Online Exhibit: Caribbean Histories

The U.K. National Archives launched an online exhibit that covers 300 years of Caribbean history, from the 17th century through 1926. It offers maps, photos, letters and petitions.

This new resource, launched in March, marks the culmination of 'Your Caribbean Heritage', a three-year project at the National Archives, supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund. The project has created 125,000 new online record descriptions relating to the Caribbean, making the documents more easily accessible to a wider audience.

The territory covered includes Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda, The Bahamas, Barbados, Bay Islands [Honduras], Belize, Bermuda, the British Virgin Islands, the Cayman Islands, St Croix, Curaçao, Dominica, Dominican Republic, St Eustatius, Grenada, Guadeloupe, Guyana, Havana Province [Cuba], Jamaica, St. Kitts, St. Lucia, Martinique, Montserrat, Nevis, Surinam, Tobago, Trinidad, the Turks & Caicos, St. Vincent and the Grenadines.

There are many entries of Jewish interest, including a petition (CO 137/2 folio 208) sent by members of the Jamaican Jewish community after a 1692 hurricane and a 1914 request for British naturalization of Mr. Sally Wolffsohn of British Honduras (Belize).

Names referenced in the petition are somewhat incorrect in the document's transcript, and I read the correct names of the petitioners from the document image as Isaque Fernandez Diaz, Isaque Moses Baruch, Isaque Nunez, Phineas Abarbanel, Isaque Rodrigue, Sousa Aron Jacob, Soares Samuel, Careses? Jacob David, Robles Isaque Monoes? (Gutierer).

The men, named as merchants, also mention the "terrible earthquake which happened there on ye 7th of June," and that they have lost everything.