March 30, 2007 – The St. John Historical Society will hold its final meeting of the season at 7 p.m., on Tuesday, April 10, at the St. Ursula's Church Multipurpose Center in Cruz Bay. There will be a short business meeting–including a vote on the Society's Board of Directors for the coming year–followed by a very special presentation by George F. Tyson on the St. Croix African Roots Project.
George Tyson is a highly respected professional historian, who has written widely on Virgin Islands and West Indian history and has served as executive director of the St. Croix Landmarks Society and president of the St. Thomas Historical Trust. Currently, he is director of the St. Croix African Roots Project.
The project is designed to reconstruct and study in great detail the lives and family histories of over 100,000 enslaved and free individuals living on St. Croix throughout the period of Danish rule. A major outcome of the project will be a digitized, searchable database, consisting of approximately two million entries, compiled from historical records archived in Denmark, the United States and the V.I. Information in the database will enable many families to confidently trace their ancestors back to African homelands.
