MAPPING FREEDOM: From slavery to freedom in the U.S. Virgin Islands

MAPPING FREEDOM will produce a database of the permanent and transient population of the Danish West Indies (today the U.S. Virgin Islands) from 1841 to 1917. It will be a decisive research tool for documenting the effect of legal freedom on the lives of formerly enslaved people, enslavers, and their descendants.

View of the harbor of Charlotte Amalie, St. Thomas (Fritz Melbye, 1851-52, courtesy of the Maritime Museum of Denmark
View of the harbor of Charlotte Amalie, St. Thomas (Fritz Melbye, 1851-52, courtesy of the Maritime Museum of Denmark).

The MAPPING FREEDOM database will contain reconstructed life trajectories and family relationships of individuals who lived in or visited the Danish West Indies from 1841 to 1917, a period of time that includes emancipation (1848). The database will include data from censuses, parish records, and passenger lists, providing information on more than 150,000 individuals.

Upon conclusion, the MAPPING FREEDOM database will have free open access. With this research tool, genealogists, historians and other scholars of the Caribbean will find a wealth of information to enrich their research.

 

 

 

MAPPING FREEDOM is a collaboration between University of Copenhagen, the Danish National Archives and the Caribbean Genealogy Library, St. Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands. Each partner contributes with domain expertise.

Researchers and data analysts from the Danish National Archives hold decisive knowledge about how to mobilize machine learning to establish historical life trajectories, and the partners from the Caribbean Genealogy Library bring detailed knowledge of the documentary records. Dr. Gunvor Simonsen, the project’s principal investigator, is an expert on Caribbean social history.

To read more about the partners, please visit:

 

 

 

 

 

 

MAPPING FREEDOM is fortunate to have a strong group of scholars from the U.S. Virgin Islands advising our work. Our Advisory board consists of:

  • George F. Tyson, PhD (h.c.), State Historian of the U.S. Virgin Islands, author, cultural resource specialist
  • Molly F. Perry, PhD, Assistant Professor of History and Geography, University of the Virgin Islands
  • Lauren Prince, PhD Graduate Student (Africana Studies), Brown University

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

MAPPING FREEDOM secures the quality of its results by working with experienced genealogists of the U.S. Virgin Islands. Coordinated by the Caribbean Genealogy Library, they perform hands-on linking of the data, which will enable us to build robust models for automatic linking. The data analysts are:

  • Jacklyn Lawrence
  • Leayle Robinson
  • Mary Roebuck 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

People

University of Copenhagen

Name Title Phone E-mail
Gunvor Simonsen Associate Professor - Promotion Programme +4551299335 E-mail

External

The Danish National Archives

Caribbean Genealogy Library, St. Thomas, USVI

Funding

Mapping Freedom is generously supported by the Carlsberg Foundation (grant CF24-1610).

Project period: April 2025 - March 2027

PI: Dr. Gunvor Simonsen