Inter-Island Connections in the Lesser Antilles Conference

This conference is being held in person on St. Thomas, and also virtually. It is a three-day conference, from February 23rd through February 25th, 2023. Sessions include "Making Connections in the Early Lesser Antilles", "The Challenges of Doing Family History in the Lesser Antilles", "Antillean Family Histories in the Twentieth Century", "Food Ways, Survival and Resistance in the Lesser Antilles", "The Islands of Green Gold" and "Migrants and Their Communities in the Lesser Antilles and Beyond". 

In this conference, we gather Caribbean historians and genealogists of the Lesser Antilles to ask how the archipelagic setting of the Lesser Antilles shaped island existence in the past and how it influences families, friends, and institutions today. Twenty talks are expected, including topics related to the Virgin Islands and other neighboring islands of the Caribbean.

For centuries, islanders living on small islands, in close proximity and with a limited resource base, have turned towards their neighbors across the sea. They have crossed formal and informal borders to carve out places for themselves and their loved ones. It is this dynamic of inter-island movement that we wish to explore at the conference. We ask what conventional historical and archaeological evidence tells us about inter-island movements and how family histories and genealogical research can enrich, complicate, and qualify the historical record.

Organized by the Caribbean Genealogy Library, the University of the Virgin Islands, and the IN THE SAME SEA research project, University of Copenhagen.

Registration/Ticket:
In Person Only: $20 per person
Virtual Only: $20 per person
In Person and Virtual (Same Attendee): $20 per person
Students: Free (Requires Valid University Student ID) 

Purchase your ticket(s) using the yellow Buy Ticket button on this page.

All ticket sales are final and non-refundable. Tickets cannot be exchanged or refunded after purchase unless the conference is cancelled and not rescheduled.

Conference Recordings: Talks offered in the conference will be recorded as allowed by the presenters. The recordings will be made available to attendees allowing the opportunity to listen to a talk again or view one that was missed. The recordings will be available after the conference ends. 

Location for Live Event: University of the Virgin Islands, St. Thomas Campus, ACC Building
Virtual Attendance: Via Zoom

Days/Times:
February 23rd, 2023; from 1pm to 5pm
February 24th, 2023; from 9:00am to 3pm
February 25th, 2023; from 9:00am to 4:30pm

List of Speakers & Talks:

Conference Day 1: February 23, 2023, 1pm to 5pm
Location: UVI St. Thomas Campus, ACC Building & Virtual on Zoom

Joy D. Lewis: “A United Virgin Islands?”

Costantino Nicolizas: Amerindian navigation in the Antilles: From mobility to structure

Martijn M. van den Bel: The Prize Papers revealing the social network of Dutch merchants on St Christopher, Guadeloupe and Martinique in 1664

Astrid Girault: Baptismal and wedding parties as ways for slaves to create and maintain family ties

David Knight Sr: Daughters of Eden; The Role of Creole Women in the Founding of the Danish Colony on St. Thomas in the Seventeenth Century

Conference Day 2: February 24th 9am to 3pm
Location: UVI St. Thomas Campus, ACC Building & Virtual on Zoom

Jacklyn Lawrence: The Gerard-Crameaus and Me: Finding My Free-Colored Family in the Danish West Indies

Stephanie Duzant: The Importance of Cultural Identity for a Stateside born St. Johnian: Living a
Virgin Island life in the Continental States

Michele D. Bertrand: “The Bertrands Between the World Wars”

Myron Jackson: Red Peas Soup: The Collective Memory and Cultural Heritage of a People

Dante Beretta: How Ms.Verna’s ancestors came to settle on the island of St. Thomas

Gabriëlle La Croix: "Heyligers in Power: The influence of Johannes Heyliger Pieterszoon, and his family network, on the Leeward Islands"

Mary-Jane Roth: An Inter-Island Merchant Family

Conference Day 3: February 25, 9am to 4:30pm
Location: UVI St. Thomas Campus, ACC Building & Virtual

Enrique Corneiro: How Did I Get Here?: Fugitives in the Danish West Indies

Cush Cuthbertson-Sewer: Food, Farming, and Black Resistance in the Virgin Islands: 1733 & Food Sovereignty

Mary Draper: Dry Weather: Drought and the Inter-island Water Trade in the Eighteenth-Century Leeward Islands

Jon Euwema: The Islands of Green Gold

Don Wallicek: Difference and Belonging in Nineteenth-Century Samaná: the Significance of Inter Island Connections

John Angus Martin: The “Mount Moritz Bajans”: Grenada’s Lost White Tribe

Timothy Hodge: The migration of Anguillians to neighboring Caribbean islands: its impacts on Anguilla and contributions to the islands they migrated to

Vincent Cooper: The Relocations of British Colonial Capitals and the Cooper Family Migration to the Dominican Republic, Cuba, and the Virgins—A Preliminary Report