In 1949, Axel H. Oxholm conducted a survey of the Virgin Islands. He received wholeheartedly the cooperation and assistance from local and federal officials, civic organizations, the business community, and industrialists of the islands. This survey of the Virgin Islands took place during the William H. Hastie administration, the first appointed Black governor of the Virgin Islands. We are in the beginning of the hurricane season. September of 2025 will be eight years if nothing has been done to restore Whim Museum’s historic structures since the impact of Hurricane Maria in 2017.
Listen to what Oxholm said 76 years ago as part of his report to the local government. So interesting are these old buildings, he said, that the Danish government is now selecting a typical plantation mansion to be dismantled and rebuilt in Denmark. It would be of great cultural value, Oxholm said, if a representative mansion of the island’s golden age in the 18th century could be set aside, equipped with period furniture, and otherwise restored to give posterity an idea of life in the Virgin Islands during the period when sugar was King.
One of the jewels of Whim Museum is the library. In my opinion, there are no libraries in the Virgin Islands, both public and private, that can stand taller with the wealth of cultural information to the people of these islands and the wider Caribbean region than the Whim Museum library. It is one of the best cultural treasures comprising historic documents, reports, old photographs of the islands and it people, historic maps, letters of the 17th 18th and 19th centuries, sketches, magazines, and old books — an endless list of information about the history of the Virgin Islands.
What put the Whim Museum library on the worldwide map digitally is when the African Roots Project came online. Dr. George Tyson, a local historian and president of the Virgin Islands Social History Associates, and others for more than seven years worked on transcribing thousands, and tens of thousands of records from the Danish colonial period of St. Croix, which includes census reports, church records, tax records, enslaved and “free slave” lists, school records, and centuries of unread documents on the shelves of the Danish National Archive, as well as the United States Archives of early rule of these islands.
This database created at the Whim Museum library is a search engine of more than 1.8 million entries that helps researchers, educators, archeologists, historians, students — an endless list of professional and ordinary people like you and me. But, most importantly, Crucians can learn about their ancestors or people in general of how they lived back then, from 1734 when St. Croix was purchased from the French to when the islands were transferred to the United States in 1917.
Crucians or Virgin Islanders can trace their families back and even at times what slave ship our ancestors came on or the place in Africa where they had been kidnapped and brought to the Danish West Indies colonies. Believe me, these are powerful historical documents the Whim Museum library possesses. It has become well known worldwide for its cultural and historical resources.
With the digital age that we live in, the Whim library has become a mecca where hundreds or even thousands of people have come to the shores of St. Croix throughout the years to use its resources for obtaining valuable historical documents for conducting research, such as writing a thesis, dissertation, research paper, genealogy of searching family roots, researching who owned what estates on St. Croix — documenting the very essence of peoples’ lives who lived several centuries ago.
Over the years, people worldwide have donated boxes of historical materials relative to Virgin Islands history, the Caribbean, and research conducted by professional researchers, students, etc. In fact, I have worked over the years with students from Denmark and the U.S., as well as internationally giving researchers assistance with their research findings. Believe me, Whim library was the major source to gather this information, particularly its historical documents.
The library at Whim has grown so much that the old historical cistern under the library building was converted to a state-of-the-art storage facility with air conditioning with shelves housing thousands upon thousands of materials pertaining to the history of the Virgin Islands, the Caribbean, Denmark, and other regions around the world. Carol Wakefield has worked for donkey years at Whim Museum as a librarian. Carol was a great asset to the development of the museum library. After she retired, she still can be found at the museum volunteering her expertise in the library.
She was credited for the establishment of the family history center and research library and archives of Whim library museum. Jerry Dorward and Mary Roebuck, who I call cultural historians, are valuable assets as volunteers to the library. Dorward can speak Danish and Mary Spanish, which are valuable assets doing research at Whim. These two native Crucians helped hundreds of people over the years searching for family trees, etc., etc., and people who visit the library from around the world. All in the name of volunteerism!
I was taught as a child that when you are in the library you must be quiet. I was told that Whim library is not all the time quiet. People cried when they found information about their family tree. I mean really crying where tears run down their faces. Whim library archives are so powerful, it moves you emotionally. You can feel the spirit of people in the pages as you read the historical documents, census reports, etc. Your very hair on your body literally will stand up. People do laugh at Whim library sometimes when something sweetening them, but also the realization that our ancestors had to overcome many obstacles is the reason why we are here today.
Dr. Olaf “Brono” Hendrick, a volunteer at Whim, was a major contributor of items and knowledge of the island’s history along with others in the community, such as the late Doc Petersen, Winifred Clarke-Hardy, Joan Keenan, Tommy Mckay, and Derby. These individuals and other volunteers play major roles, especially in cultural exhibition events at the museum as well as tracing their family history back several generations.
Whim Museum is more than a museum. It is a place where we all have connections locally and globally through our ancestors, whether they were Black, white, or some other color of the Homo sapiens species. Therefore, it is extremely critical to preserve the artifacts, historical documents, and other valuable materials by the restoration of the great house, library, and other historic structures at the Estate Whim Museum site.
— Olasee Davis is a bush professor who lectures and writes about the culture, history, ecology and environment of the Virgin Islands when he is not leading hiking tours of the wild places and spaces of St. Croix and beyond.
