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.
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.
This is a question I’ve seen asked by people new to Genealogy all the time, if you are one of these people I’m going to give you the answer to this question you’ve been searching for.
Yes, there are free Genealogy websites!
The biggest free Genealogy website is FamilySearch, the site is available in 30 languages, and is completely free. All you have to do is sign up for a free account and you will be on your way.
I’ve written about using FamilySearch before in my Finding my Roots In The Caribbean and Who are you? Joseph Boldt posts and this site is really essential, not only can you find records that are also available on Ancestry but you can find records that are not on Ancestry. When I’m working on a tree for someone I will usually go to Familysearch and look for the free records before I move over to Ancestry to find the paid sources. If you haven’t created an account on Familysearch I highly suggest you do so today.
For the Danish West Indies, I use Virgin Islands History, there are so many records here that it should be one of your first stops when looking for family members from the Danish West Indies, most of it is not indexed but some are, so all you have to do is type in your surname and see what shows up.
If you are looking for more recent family then visit FamilySearch or Ancestry sometimes you will have to use both as FamilySearch has Church and Census records that Ancestry just doesn’t seem to have.
I hope this was helpful, and if you have any questions please feel free to leave a comment or visit my Instagram page and send a message there. You can find me on Instagram here :
At the end of October, I received from one of my sisters by way of an aunt who got them from my step-grandmother the baptism records for not only my grandfather but also two of his sisters. This was like a gift from the universe because I had pretty much given up on this side of my family tree with little to no information forthcoming. I was at a dead-end and just did not know how to move forward. I put this branch of my tree on the back burner and turned my attention elsewhere.
I think it was last month or maybe even earlier than that Familysearch released a bunch of indexed records for several Caribbean Islands and Dominica was included, I helped with the indexing but only got records from St. Kitts so I was pleasantly surprised to see Dominica had been included. Unfortunately for me the records included seemed to only be for Saint Patrick parish which I don’t know if either one of my grandparents had family from there. I know they both were born in Roseau which is part of the Saint George parish. I did find a few Xavier in the Saint Patrick parish with a few of the names looking very familiar, one seemed to show up in my brother’s DNA relatives but of course, I have no idea how they are actually related so now I’m attempting to triangulate and group-specific people according to how they are related to my brother and each other. I really need to do my Ancestry test and send it off for that extra connection.
You will need to sign in to actually search the records, if you don’t have an account it’s very easy to sign up for a free account.
Here are the baptism records I received (I tried to improve them so it would be easier to view the information, they were very blurry and hard to read before, some of them still are):
The next baptism record belongs to Mabel Xavier, child of John Xavier and Marian Xavier -Augustus born in Giraudel Dominica on the 16th day of April 1919. She was baptized in the Catholic Church on the 18th day of May 1919. Her sponsors were James Samuel and Josephine S…? I think it’s the same last name from the first record but I can’t really make it out.
The last baptism record belongs to my grandfather, Norbert Anthony Xavier, child of John Xavier and Jane Xavier born in Roseau on the 12th day of June 1931. He was baptized in the Catholic Church on the 12th? day of July 1931. His sponsors were Michael T…? and L…? Nicholson?
I’m left with so many questions after seeing these baptism records, Are Marian and Jane the same person? Are Joseph and John the same person? If so then John has another name to add, my grandfather told me his father was also called Roderick so here we have a John aka Joseph aka Roderick Xavier who was married to a Marian who might or might not be Jane Augustus.
I’m hoping beyond hope that Familysearch transcribes the church records from the Saint George parish, they do have it but it’s a film and I have no way of getting to a Family History Center so the only way will be an index. Next year maybe? Possibly? Please?
I was thinking how crazy it is that I began my genealogy journey in 2006, that’s 14 years ago, way older than my oldest child. I was barely a child myself, 19 years old and I had no clue what I was doing. I just jumped on Ancestry and started putting in names my parents gave me. I hit a huge brick wall because there were so many people with the same name and people frequently used only their middle names or nicknames. I did a google search for my great grandparents’ names which lead me to a thread on Ancestry about a family with that name. It looked correct so I put it in my tree. Biggest rookie mistake ever!
To break this wall I scoured all over the net, looked at several family trees, and then I found a reference somewhere that said he was born in Couëron, I had never heard of this place before.
It makes a bit of sense why he would be considered a Nantes native but it is very unhelpful for a novice. So, I now knew where he was from but I had no idea where to find information about his parents. I asked a question on Wikitree in 2018 asking if anyone could help me find his Acte de naissance or Acte de baptĂŞme. A very helpful person pointed me in the right direction and I found not only his Acte de baptĂŞme but that he had a brother! I haven’t explored much of his brother’s descendants, maybe I should do that sometime soon.
For now, I’m working on the Governors of the US Virgin Islands/Danish West Indies. It is much more challenging work compared to researching my French ancestry. A lot of them were descendants of slaves and those records are not so easy to go through.
If you’re also looking to do some research in the Dansk Vestindien I suggest this site Caribbean Genealogy Library or CGL for short, I find myself using the records for St. Thomas a lot when working with my French side because many of them left St. Barts and ended up in the Virgin Islands. I’m particularly fond of the:
For census records, during Danish time you can find those on Ancestry which of course requires a subscription to use but you can also find the St. Croix census on the Dansk Demografisk Database by Rigsarkivet (Danish National Archives), all you do is enter a name and it will bring you up all instances of that name appearing in the Census records.
Show Household will display everyone that lived in the household.
Show all Fields will show you all the information about the person you were looking for.
It is a pain because you have to search for everyone one by one but it is free so I can’t really complain. I should note that not everyone can be found this way, the record you are looking for might not have been transcribed or the name is spelled differently than you are looking for.
For the more recent Census records you can find them on Ancestry or you can look on FamilySearch, FamilySearch is free to use, you just have to sign up for a free account. It is a very useful site because you can also look up their free world tree to see if your relatives are already on there. If they are you will be notified when you search for records about them. You can see it circled in the photo attached.
There are not that many of us doing Caribbean genealogy on Wikitree so if you are interested in helping I’d suggest joining and helping put our Islands on the map.
Crucianize 