Tracing your Caribbean family

Slave registers / Slavery

The Slave Registers are crucial records for researching slaves and slave holders for the period 1813-1834. They were first created in Trinidad under British laws and similarly adopted in other Caribbean countries. Copies of the registers are held at the National Archives in the series referenced T 71 and the digitised records can be accessed via Ancestry. There are no slave registers before 1812, though it may be possible to find out about enslaved people from the family’s private records if they were kept by the family or deposited at an archive local to the family’s estate.

The registers will list the name of the slave owner, the names and gender of the slaves, their age and colour (e.g. 'mulatto' for a slave who was of mixed ethnicity or 'negro' for a slave who descended directly from Africa). For more information on the Slave Registers, slave owners and slave compensation see this guide from the National Archives.

The Centre for the Study of the Legacies of British Slave-ownership based at University College London have also compiled a database of slave owners, including the number of slaves they kept, where the estates where and the compensation they received (following the ending of slavery in 1833). It is free to use and it is also possible to explore the different plantations that were in the British Caribbean, browse maps and the legacies of slavery. 

Page last updated: 15 September 2023