Crucianize

Category: Danish West Indies

  • Finding Sarah Holm

    Finding Sarah Holm

    If there is one ancestor who has evaded all my research skills it is my 2x great grandmother Sarah Holm, the amount of evidence !i have that Sarah did exist is very minimal, five pieces of primary records, I have tried to look forward but couldn’t find her in any record after 1920, I have tried going backwards but hit a brick wall in 1908.

    She is truly one of the most elusive people I have had to research and I can’t help but ponder, just  who are you Sarah? Were you hiding from someone or just didn’t know your correct age?

    Let’s go over everything I currently have, starting with the 1908 baptism record of my great uncle Harold Olanzo Smith. Harold was born on November 14, 1908 to Michael Smith of Tortola, British Virgin Islands and Sarah Holm of St. Thomas, Danish West Indies. Michael was 38 while Sarah was 33 at the time of Harold’s birth.

    Harold Smith’s baptism line 286

    1911 Census

    In 1911, Sarah lived in Mandenberg which was located in New Quarter on St. Thomas, she was 35 years old and worked as a Coal Worker and had two children, Harold 2 years old and another child identified as a boy with no age given.

    Sarah and children located on the bottom

    In 1914, Sarah gave birth to my great grandfather Alfredo Alexander Boyles also known as Alfredo Pedrito Boynes. Alfredo was born on May 26, 1914 to Joseph Alexander Boyles and Sarah Holm, Joseph was 45 years old and Sarah was 35, here is where the age discrepancies begin, in 1911 Sarah was 35, there is no way she was still 35 a whole 3 years later.

    Alfredo Boyles’ baptism line 46

    Sarah gave birth to my last great aunt in 1916. On November 12, 19166, Sarah and Joseph had another child, the baptism record lists the child as being male and named Arthur but on the left hand side there is a remark about the child actually being female. Joseph was 42 years old and Sarah was till 35 years old. Even more interesting Agatha later on gave her birth date as January 14, 1917 which was the date she was baptized.

    Agatha Boyles’ baptism line 2

    The last piece of primary source I could find, the 1920 Census, fun fact the 1920 Census was actually taken in 1917 up to 1918 so the dates are almost always wrong, sometimes I come across people with the right birth year but it’s mostly off by two years. In 1920, Sarah was living in Altona, which was located on the Southern East section of the island. She was 40 years old and living with three children, Mary J Griffith 11 years old, Agatha Boyles 1 years old, and Alfredo Boyles 3 years old. I’m not sure where Harold was at this time.

    Sarah and children located on the bottom

    An interesting piece of information I came across recently gave me some more clue to who Sarah might have been, this piece of information was an interview Mary Jane did when she was 99 years old. On October 9, 2004, In an interview with the St. Thomas Source, Mary Jane spoke about her life, how she met her husband and what she remembered of the day the islands were sold to the United States. She spoke about how her father was a carpenter, her mother grew vegetables to sell, Mary Jane states that she was the oldest of four children and was born on May 10, 1905 in Park Yard. I have not been able to find any baptism records to confirm this date nor do I have any clue as to where Park Yard might have been on St. Thomas.

    I’m afraid the only way I will get any answers is through DNA but Mary Jane had no children, I’m uncertain if Agatha had children, none of my known cousins on my grandmother’s side of the family has tested and none show any signs of being interested. I have one grandchild of Harold’s but there are very few connections, it did lead me to the grandchild of my grandmother’s half sister which also lead me to the NPE I discovered and posted about before Detective Lynnette and the Case of the Mysterious DNA Relative, this mystery cousin has a few relatives in common but I have not been able to make any connections between her tree and the other matches, if I could find a match betwen thm then I can find the connection to me as well.

    I guess I will be back to looking through my DNA relatives, those of my brother and those of my father as well.

  • Agnes Ancita Bastian

    Recently I was able to fit a missing piece into my puzzle thanks to a stranger on FamilySearch.

    For so many years I’ve been searching for proof that my great aunt Agnes Bastian was the daughter of Casper and the full sister of Ann Loratia Bastian but that pesky baptism record eluded me for so many years, no matter what combination of names or dates I put in I just could not find that baptism record. That is until I went onto FamilySearch after a little break and saw that someone attached a document to my great aunt, I was intrigued, usually, I am the one finding records and connecting them to other people’s relatives. I wasn’t convinced even if the names sounded similar, I had never heard the middle name Ancita before so I took a closer look at the record, and there it was.

    “Virgin Islands US, Church Records, 1765-2010”, database with images, FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:6ZF3-9558 : 29 December 2021), Agnes Ancita Bastian, 1918.

    Agnes Ancita Bastian was born on October 21, 1917, and baptized on January 15, 1918, the daughter of Caspar Bastian and Maud Hinds.

    Before this record popped up all I had to go by was the1930, 1940, and some travel records which unfortunately did not give her birthdate just her age and an estimated birth year which said around 1917.

    So now I have confirmed that Agnes and Ann Loratia Bastian; Ann was born on December 24, 1914, and baptized on February 6, 1915, were both the daughters of Casper Bastian.

    St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands, Slave and Free People Records, 1779-1921, Ancestry.com

    There is an older sister, Esmeralda Bastian who was born on October 29, 1911, according to her baptism record but no father is recorded, given that Ann and Agnes followed after I assumed that Casper was also her father but I have no proof.

    I guess I will just have to continue searching and hope that maybe another kind soul will stumble across it and link it for me again.

  • Family Hidden in Plain View

    Have I just found Christina Chamberlain’s mother?

    That is the question that I am currently asking myself, have I in fact discovered the mother and sibling of Christina Chamberlain right there in a Census document that I have looked at several times before?

    The document in question is the 1870 Danish West Indies Census, here you can see Christina with Ancilla living next to her “father” Ludwick Chamberlain, and in the house above is Catherine “Caty” Simmons. I’ve seen the name Simmons before, in the trees of people who seem to have the same relatives as I do but they haven’t tested or maybe they have and we don’t match? Whatever it is I never ran across them in my brother’s DNA relatives and I have not seen them in mine.

    U.S. Virgin Islands Census, 1835-1911 (Danish Period)

    This record alone isn’t enough to say Hey! That’s her Mama, it was the other records that I found that made this even more compelling, here is Caty and Christina in the 1860 Danish West Indies Census, it lists Christina as her daughter.

    Danish West Indies, Denmark, Census, 1835-1911

    And here in the 1857 Census is Caty with Judy Powlis also known as Judith her other daughter and Judy’s son Carl.

    Danish West Indies Census, 1841-1901

    In the 1850 Census, I found Catherine, Judith, and Christina in the same place. I have not identified the other people yet, possible relatives? Maybe.

    Danish West Indies, Denmark, Census, 1835-1911

  • Breaking a 16-year brick wall – George Petersen

    My Great Grandmother on my father’s maternal side was Valderia Eugenie Petersen, she was the daughter of Maud Hines and George Petersen.

    I know a lot about Val’s mother and her mother’s maternal family but her father was a mystery because all I had was his name.

    The only reason I even knew his name was because of the index for Valderia’s Social Security Application.

    It has taken me 16 years to finally find his family, with the help of DNA relatives on Ancestry and knowing more about genealogy now than I did when I was 19, I was able to build a family tree of only men with the name George Petersen born between 1870 and 1905. I choose those dates because I knew Valderia was born in 1920 and her father could have been anywhere between the ages of 50 and 15. I have seen very young parents in my searches so 15 is not common but not unheard of.

    I’m getting a little ahead of myself so let me backtrack a bit, before I even began my George Petersen tree I identified DNA relatives from my father’s maternal side of the family and those who were not related to Val’s mother’s side I separated and focused on building branches for them in my own tree with the hopes that I would find the connection but the higher I got on their trees the more I didn’t recognize the names. It was also more difficult because some of them didn’t have any shared connections! They were puzzles that intrigued me. I could see that they were related to each other somehow but my brother just didn’t have the same shared DNA with each of them.

    This is when I got the idea to look for all the George Petersens, and there were so many of them that I just started labeling them I, II, all the way up to XIII. George Petersen XIII (13) was the one!

    His full name was George Henry Petersen born on June 26, 1879, to George Henry Petersen and Lydia Gasper. Gasper also spelled as Jasper and Yasper is a name I’ve seen in my DNA relatives’ trees and I got that lightbulb feeling that this had to be him, he never showed up in any of their trees but his grandmother on his mother’s side was the half-sibling of my brother’s DNA relatives’ 3rd Great grandfather, 4th Great grandfather, and through another side, his mother was the sister of these relatives Great grandmother.

    St. Croix, Danish West Indies, Denmark, Records of Enslaved and Free People, 1779-1921 for George Henry Petersen

    When I entered his information into my tree and attached him as Valderia’s father, I had to wait the next day to check the Thrulines to see if it would show me anything interesting and it did.

    I found 3 other DNA relatives, one of them was only 7cM which I didn’t really pay any attention to because of how small it was and they literally shared no common matches so I had no idea they belonged on my grandmother’s side but it makes me feel good because this meant that I had found the right person.

    Days like these show me why I love Genealogy and pairing DNA testing with it. Conventional Geneaology can only get you so far it’s the DNA that will help you break those decade-long brick walls.

    My focus now will be to find the father of my 2nd great-grandmother, Maude Hines. I know that he has to be a Hynes from St. Croix because I have DNA relatives with the Hynes last name and they share common relatives from my grandmother’s family but they do not match with my grandmother’s father or her most of her maternal side. There’s some overlap which isn’t surprising with the size of the Island but the connection is there and it’s waiting for me, I just have to find it.

  • Who are you? Joseph Boldt

    I wrote about Joseph Boldt before in this post and this one as well. Since those posts, I have done a lot more fact-checking and some stuff is just not accurate anymore. Genealogy as you might not know is very fluid and things you thought you had checked and double-checked could always use a triple check.

    First things first, Joseph and Christina’s first daughter was not Adelaide as I had assumed but Ancilla Boldt, this was not a middle name or nickname but her actual name. Ancilla was born on August 7, 1869, and she passed away on March 18, 1881, when she was 11 years old.

    Burial records 1881 St. Croix, Danish West Indies

    This record was the reason I went back through the records I had for Adelaide and realized that there were records for 3 people. There was Ancilla born in 1869, Adelaide born in 1883, and another Adelaide Boldt born in 1853. I now have Ancilla and my Adelaide accounted for but have no idea who the older Adelaide is. I’ve been trying to build a mirror tree for her but she is a complete mystery to me and I’ve shelved it for a little while. I’m more interested in Joseph and what secrets he has for me.

    So, Joseph, I know was born in the 1840s and his mother’s name was Precill or something close to it so I focused on looking for birthdates with names close to it. I came across this entry:

    Baptism records 1842 St. Croix, Danish West Indies

    The name Sames made no sense to me so I looked at the record more closely and the name is obviously James.

    Joseph was born on April 3, 1842, parents are James and Priscilla from Mt. Stewart.

    This could be his parents, this could be my 5th great-grandparents but I’m not sure. They both have no surnames so I’m assuming they are slaves. I viewed a Session during RootsTech Connect that said slaves took names that had a meaning to them. The name of their master, their master’s mother, or grandmother, whoever it was the slave knew them and took the name for themselves during slavery and kept it. I’m now tracking every Boldt I can find on the Island. Somewhere there has to be a clue.

    Very recently I found some new records that suggest there was another daughter named Rebecca, there’s no image available to view but the Household number leads me to believe this was one of my great aunts.

    1880 Census St. Croix, Danish West Indies

    Unfortunately, she passed away in 1900 before she could turn 23.

    Burial records 1900 St. Croix, Danish West Indies

    She’s old enough to have had children but I haven’t come across any so far.

    As for Christina, I think I found some of her family, possibly her father and two aunts. I was looking over the 1870 Census when I noticed a familiar last name, Chamberlain. Family in the Danish West Indies almost always stuck close to each other so it’s telling that the only other family I found with this last name lived right next to Christina and Ancilla.

    1870 Census St. Croix, Danish West Indies

    Going back to Joseph’s parents in the 1870 Census Priscilla shows up as Precill Karen. She’s an Invalid living with her son Joe and sister Magdalene Karen who is also invalid.

    1870 Census St. Croix, Danish West Indies

    In the 1880 Census, she is Percila Boldt, there’s no image available for this record so I have if I look at the household number it’s safe to assume she was living with Joseph and his family.

    Percila is very close to Priscilla so even if these specific people aren’t my great grandparents I’m going to refer to Precill as Priscilla from now on.

    I haven’t had much luck finding any other Karens on the Island so it just might be a misspelling. So far the closest names I have found are Caren, Cairnes, Cairns, Karn, Kern, and Keron.

    My Boldt Collection:

    After going through the Census records which include Baptism, Burials, and Marriages I have collected quite a few Boldts to see if I could find a link to my family.

    • James Boldt born on 28 November 1854 in St. Croix, Danish West Indies, he went by the name Bolde while becoming Naturalized in Massachusetts.
    Familysearch

    I have not found a baptism record for him. I did find him in the 1870 Census living in a house owned by Sarah Jane Boldt. I’m still doing research into who this might be.

    I’m now trying to work downwards from the connections I have made but it is very slow going because I’m not sure if they went to other Islands or other countries.