St. John Historical Society

Promoting an appreciation and deeper understanding of the history and cultural heritage
of the island of St. John in the U. S. Virgin Islands since 1974.

Document Collection: Archival Documents

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  Title: 1722. List of first plantation owners on St. John.

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  Owner: Photocopy from the Danish National Archives, Copenhagen

  Yearly tax records for St. John did not begin to be compiled until 1728, making property ownership in the early years of Danish settlement difficult to determine. This list is one of the earliest documents to record the names of the settlers on St. John, along with the size of their properties (width and length in Danish feet). It was compiled by Governor Eric Bredal and sent to the West Indies and Guinea Company headquarters in Copenhagen in 1722.
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  Title: 1728. Page from first tax rolls compiled for St. John.

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  Owner: Photocopy from the Danish National Archives, Copenhagen

  Arrow points to the entry for Isaac Constantin, the original land-grantee of the plantation that would become known as Estate Annaberg. Other plantation owners noted on the page are Capt. Fred. Moth, William Vessup and Jacob van Still
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  Title: 1780. The Cruz Bay Battery, 1780

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  Owner: Photocopy from the Danish National Archives, Copenhagen

  In 1780 Danish military engineer Peter L. Oxholm surveyed the island of St. John and drew plans of its defensive installations, including this drawing of the recently constructed battery in Cruz Bay. In Oxholm’s report to the Danish Crown on the situation on St. John, he wrote of the battery in Cruz Bay as follows: “This recently constructed battery, as reported to me, has cost 9000 Riksdaler and yet there is no guardhouse… There are 12 cannons by the battery, but no ammunition supply except 30 or 40 [charges or cartridges] which is shipped from St. Thomas when the last has been used up… There are no cannon balls either, they must be ordered from St. Thomas as soon as there is a place to put them….”
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  Title: 1792. St. John Estate Names, 1792

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  Owner: Photocopy from the Danish National Archives, Copenhagen [copy courtesy of George F. Tyson]

  It was not until around the turn of the nineteenth century that plantation properties on St. John were consistently identified in tax records by fixed estate names. Prior to that period, properties were only identified by the names of the current owners. Therefore, this1792 list of St. John property owners with the corresponding names of their estates is a rare and important document. The numbers immediately after the estate names are tax ID numbers, which correspond to yearly tax rolls; the numbers to the right, are tallies of the number of enslaved laborers on each property.
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  Title: 1800. Tax accounting of free inhabitants of St. John, who do not own plantations, 1800

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  Owner: Photocopy from the Danish National Archives, Copenhagen

  Unlike St. Thomas, with its busy port town and its rapidly expanding population of artisans and tradespersons, St. John’s agrarian landscape left little opportunity for urban community development. Aside from a small section of land set aside in the tiny village of Cruz Bay in the mid 1700s, small residential house lots were simply unavailable. This tax list, dating to 1800, attests to the small number of free inhabitants who were not plantation owners on St. John in this period. The listing at the bottom of the left-had column of the page records the “Free Colored” heads-of-households, with the number of individuals in their family and the number of slaves they possessed. The listings on the right-hand side of the page are the same, but for the White inhabitants.
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  Title: 1824. Contract between Governor Peter von Scholten and John Wright

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  Owner: Photocopy from the U. S. National Archives in College Park, Maryland

  The contract between Governor Peter von Scholten and John Wright for the construction of a jail building, kitchen, pantry, privy, laborer’s quarters, horse stable, and walls at the Cruz Bay Battery, 1824. NOTE: To learn about the intriguing life of John Wright see the article on Per Nielsen’s presentation, “John Wright, Outstanding Citizen of the Danish West Indies” in our Newsletter Articles Section
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  Title: 1825. Architectural Plan for the new “Arrest-house and Court Room” at the Cruz Bay Battery, 1825.

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  Owner: Photocopy from the Danish National Archives, Copenhagen

  According to Danish Historian Per Nielsen, Governor Peter C. F. von Scholten ordered these building plans drawn, and on December 5, 1825 presided over the opening of the new courthouse and jail. In her book St. John Backtime, Ruth Low referred to the Battery as “the embodiment of the island’s historical continuity” because of its association with von Scholten and as the site of all official actions on St. John to these modern times.
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  Title: 1846. Census Registers for the island of Loango [aka: Lovango].

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  Owner: Photocopy from the Danish National Archives, Copenhagen

  Lest we forget, our sister island of Lovango lies within the jurisdiction of St. John, and is administratively a part of the Cruz Bay Quarter (or District). The first of these two “Registers” records the name, gender, place of birth, religion, marital status, and occupation of each of the seventeen free inhabitants of Lovango in the fall of 1846. The second “Register” lists the names of the five un-free (enslaved) individuals on the island, along with their gender, place of birth, age, religion, marital status, how they are employed, and “moral character.”
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  Title: Rocks from Congo Key in place at San Juan Harbor, circa 1920

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  Owner: photo and text from U. S. National Archives
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  Title: Loading rock at Congo Key, circa 1920

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  Owner: photo and text from U. S. National Archives (see also Congo-Rocks-2.JPG)