GROWING THE SALT CAY FAMILY TREE !

Building a family tree is like putting together a complex jigsaw puzzle. So far we have reached over 300 families extending out to South and North Caicos, Providenciales, Grand Turk, Bahamas and even ancestral family members from the Hamilton family arriving from Africa.
 There is nothing more exciting than finding fresh information that can take us back another generation and create a colourful picture of the community and how they lived in that bygone era.

Anglican Church "St Johns the Divine"

 It was with great interest that we discovered some old papers pertaining to the Anglican Church of St Johns.....Did you know that in the last century the church was referred to as "St Johns the Divine"?



Inside the  Bnevolent house Salt Cay.2010



It is incredible when researching family trees how much information can be gained from  old documents like the members ledger of the Benevolent Society,the Book of Burials and the Book of Marriages.

Take a look at another entry found in the Book of Burials. Notice that the first entry on the page is Mister Daniel Francis Harriott,who died November 15 1910 at the age of 43 years and 4 months.


The Harriot family of course were the salt merchants from the "White House".

The fact that there are no letters A or B next to his name means he was buried in the graveyard of the Anglican Church and not at the North or South Barren Grounds.

By studying further his Peers logged in the same year we can create a time frame of  "Who's Who" in 1910.

In the following copy of  accounts dated February 1864, we can learn from this document that the Reverend Astwood was the Rector of the Anglican Church during this period and that the Clark of Vestry was Mister Lightboune. The Sexton was a man named Duncan Wood.

As a point of reference, liberation from slavery was 30 years earlier on the 1st August 1834.

A population census taken in 1845 listed the number of white males on the island as 36, the number of white females as 42, local coloured males as 183 and  females as 300 for a grand total of 676 people living on Salt Cay.

Now all we have to do is find all the families for the Salt Cay Family Tree. Happy hunting  !!