BBC Caribbean reports about Caribbean people’s growing interest in tracing their family history.
The article mentions the Barbados Slave Register, which, in April of 2007, was published on ancestry.co.uk. (The Barbados Register is just one of a collection of slave registers from former British dependencies; registers from other colonies will be up on the site soon).
The 1834 Barbados Slave Register has the names of 99,349 slaves.
It also carries the names of 5,206 slave owners, which marks an average of 19 slaves to every owner.
Ancestry also hosts a database of English settlers in Barbados from 1637 – 1800 (n.b. : a fee is charged for full access to the slave and settler databases), and offers guidance to black Britons trying to trace their genealogical roots.
ETA: Barbados Free Press wrote a post about the slave registers when they were first published, and got some really great, informative comments in response.