The Guyana/British Guiana
Genealogical Society

CENSUS

There were census taken in colonial British Guiana. An editorial of the Stabroek News ("Records", December 30, 2003) cited the census as follows:

"From around the middle of the nineteenth century, there are the census records, complete sequences of which are held in the PRO, and incomplete ones locally. In addition, it should also be noted that the registration of births, deaths and marriages became a requirement in the nineteenth century too. These records, however, are not deposited in the Guyana National Archives, but in the Office of the Registrar General, which falls under the auspices of the Ministry of Home Affairs, not the Ministry of Culture. Its registration records date back to 1865, while it also is a repository for some, although not all, of the shipping records. For some time now it has been facilitating members of the public on Fridays who wish to trace their own family members."

This indicates that the Guyana public can view the Birth, Marriage and Death records on Fridays at the Ministry of Home Affairs. No additional information is known at the present time.

Church Records
The information on this page will hopefully assist you in obtaining records from the church archives, provided you know your family's church affiliation.

Churches and Archival Dates:
Per Blanche Emmeline Duke, in her "The History of the Anglican Church", Red Thread Women's Press, Georgetown, 2000, the earliest dates recorded in the Registers of the various churches, are:
St Georges, Georgetown, Demerara 1796
All Saints. New Amsterdam, Berbice 1818
Holy Trinity, Anna Regina, Essequibo Coast 1821
St. Paul's, East Coast Demerara 1824
St. John's, Suddie, Essequibo Coast 1825
The Church of the Immaculate Conception at Brickdam has the following records:
Records for Baptisms start at 1869
Records for Weddings start at 1873
Records for Funerals at 1913

Requesting a Record
Requesting records from Guyana is different from other countries in that the records are not computerized or microfilmed and must therefore be manually searched. Even when volunteers are available, there are no supervisors to teach them how to search the aging records. Donations for the time required to perform searches is appreciated as manufactured goods in Guyana are expensive, i.e., a small bag of potato chips cost $4.00 US Dollars, and many Guyanese face a daily struggle for survival.

Specify Your Request:
Include in your request:

• The name to be searched
• Specify the record sought; i.e., Birth, Marriage, Death, Baptism, etc.
• The month, day and year of event (at minimum, a year must be specified)
• If desired, ask for a photo copy of the record (copy service dependant on having available equipment)
• List the address to which the record or results of the search should be sent
• Indicate that you will immediately send a donation (specify amount you will donate, suggested amounts are listed below) upon receipt of the requested record

US Postage for an airmail letter to Guyana is check here
Canadian postage for a letter post to Guyana check here

Donations:
It is important to include in your request for records that you will send a donation immediately upon receipt of the requested item(s) and that the promised donation is promptly sent. A personal check/cheque is acceptable and perhaps the safest way to send your donation. A search for one single name with a specific date of an event, i.e., birth, marriage, death, etc. will take approximately an hour while a search for an entire year will take many hours. The following are suggested donation levels based on the type of search requested:

St. Andrews Presbyterian Church has many records dating back to 1816. Their records are kept by event (birth, deaths, marriages) and by year.
The Rev. Oswald A. Best
St. Andrew's Manse
81 Croal Street
Georgetown, Guyana South America
Telephone: 592-226-5624

St. George's Cathedral - Archives are held here, however, the oldest records are in fragile condition and presently inaccessable until funds to preserve or digitize are available.
The Very Rev. Terry David
St. George's Cathedral, Deanery Office
79 Carmichael Street
South Cummingsburg, Georgetown, Guyana, South America

Church of the Immaculate Conception - Roman Catholic Cathedral Administrator
Cathedral Parish of the Immaculate Conception
28 Brickdam Street
Stabroek, Georgetown, Guyana, South America
Telephone: 592-223-7610

Religious Council (Note that this office is infrequently active and would have current rather than historic information on member churches)
Guyana Council of Churches
71 Murray Street
Georgetown, Guyana, South America

Anglican Clergy in South America: Alan Longbottom at Pudsey posted this list of Anglican Clergy on the South American mail list board in July 1998 which may be helpful for those looking for colonial ancestors.

United Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts
This Anglican church missionary society was very active in the West Indies and in British Guiana (working with the Arawaks and other Amerindians) from about 1840 to the late 1880s. Many libraries throughout the world hold copies or portions of the society's archives. The original archives are now held at Cambridge University in England, at the Rhodes LIbrary. The archives contain letters from missionaries and reports from the field. A Google search will find a library near you, or a search of the Worldcat (library catalogs) will do the same.

Transcriptions

All those searching for British Guiana colonial record transcriptions know that there are few records that have been transcribed and available for research. From the creation of this site in 2005, many people have contributed transcriptions of documents and records. Check out the "Research | Transcriptions" link on the menu bar at top of this page or go straight there …. Transcriptions. You will be surprised how much data is available

Websites

Online Web sites with online data re Colonial British Guiana:

• British Guiana Colonists by Tikwis Begbie, which has loads of information on the Dutch and English colonial periods.
• Guyana Colonial Newspapers by John Wilmer - transcription of very early Colonial Newspapers; indexed by surname

Immigrants to US: For those who immigrated to the U. S., a Freedom of Information Act request addressed to your local Immigration office may yield a copy of the birth and marriage records, along with the parents' names and other relatives, and usually a photo (mug shot like passports which aren't very flattering, but a photo none the less). Although they may charge for sending copies of these documents to you, they sometimes do not charge a fee. To order this way, one must have patience and be prepared to wait up to a full year. There is a very good chance that your patience will be rewarded. You can download the required form from the web site which makes it very easy. Another source for those who immigrated to the U.S. are death records. Death certificates will most often contain names of parents, birth date, and more. If you don't know for sure when your ancestor died but know the location, a search of nearby cemeteries might result in finding your ancestor's burial place and possible records the cemetery may have.
Guyana Lists online: The National Trust of Guyana. This page lists most of the government offices in Guyana. Also there is a Facebook page for the National Trust of Guyana

Immigrants to Europe/Canada: For those who emigrated to Europe and Canada, check with those countries for immigration documents.

Sugar Plantation Records: Because the early colony was dominated by the sugar industry, many of us have references to a plantation or estate with our ancestors. We have begun listing the estates and plantations as we hear references to them and their locations on our Plantations and Estates page.

Other methods a researcher can employ include:

1. Communicate………It is always a good idea to visit online genealogy sites and, if they have a message board, post a query (message) stating the full name of the ancestor you are seeking, the era of time they lived in Guyana, and where they lived (i.e., Berbice, Essequebo, etc.). You may be very pleasantly surprised that a fellow Guyanese might have access to records or even be a relative and able to assist you!!! Visit the following sites:

   • Family Search - This site has some international family trees
   • Ancestry message board - Guyana, General
   • Yahoo Groups Guyana - A Yahoo group where people with an interest in Guyana or colonial British Guiana can meet and have discussions
   • General Guyana web sites which have message boards (non-genealogy sites)
   • News groups - soc.genealogy.west-indies - this group has a little activity and often data is submitted, primarily of Dutch ship records
   • Caribbean Surnames Index list - Caribbean's voluntarily post their names and email address on this site and can be contacted directly
   • British-Genealogy.com has a B-G forum where one can post queries about their search for a Guyana/British family

2. Seek …. Genealogical Sites: Although genealogical sites, whether free or for a fee, do not have Guyanese records online, a researcher may find something on the surname of interest. There are many genealogical sites:

   • Ancestry.com (fee-based but some records free [primarily US records]
   • Kindred Trails (fee-based) no longer active
   • Cousin Connect has a Guyana Genealogy query page. not active
   • Roots web has a mailing list for Guyana.
   • United Kingdom National Archives site has census and other records available for England
   • NALIS library site - An act from Trinidad/Tabago created an international library database with many online items
   • Did anyone in your family graduate from the University of Guyana? Check their list of alumni

Guyana Schools

Other Online Sources:

Don't miss a visit to Don Mitchell's West Indian Bibliography. Don has compiled a vast bibliography from 1492 to the present, English-language Non-fiction of the West Indies. Don began the compilation with the first edition in March 2000. The Bibliography is currently in it's 8th edition dated April 2005.

Guiana (Guyana) Colonial Newspapers - Go to this site and be ready to spend some time -- you're going to enjoy reading the many transcriptions from the colonial "Royal Gazette". John Wilmer has transcribed data from the historical newspaper microfilm held at the University of Florida. He has extracted "what is perceived as the unique items referencing people and events in the colonies of Essequebo, Demerara (Demerary) and Berbice as reflected in Proclamations, Public Vendues, Advertisements, etc." Some records are in Dutch but most in English. He provides an index of surnames included in the work.

Adam Matthews Publications: A small portion of what is available on microfilm as described on their site, is on Reel 12 of the collection:

• 5/1/1: 31 Oct -29 Nov 1823- Traveling expenses in Britain and Ireland, and legal expenses relating to the acquisition of the plantations.

• /2: 1829-1834 List of births and ages of children born to slaves on the plantation. [note: probably the Hanover plantation or more?]

• /3: 31 Dec 1832 List of Plantations for District of Berbice, giving number of slaves and returns for each plantation.

• /5: 1 July 1834 Balance Sheet of Utile and Paisible Plantations.

• /6: 1 Aug 1834 Return for slaves on Plantation Utile and Paisible for workforce.

• /6A: Aug 1834 List of labourers in Plantations Utile and Paisible.

• /7: Nov 1834 Balance Sheet for books, clothing, sundry items.

• /8: 1834 Liquidation of Claims against Plantations Utile and Paisible.

• /9: 1834-1841 Memorandum and Extracts from letters and sales estimates as to value and sale of Estates.

• /10: 1836-1837 Calculations of costs of Hanover Plantation.

• /14: n.d Salaries and sundry expenses on Demerara Estate. This collection is available for purchase for $3,5000.00 !!!

• Latin American Collection at Yale University - Yale Latin American collection of microfilms; i.e., Colonial Office records, several years in America & West Indies

• Wheaton College Archives - Records of the Billy Graham Center - Methodist Missionary Society: Inventory of Correspondence; Collection 163...Sheet 11 contains British Guiana, 1867-

• Dissertations at University of California at Berkeley - Look Lai, Walton --- Sugar plantations and indentured labor: migrations from China and India to the British West Indies, 1838-1918, PhD Dissertation, New York University, 1991 ;

• Sohal, Harinder Singh --The East Indian indentureship system in Jamaica, 1845-1917. PhD Dissertation, University of Waterloo (Canada), 1980

Search by Ethnic Group

The following online sites are listed by ethnic group and are meant to be starting points only, not a complete listing:

• European heritage
  You may be able to find a record of their transportation to British Guiana by sea. Many sites have online ship manifests that can be searched for your ancestor's name. As the colonialization of early Guiana included the French, Dutch, and British, those country's record should also be searched. We know that the British left vital records in Guyana when they left but did take newspapers back to England. Perhaps the French and Dutch may have taken some records back to their countries as well? There are some online Dutch records of births, marriages and of transport. These sites are in the Dutch language, but you can use an online translator to assist you in finding what you are looking for.

  • Dutch newspaper NRC - Births, Deaths, Marriages from 1910-1945 - West Indies
  • Passagierslijsten ná 1736 - internet - List of ships from Netherlands to various ports, 1737 to 1950s, and URL for transcribed list of passengers
  • Olive Tree Genealogy provides a page of Dutch phrases and words in Church records which might be useful for a Dutch language site search

• East Indian heritage
  There are many books written about the transportation from India, as well as some ship manifests. There are also many web sites devoted to East Indians in the West Indies. An interesting article on the Migration Histories web site is about Indentureship.

• East Indian in the Caribbean Basin 1838 to 1960
  This site gives the number of persons indentured to work in the West Indies by country as well as a chart of known Guyana (among other countries) plantations receiving these workers.

• Moving Here, Tracing your roots of the UK has a page which lists available lists and records available at the PRO on "Asians via the colonies to Britain" and British Guiana.

• Yahoo Group for East Indians from the British West Indies. This is a message board for communicating about East Indians in the West Indies.

• Asian (Chinese) Heritage Visit the large Rootsweb site Chinese in Guyana: Their Roots which provides internet sources for Chinese in Guyana.

• African heritage
  Again, there are many books on the subject of Africans transported to Guiana as well as several web sites. An English web site, Living Easton, has a timeline of uprisings by Africans in the West Indies and other countries, many list the plantation where the uprising occurred. An interesting paper, while not really pertaining to genealogy, is Liberated Central Africans in Nineteenth-Century Guyana, by Monica Schuler of Wayne State University.
  The Transatlantic Slave Trade Education Project (also known as the TST) is an integral part of the UNESCO Slave Route Project. It is conducted through UNESCO’s Associated Schools Project Network (ASPnet) and involves just over 100 schools in three continents: Africa, Europe and the Americas/Caribbean.
  Under the title of 'Breaking the Silence' an opportunity has been given to young people to study the events and developments of their common past, regardless of their backgrounds and present-day living conditions.
  This article is highly recommended: Josiah, Barbara P. After Emancipation: Aspects of Village Life in Guyana, 1869-1911 Journal of Negro History, Volume 82, No.1 (Winter, 1997), Pages 105 - 121. This article describes phases of life of these Afro-Guyanese families; Elcock, Benn, Williams, and Browne, in communities primarily, Hague, Blankenburg, De Kinderen, Meter-Meer- Zorg, Fellowship and Den Amstel of West Coast Demerara, and Vergenoegen, Philadelphia, Tuschen, Zeelugt, and Parika on the East Bank Essequibo. And, perhaps more importantly, informs readers of sources which were available as late as 1997 in Guyana.

• Amerindian heritage
  Although there are books on the various tribes of original peoples of Guiana - none are known to cover the "family trees" of the individuals. Any citations of reference materials for the genealogy of the native peoples would be welcomed to include here. One particularly interesting web site, Windsor Forest, from the University of Chicago has an article written by Raymond Smith on the Amerindian (original peoples) of Guiana.

• Portuguese heritage
  To learn more about the Portuguese heritage, history, and to start your research, try the following links:
  • Guyana.org Portuguese history
  • Portuguese Indentureship
  • Chapter 47 of Guyana History
  • Madeira history (Portugal)