Barbadians more interested in their family history

Brian spoke with Barbados TODAY during Saturday’s Genealogy Marketplace held at the Barbados Department of Archives, Lazaretto, St Michael.

The event included activities like genealogical workshops, an Independence exhibition, interactive lectures held by Professor Trevor Marshall and Maurice Greenidge, and more. It’s part of a series of monthly workshops held by the Barbados Department of Archives, in order to help Barbadians trace their family history, according to Brian.

“The archives normally do this activity once every month, and it’s growing every month [with] lots more people attending. Within the festival of Independence, we thought that it was a nice addition to give people more opportunities to come and look at their family [links] and so on, especially since the COVID pandemic.”

She added: “We realised a lot of reunions were happening especially during Independence and Christmas. We thought that at this time of the year that it would be fitting to have a larger marketplace so that we can facilitate more people to come [research] their family tree.”

When asked about the level of interest expressed by locals so far, Brian said Barbadians for some time now have been expressing a keen interest in finding out more about their lineage, so far as to turn these research opportunities into full family outings.

“You know that there is someone in your family that has every birth certificate, they have every marriage certificate [and] they keep all of the records and so on, but we are finding now that on Saturdays when they do have the workshop, groups of people come down together and are doing it as a family activity. So, it is becoming more popular on a monthly basis” (SB)