to attain greater profitability. Far more prevalent than sale and purchase,
marriage and guardianship were most often the means by which acquisitions were
carried out - a system that inevitably resulted in the consolidation of vast property
holdings by a few wealthy and politically-influential families (in context of the
setting and era, this group is often referred to as the “plantocracy”).
Through economic control and protectionism, this elite cadre of property
owners and their heirs, firmly upheld the exclusionary policies of the colonial
system, which either bound individuals to land they could not possess, or forced
them to reside in rapidly-expanding and increasingly-competitive urban
environments.
By 1730, when the land on St. Thomas and St. John had all been ostensibly portioned
out, the number of individual parcels that comprised the total area of the Danish West Indies
colony was some 270 properties. Only twenty-five years later, by 1755, property consolidation
had reduced this number to only 146 “estates”-- the majority of which were associated through
extended family relationships. These figures reflect a 46% drop in the number of properties
available for ownership; a decrease that could only have resulted in diminishing opportunities and
the perpetuation of the perception of an elevated standing of the land-owning elite.
But, it is the decline in the number of available land holdings when compared against
the steady rise in the colony's population that most vividly underscores the inequity that had
developed. In 1686 the total population of the colony was recorded to have been less than 600
individuals. By 1755, the reported population of the St. Thomas/St. John district stood at about
3,600 persons-- a rise of some 600%. Clearly, while the islands' population had vastly increased,
possession of the land had fallen into the hands of a relatively small segment of the colony's
inhabitants.
This legacy of “plantocratic” control has indelibly marked the Virgin Island landscape.
To this day, the delineations of the “estates” that were created by 1755 remain as our islands’
primary geographical context (Estate Charlotte Amalie, Estate Vessup, Estate Pearl, etc.).
It is no wonder in this place where the vast majority of inhabitants lived on land owned
by so very few, that we inevitably must turn to colonial-era property tax and probate
(inheritance) records in search of insight into the Danish West Indies’ population.
Sources:
Vestindiske - Guineisk Kompagni, Landlister for St. Thomas og St. John, 1730, [Rigsarkivet, Denmark].
Vestindiske - Guineisk Kompagni, Landlister for St. Thomas, 1686, [Rigsarkivet, Denmark].
Vestindiske Reviderede Regnskaber, Matrikler for St. Thomas og St. John, 1755, [Rigsarkivet, Denmark].
Danish West Indies Property Tax Records
The primary bodies of records that
hold comprehensive listings of property ownership
are found in two archival record groups in the
Danish archives.
The first and earliest of these,
collectively referred to as Land Lists, are part of
the Danish West India and Guinea Company
Archives, and contain -- with surprisingly few gaps
-- a contiguous listing of the colony's property
owners and their taxation from 1697 through the
transfer of the colony's administration to the Danish
Crown in 1755.
Additionally, three preceding
documents are found in this group that represent
the earliest existing Land Lists compiled for tax
accounting purposes: one dated 1680, another,
representing a tax period from March 1, 1692
through March 1, 1693, and yet another undated list
attributed to the year 1693 through 1694. Also
included in this record group are five documents
that are in effect the first available censuses of the
St. Thomas colony: one taken in 1680, another in
1686, yet another in 1688, and two completed
between 1690 and 1691.
Detail from the 1686 Land List for St. Thomas
(DWIGC Archive, Rigsarkivet, Denmark)
Compiled as a means to relate the overall make-up of the settlement to Company directors, who
sat far from the shores of Denmark's tropical colony, the Land Lists provide a more
comprehensive and intimate glimpse into the lives and heritage of the early population of the
Danish West Indies than any other single body of existing records.
One of the oldest surviving documents in this group, dated May 15, 1686, was compiled by
order of then Acting Governor, Christopher Heins and signed by the colony's Secretary, John
Lorentz.[1] This document contains the names of all male property owners along with the religion
and place of origin of the inhabitant and his spouse. The quarter location of each inhabitant's
property, the number of children in his household, and the quantity of enslaved men, woman, and
children were also recorded.
It is purely an aside, but of interest as a genealogical note, that of the 136 reported property
owners and their wives recorded in the 1686 census, 51 individuals claim to have been born in
the West Indies. Of these, only 13 were men, meaning that 38 woman, representing 28% of the
colony's total free adult population, were already born to a West Indian heritage. It is therefore
likely that a sizable number of the 127 offspring of these early colonial families, as well as a
portion of St. Thomas' 57 children of African decent, were, after only fourteen years of the
colony's official settlement, West Indian Creoles.
While the details do not remain consistent in format or content, the complete body of Land
Lists through 1755 constitute a valuable resource for genealogical information.
•[1]Note: The copy of this document that appears on the Rigsarkivet micro film -- Roll # S 12.514 -- is incomplete and does not show
the summary or title pages that contain the date and signatures.
The second group of
property tax records, referred to
collectively as “Matrikler” (also
spelled, Matriculer), begin after the
transfer of the Danish West Indies
colony to the Danish Crown in 1755.
These records were compiled annually
up until about 1916. The Matrikler,
which were rigidly formatted and kept
solely as a means of tracking taxation
and statistical population data, can be
broken down into two basic groups: the
Head and Ground Tax Calculations - compiled from 1755 to 1785, and the
Land Registers -- compiled from 1786
through about 1916.
While less directly
informative than the Land Lists as a
genealogical resource, the broader
Matrikler group still yields abundant
information on individuals within the
Danish West Indies community.
Detail from the 1766 Ground and Head Tax Calculations for St. John
(West Indies Local Archive, Rigsarkivet, Denmark)
Detail from the 1803 Matrickler for St. Thomas/St. John showing information regarding the Free Colored population
(West Indies Local Archive, Rigsarkivet, Denmark)
But how might these records be utilized to directly gain information on individuals who do not share a
direct or previously-recorded link to the free property owning population? The answer to this question
is that in many cases they specifically may not, however, in the situation where some insight might be
better than none at all, any individual who is diligently in search of lineage should endeavor to utilize
the colonial property records to the fullest extent. Buried within the formatted text of the Land Lists
and Matriklers are numerous fragments of potentially useful information relating to all elements of the
colony's largely undocumented population.
For example: In an entry for John Lorentz Carsten's plantation of Cabritburg in the 1732/33
Land List, the names of twenty-five enslaved individuals are recorded, and scattered throughout the
1691 Land List not only are the names of indentured servants listed, but also their ages, religions, and
places of birth. In general though, references to non-taxpayers are limited, although not uncommon,
and it takes deeper investigation to yield even fragmentary documentation of the Danish colony's
“shadow-world” of the enslaved, indentured, imprisoned, and itinerant laborers.
However, while not always providing direct genealogical data, the Land Lists and
Matriklers constitute a valuable easily-interpreted research tool for locating substantive blocks of
information on all sectors of the colonial era population. By utilizing these records as a comprehensive
name index, one can expedite the location and retrieval of specific documents that lead to a broad range
of important information.
Keeping in mind that any event that effected the property owner effected every person
associated with that individual, identifying events in the tax and property records that would have
prompted further documentation will often yield references to persons beyond the property owner and
his immediate heirs and descendents. In the Land Lists and Matriklers the most obvious and easily
recognized of these events would, of course, be changes in property ownership. And in the Danish
colonial period changes of property ownership were most often prompted by death -- which, luckily for
genealogists, always prompted a highly-informative form of further documentation: the PROBATE.
Before moving on to probates, it must be stated that while the Matriklers and Land Lists are valuable
sources of genealogical information, as with any research tool a clear understanding of content and
format must first be acquired in order to avoid pitfalls and misinterpretation of the record. When
attempting to utilize the tax records as a genealogical resources, the following factors should always be
considered:
1) While the Land Lists and Matriklers are valuable resources, any conclusions gained through their use
should, whenever possible, be verified through other forms of supporting documentation -- tax avoidance
and misrepresentation is not an uncommon occurrences.
2) While both the Land Lists and Matriklers appear to be listings of a succession of un-associated
individuals, nothing could be farther from the truth. Properties were seldom sold outright from family
hands in this period, and even in cases of sale rather than inheritance, transfers of ownership were most
often conducted amongst extended family. Successive, seemingly-unrelated surnames in association with
a single property can always be assumed to have a family connection when searching for potential
relationships.
3) An awareness of a variety of naming practices is essential to genealogical research and will go a long
way toward helping to associate the seemingly un-associated names in these records. Many differing
ethnic and regional patterns of naming appear throughout these early records -- an indication of the
eclectic makeup of the Danish colony. The use of patronymics, for example, as in Jurgen Hanson being
the first son of Hans Jurgen, was a common practice among Scandinavians and Northern Europeans.
Trade or geographical designators such as Bødker, for someone whose occupation was a barrel maker, or
Englsman, to distinguish an individual of English origin, are commonly found utilized as surnames. Also
remember that women seldom took on the names of their husbands after marriage until well into the
eighteenth century. And, during this same time period, the first two children of each gender were often
named for their four grandparents -- starting with the paternal side of the family. Even up until modern
times family naming patterns can be recognized and their identification is often the key to sorting out
issues of lineage that inevitably occur in genealogical research.
It should be additionally noted, that due to the diverse nature of the colony and the fact that
the language of record was quite different from the languages spoken by the broader
population, transliteration is a constant factor to be dealt with throughout Danish Colonial era.
Indeed, many spellings of the same name are a common occurrence, and some names even
morph over a period of years into spellings that appear quite alien to their original form.
4) Be cognizant of changes in context of information as the content of the records change over
a period of years. For example: All free heads-of-households (usually, but not always males),
regardless of racial heritage, were required to pay a “head tax” for themselves, their domestic
partner, of-age children and any of their taxable slaves from about 1692 until the year 1764;
and, it is only in this time period that all free inhabitants of the colony are included in the
Land Lists and Matriklers. Also realize, that alphabetical lists and/or indexes found in these
records up to c1783 record all persons by their first name; while, between 1783 and 1834 only
“white” inhabitants were listed alphabetically by surname, and after 1835 no racial distinction
was (legally) allowed in the way names were officially recorded.
5) Finally, it should never be assumed that documentation in even the earliest colonial tax and
property records is exclusive to people of a particular background. As early as the 1680s
inhabitants of mixed or African descent are listed as being in possession of plantations and
slaves, and, before the end of the first quarter of the 18th century a rapidly-increasing group of
Free Colored residents and property owners began to appear within the broader boundaries of
what we know of today as the town of Charlotte Amalie. Although the majority of the
individuals reported in the Land List and Matriklers share some degree of European ancestry,
these records represent a complete cross-section of the Danish West Indian population.
Danish West Indies Probate Records
The broader Danish West Indies probate
records are often referred to as “skifte”
documents, a Danish word that literally
translates into English as “change.”
And for genealogists, change is good.
Danish West Indies probate records are, arguably, the most important genealogical
resources in the Danish archives. Few other archived record groups are as complete, or as
consistent in content over the entire Danish colonial period, as the probate records.
From the earliest years of Danish settlement in the 17th century, through to Transfer to the
United States in 1917, it was mandated that all deaths of property owners (either tangible
or presumed; free or unfree) were to be reported to the authorities within twenty-four
hours to be logged into the “Probate Register.” The probate process ensured that any
inheritance of wealth, capital and equity, was properly distributed amongst legitimate
heirs and creditors, and that the government (and in some periods the church) got their
fair share of any fees or taxes due them. Very broadly speaking, the Danish West Indies
probate records can be broken down into three primary groups, each of which represent a
consecutive step in the probate process:
Registrations, “Registerings”, where deaths were recorded and assigned a case number,
and each estate was evaluated.
Probate proceedings, “Skifteretsessions”, the hearings where supporting documents such
as appraisals, reconciliations of debt, and testaments were presented.
Probate case papers, “Skiftedokumenter”, resolutions of the probate court and all
supporting documentation relating to the case – otherwise known as genealogical pay-dirt.
While specific names given to these record groups throughout the finding aids will vary
(and in some instances the records are merged with other procedures, such as in the case
of volumes titled Registerings og Vurderings Protokol and Registrerings Vurderings
Sessions og Testament Protokol), the basic content remains the same with little variation
in format throughout the period.
The earliest probate records for the
Danish West Indies are found within the
West India and Guinea Company
Archive (1671-1754).
During the first years of
colonial settlement most references to
death and inheritance are found in the
governor’s journals and Company
copybooks, but by c1689 specific
probate cases begin to appear in the
record. By 1693 onwards there becomes
good continuity in probate registrations,
and within this group there is a complete
set of probate registrations for West
India and Guinea Company employees
and functionaries for the dates 1675
through 1754.
Also, scattered throughout these records
are numerous reams of case papers for
high-profile or notable individuals, such
as Governor Jørgen Iversen, who was
killed in a mutiny, or Willam Vessup,
who had fled the colony after
committing a murder.
Detail from a probate register with entries from 1726 through 1734
(West India and Guinea Company Archive, Rigsarkivet, Denmark)
While a search of the West India and Guinea Company Archive will indeed yield some
important probate documents, it is another archival group within the broader
collections of the Rigsarkivet (Danish National Archives) that houses the bulk of the
Danish West Indies’ probate documents: the “West Indian Local Archive.”
Here, in section #13, in the records of the
St. Thomas Byfoged, and section #35, in
the records of the St. John Landfoged, are
found the near-contiguous records for St.
Thomas and St. John probate cases
between the years 1717 through 1893, at
which point, the material housed in
Denmark abruptly ends.
A sampling of some of the St. Thomas probate materials found
on the Danish National Archive’s shelf list:
Rigsarkivet, West Indian Local Archives
Section #13: St. Thomas Byfoged, 1717 – 1909
Entry 23, Skifteretssessionsprotokoller,1736 – 1893,
Boxes 23.1 through 23.15
Entry 24, Sager til Skifteretssessionsprotokoller, 1815 – 1893
Boxes 24.1 through 24.158
Entry 25, Testamentprotokoller for Skifteretten, 1787 – 1874
Boxes 25.1 through 25.5
Entry 26, Registerings og Vurderingsprotokoller, 1734 – 1891
Boxes 26.1 through 26.16
Entry 27, Skiftebrevsprotokoller for Indvånere, 1717 – 1766
Boxes 27.1 through 27.13
Entry 28, Skiftebrevsprotokoller for Plantere, 1726 through 1734
Boxes 28.1 through 28.6
Etc… through entry number 40.0
So… just where are the Danish
West Indies probate records that
seemingly fall off the Rigsarkivet
shelf lists after 1893?
Entry 647
Probate Case Papers 1870-1917
Box 1708
Box 1709 - 1710
Box 1711
Box 1712
Box 1713 - 1714
Box 1714 - 1715
Box 1716
Box 1717- 1721
Box 1772
Box 1723
Box 1724
Housed in the United States National Archives II in College
Park, Maryland, is Record Group #55: The Records of the
Government of the Virgin Islands, Danish West Indies, 1672
– 1917. Within that record group will be found the
remainder of the St. Thomas and St. John probate case
papers for the years 1870 through 1917.
Box 1725
Box 1726
Box 1727
Box 1728
Box 1729
Box 1730
Box 1731
Box 1732
Box 1733
Box 1734
When examined from the perspective of sheer
volume and continuity, no other archival record
group can match the potential to yield substantive
genealogical information like the Danish West
Indies probate records.
Box 1735
Box 1736
Box 1737
Box 1738
Box 1739
Entry 728
Case Papers before the Probate
Court 1883-1910
Box 1906
Box 1907
Box 1908
What sort of material might a researcher find
within the case papers in the Danish West Indies
probate records?
 Wills and testaments
 Lists of heirs and relations
 Genealogical charts
 Property appraisals and valuations
 Household, business, and plantation inventories
Testimonials
 Slaves lists
 Business and personal financial accounts
 Bills and outstanding debts
 Burial information
 Newspaper announcements
 Auction papers
 Personal letters and photos
 and much more…
Acknowledgement of the paternity of
Abraham Hassell from the probate of
Henry Hassell
(VLA13.24.43, Case #56, 1828)
A Genealogical chart of the heirs of siblings John and Eliza McKay
from the probate of their deceased sister Miss Ann McKay
(VLA13.24.150, Case # 13, 1886)
Auction account for the effects of
the deceased Deborah Levy Maduro
(VLA13.24.75, Case #17, 1843)
Auction notice in the St. Croix
Avis for Great Cinnamon Bay on
St. John from the probate of estate
owner Thomas Ivinsen
(VLA 35.41.14, Case #14, 1857)
The last will and testament of
Reverend Thomas Braithwaite of
Tortola and St. John from the
probate of Jane Braithwaite
(VLA 35.41.3, Case # 13, 1827)
Listing of slaves belonging to Sarah Susanna Yarr of estate Concordia on St. John
(VLA 35.41.8, Case # 16, 1838)
Attest to the heirs of the deceased Maria
Louise Roberts of East End St. John by her
brother Henry Roberts
(NA 55.647.1729, Case # na, 1882)
Six of the eleven photographs found in the probate case papers of Julius Christian Rasmussen
(VLA13.24.135, Case #14, date of death: April 24, 1874).
Property appraisal for Estate
Carolinas Lyst on Water Island
from the probate of the estate
owner Benjamin Barton
(VLA13.24.95, Case # 3, 1843)
List of immediate family
members of the deceased Ann
Abbott, born Haddocks, of the
island of Great St. James
(VLA13.24.63, Case #14, 1836)
Death certificate issued in New
York City on August 15, 1911
for the death of Emil Hudson
Crooks Haggenson [sic.], son
of Hans and Julia Magens
Haagensen of St. Thomas
(NA 55.647.1736, Case #41,
1913)