MAPPING FREEDOM: From Slavery to freedom in the U.S. Virgin Islands

Mapping Freedom will build a digital infrastructure—specifically, a database—of the permanent and transient population of the Danish West Indies between 1841 and 1917. The database will enable researchers to document and explore the consequences of emancipation in 1848 for formerly enslaved people, enslavers, and their descendants. It will create a new foundation for historical research on social mobility, family patterns, and migration, as well as for genealogical research, both locally and internationally.

The database will be the first of its kind in the Caribbean. It is made possible by a combination of the extensive source material from the Danish West Indies that has been preserved, the Danish National Archives’ experience with linking historical life trajectories, and historical expertise from partners in the U.S. Virgin Islands. The database is being established through a combination of human expertise and artificial intelligence.

The database will contain data from three types of sources: censuses, church records, and passenger lists. It will include data on more than 150,000 individuals from the period before the abolition of slavery in 1848 up to the sale of the Danish West Indies to the United States in 1917. Once completed, the data will be publicly accessible online (open access) through a new research infrastructure called the Historical Person Register (HisPeR), which the Danish National Archives is developing in collaboration with several partners.

Mapping Freedom is a two‑year digital research infrastructure project (2025–2027) led by Gunvor Simonsen, Associate Professor at the Saxo Institute, University of Copenhagen. The construction of the database is carried out by the Danish National Archives in collaboration with the Caribbean Genealogy Library on St. Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands. The project is made possible by a generous grant of DKK 6.4 million from the Carlsberg Foundation (grant no. CF24‑1610).

The project benefits from several factors.

First, the archival records from the colony of the Danish West Indies are of exceptionally high quality. Most of the collection is held at the Danish National Archives and has already been digitized and made available online on the Archives’ website.

Second, the methods and digital know‑how required to link individual records across different types of archival sources already exist at the Danish National Archives. They were developed as part of the multi‑year project LinkLives. Mapping Freedom draws on the experiences from LinkLives regarding both manual and machine‑assisted linking of records.

Finally, Mapping Freedom benefits from the historical expertise of the Caribbean Genealogy Library, which has many years of experience working with precisely the types of sources used in the project.

More information and news about the project, participants, and contact details for Mapping Freedom can be found on the Saxo Institute’s website.

The image at the top of the page depicts the harbor in Charlotte Amalie on St. Thomas. Painting by Fritz Melbye, 1851-52, M/S Maritime Museum of Denmark, CC-BY-NC-SA.