This Map Shows EXACTLY Where Your Trinidadian Family Came From

Imagine a map of Trinidad with a pin for every family, showing not where they live now but where they started. For one family, the pin lands on a village in Gorakhpur because a register says so. For another, it lands on a colonial estate, a neighboring island, the coast of Venezuela or a town in southern China. This video shows why there is not one map but several, each drawn from real documents, and how far each of them can actually take you. It covers the 1783 Cedula of Population, which brought planters, free people of color and their slaves from Martinique, Guadeloupe, Dominica, St. Lucia, St. Vincent and Grenada; the British capture in 1797 (population 17,643, of whom 10,009 were enslaved Africans); the 1813 slave registration, which recorded African-born people by nation (Igbo, Kongo, Ibibio, Malinke, Yoruba, Hausa and others); the estimated 6,000 to 10,000 enslaved people bought from other colonies after the 1807 abolition; the more than 8,000 liberated Africans who arrived from 1841; the Merikins; the Chinese (2,645 arrived between 1853 and 1866); and the General Registers of Indian Indentureship (1845–1917), where entries name a father, an estate, a ship and, in later volumes, a native place. Real families followed to real villages include the Capildeo family and the more than 300 families helped by genealogist Shamshu Deen. As always: honesty first. No single map shows exactly where every Trinidadian family came from. The 1813 registration records nations, not villages. Some numbers differ by source, and one estimate comes from a conference paper that relies on unpublished work. I could not open the Slave Voyages database, so I did not quote figures from it. DNA studies describe groups, not families, and 23andMe's Afro-Caribbean update has a group for Tobago but none for Trinidad. A surname alone never gives you a pin. Records, followed one generation at a time, can. 🔎 Want to see what a real search turns up for your own surname? The link to our free surname lookup tool is pinned in the comments below. 🧬 For the full picture, our family research service goes directly into the surviving slave registers, the indenture registers, the baptismal and estate records and the documented family lines tied to your specific surname. Link also pinned in the comments. Drop your surname below, and tell us which island, country or village your family says it came from. Sources: - National Archives of Trinidad and Tobago, "Our African Legacy: Roots and Routes"; General Registers of Indian Indentureship (1845–1917) - Baptiste, F. A., "Trinidad and Tobago as the hinge of a primary and secondary diaspora between Africa, the Caribbean and South America" - Wikipedia, "History of Trinidad and Tobago," "Indo-Trinidadians and Tobagonians" - Benn Torres, J. et al., American Journal of Physical Anthropology (2019) - Miljkovic-Gacic, I. et al., Human Heredity (2006) - 23andMe, "23andMe Adds More Detail for Afro-Caribbean Ancestry" (2023) - Micheletti, S. et al., American Journal of Human Genetics (2020) - Scroll.in, "Searching through the fog of history, this man helps Trinidad families trace their Indian roots" Subscribe — every week on this channel we trace another documented piece of Caribbean history back to the exact families still carrying it forward today. #Trinidad #Genealogy #FamilyHistory #CaribbeanHistory #Ancestry #SlaveRegisters #Indentureship #TrinidadHistory #DNA #FamilyTree