Saint Croix Anno 1799

The original map was made by Peter Lotharius Oxholm and was published in 1799. It is a cadastral map showing all the parcels on the island of St Croix, although the island was already surveyed in 1794.
 

The map was used to allow the island's administration to create a better overview of the island and its production. The map clearly shows the type of plantations, as you can see the number of sugar mills on the island and more. There is even a statistic in the top left corner of the map that clearly describes the population and how it is distributed across the island's population groups. These statistics were compiled by Peter Lotharius Oxholm and published a few years before the map was published in 1797 in his book entitled:

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De Danske Vestindiske Øers Tilstand i Henseende til Population, Cultur og Finance-Forfatning, i Anledning af nogle Breve fra St. Croix, indrykkede i det Politiske og Physiske Magazin for Marts og April Maaneder 1797, hvortil er føiet Beskrivelse om Sukkerets Fabrikation, med 4 Planer.  

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TABLE OF STATISTICS FROM THE MAP IN 1799

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TABLE OF STATISTICS FROM THE BOOK IN 1797
 

The book was published as a response to a large number of critical articles in the Danish press in the late 1790s, so Peter Lotharius wrote a response to all the critical newspaper articles collected in one book.​​​

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Information about the cadastral lists

The purpose of creating an interactive map is to create a digital product where users can zoom in and out on individual plots and explore the plantations using the transcribed files.

 

Each plot contains the original image of a cadastral map and a transcribed version of it that you can open. Unfortunately, the quality of the transcriptions varies greatly as the lists are in different states. Some are damaged due to the tropical climate on the island, others have problems with the ink, which may have faded or become acidic. This is one of the reasons why some of the lists have words that have not been transcribed.

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This product is in an experimental stage, which means that you have to be patient as the project is only managed by me.

 

As the island was surveyed in 1794 and the map was not published until 1799, there are discrepancies in some cadastres regarding the name of the plantation, number or owner. This is usually because the cadastre may have changed owners who changed the name or merged the plot with another plantation. All sites have been laid out to the best of my ability.

 

The cadastral lists are retrieved from the Danish National Archives, however, this project was made as a product thesis for Aarhus University and is therefore not connected to the Danish National Archives or the Royal Library.

 

 

For the plantations on St Croix in 1799, there are 2 series.

No.1 is the large one with 416 images of the plantations.

No.2 is the small series with 211 images of the plantations.

 

 

There is a total of 627 images, but it has only been necessary to transcribe 215 from series 1 and 107 images from series 2. This means that there is a total of 322 images that have been transcribed.

 

 

The reason why the extra images have not been transcribed is because they are blank, as the front, list and back have been photographed, which has resulted in many unnecessary pages.

 

However, these extra pages could sometimes provide names or addresses, as this information was often written on the front and back pages by officials.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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