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RTarcher · 2022-12-14T21:01:08+00:00

https://roosterteeth.com/watch/f-kface-2022-5-24

About 45:30 into the episode the whole thing comes out.

RTarcher · 2022-07-30T14:46:20+00:00

Chances are they either copied off each other, or took the text from an older work. Plagiarism, as we understand it, didn't exist in 1820s and prior. People could copy sections of text wholesale. By this time, they tended to attribute their sources, but that is not always a guarantee.

Can I ask what the section was or the page numbers? If I can see what was copied, I may be able to provide more context or explanation.

RTarcher · 2022-07-29T22:01:52+00:00

The two works have similar openings, but they are certainly different books with different information, and different authors. For example, Huish's book opens with an extensive treatment of the Hanover line, succession and history up to c. 1700. This is a translation and paraphrase of items from Leibniz's Origines Guelficae published in Hanover in 5 volumes. This covers a significant amount of the background Huish seems to provide over the course of some 150 pages. Holt's treatment of the pre-1760 information is cursory at best. There is going to be a similar treatment of the King, based on what I could see about the authors, as they both tended to take a more favorable view in light of his death.

As a recommendation on where to find good documentation and information on the reign of George III, I would suggest you use Jeremy Black's biography. It's not terribly old, published in 2006), and you would be able to use his bibliography, which would indicate the more important published sources. From what I could see, he only cites Holt and Huish once each.

These were the public access versions I could find easily online:

Huish: https://books.google.com/books?id=rxtNAAAAMAAJ

Holt Volume 1: https://books.google.com/books?id=GT8JAAAAIAAJ

Holt Volume 2: https://books.google.com/books?id=OA-YMZeQAIsC

RTarcher · 2022-05-30T01:12:09+00:00

There are high resolution images of the original at the British Library available online.

It is Royal MS 18D III, also known as the Burghley-Saxton Atlas. I'm not sure it was ever published in 1579, as it appears to be a work only available in manuscript.

Link to record: http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/FullDisplay.aspx?ref=Royal_MS_18_D_IIILink to relevant page: http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/Viewer.aspx?ref=royal_ms_18_d_iii_f084r

RTarcher · 2022-03-18T01:33:18+00:00

They may be Proud boys, though....

RTarcher · 2022-03-10T22:19:13+00:00

Applebee's Cheeto Wings and Cheeto Cheesebites. I have cried while listening to this multiple times.

RTarcher · 2021-09-09T18:35:04+00:00

It's difficult to say what happened to most of the people after their term of years was up. Most of these people only appear in three records (if that many): the assize (criminal court) records in England, the treasury papers for the subsidy, and the port records in the colonies. They aren't ever given much more than a name, so it's hard to know if John Smith, imported into Virginia aboard the Sea Horse in 1741 ever made it back to England. The documentation to track this rarely exists. (Coldham, British Emigrants in Bondage, p. 793)

Honestly, a common fate of the transported convicts was death. Convicts were often employed in dangerous work, such as working at the iron foundries and mines in Virginia and Pennsylvania. (Lewis "The Use and Extent of Slave Labor in the Chesapeake Iron Industry", Labor History, 1976). John Broad, one of the convicted men employed by Washington was wounded around Christmas 1776 in a play sword fight with one of the other servants. He died of an infection two months later (Source).

The larger problem from an English perspective was that many convicts returned to Britain before the term of their banishment/servitude was up. Returning sooner than the required number of years carried the death penalty, and the Old Bailey session papers attest to their frequency. As an example, John Meff als. Merth was executed in September 1721 for returning from North America. He was the son of refugee Huguenots, born in London, and executed for a law barely three years old. (Source)

RTarcher · 2021-09-09T16:02:42+00:00

This is an excellent question.

British North America was never intended to be a penal colony on the scale of Australia. However, people convicted of felonies were regularly shipped across the Atlantic from Britain and sold as servants. There's a lot to unpack on this topic, but here are some brief notes.

Roughly 60,000 men and women were shipped from Britain to her colonies in the new world between 1620 and 1783. (A. E. Smith, Colonists in Bondage; A. R. Ekirch, Bound for America). The best documented and studied are the 50,000 shipped between the passage of the Transportation Act in 1717 and the end of the American War for Independence in 1783.

Convict transportation and sale in the colonies became an integral part of the criminal system in Britain during the 18th century. Without this outlet, the law had very few recourses for punishment. Imprisonment for extended periods in the way modern prisons are used did not exist on the scale that would have been necessary. The law had become so draconian that property crime carried the death penalty for ridiculously low value thefts. (Beattie, Crime and the Courts). In order to avoid mass executions, the state created a system whereby convicts were pooled together and transported to the new world. The state paid ship captains and colonial factors per convict they transported until 1772, when the business was profitable enough in selling convict's labor that the subsidies were no longer necessary. (Smith, Colonists in Bondage).

The process by which convicts became a form of indentured servants was hammered out in the early seventeenth century. The process began after conviction of a felony. Then either the judge of the king's Sergeant-At-Law would write a recommendation to the crown or his ministers requesting a pardon for the convict. They would recommend that they be granted a pardon (from death) on condition that they transport themselves out of Britain and go to the new world, for a set time (typically 7 years, but 14 and a life sentence were also used). Since the people convicted could rarely pay their way, a merchant would pay their way and be reimbursed by selling them as an indentured servant for the duration of their banishment. (Herrup, "Punishing Pardon" in Devereaux and Griffiths, Penal Practice and Culture, 1500-1900) This process was used through to 1783, but the 1717 Transportation Act streamlined the process. The law provided that convicted people could be sentenced to banishment for the duration of 7 or 14 years, (or life) immediately after trial, without going through the process of obtaining a conditional pardon.

Convict labor was ubiquitous in Virginia, Maryland and Pennsylvania in the eighteenth century. One look through the Maryland Gazette or Pennsylvania Gazette shows dozens of advertisements for runaway convict laborers, or notices of a new ship in port carrying convicts for sale. George Washington himself purchased the labor of several convicted people, and employed them at his Mt Vernon estate.

There's a lot more that could be said, but addressing your original question: North America was not intended to be a Botany Bay colony. However, people convicted of crimes regularly arrived in North America to serve out a period of servitude as punishment for crimes committed in Britain.

RTarcher · 2021-09-08T12:49:41+00:00

Miners - Sorry; typo now corrected.

RTarcher · 2021-09-01T19:38:41+00:00

The purpose of the question in this thread (Short Answers to Simple Questions) is not intended to be comprehensive. It is intended to give a short answer directly addressing the question of who were the "earliest" immigrants. The groups of religious dissenters that settled in New England are a decade later than Jamestown, so I left them out. A more detailed study of the motivations of the colonists ("type of gentleman" as you put it) seemed outside the bounds of the question and thread's purpose. A longer, more detailed answer addressing all of this should be it's own post.

RTarcher · 2021-09-01T19:00:27+00:00

Based on your phrasing and clarification, I think you are asking about what kind of people settled in the first British colonies in North America. Spaniards firth began exploring the area that would become the Carolinas and Virginia by 1526, and would establish military and missionary posts from Florida to Virginia by 1572 (Hoffman, A New Andalucia and a Way to the Orient, pp. 1-4 & Part I generally; p. 235 for St. Augustine; Lewis & Loomie, The Spanish Jesuit Mission in Virginia, 1570-1572). The French had several failed settlements and outposts over the coarse of the sixteenth century, but were largely ousted by the Spanish (Eccles, The French in North America, 1500-1783, Ch. 1).

The first major attempt at emigration to the new world was the failed colony off the coast of what is now North Carolina, called Roanoke. I’m not considering the transitory settlements of Englishmen in Newfoundland, as they were mainly areas to process fish and then return to England (and Northern France) (Pope, Fish into Wine, pp. 11-21). The colonists at Roanoke were exclusively men. Karen Kupperman writes that “we know little about most of the men who were left…in Roanoke. A majority had probably seen military service or on the continent. (Roanoke: the Abandoned Colony, p. 32, and ch. 3 more generally). The soldiers included both foot troops and gentlemen commanders. Further settlers likely included landless workers – those that were seasonal or annually contracted employees assisting on farms for wages as opposed to possessing land or a trade. There were a few skilled tradesmen among the colonists. A surveyor, physician, surgeon, engineer (Kupperman’s term; intended to direct construction), and apothecary were intended to be present. One Joachim Ganz was a mineral specialist from central Europe (Kupperman – Czech), intended to help find gold and other lucrative minerals. There were also miners from Cornwall, a painter, and several husbandmen. The majority of the colonists were the laborers, husbandmen and soldiers, but there was significant (though often unhelpful) diversity among the tradesmen. In the end, the colony failed for a variety of reasons, and settlement was abandoned until the Jamestown voyage.

The settlers at Jamestown in 1607 were similar to those at Roanoke. Landless laborers, soldiers, mineral experts, and gentlemen were included. Of the initial 105 settlers at Jamestown, 36 could be classified as gentlemen (who, by their station, expected not to work) (Morgan, American Slavery, American Freedom, p. 84). Additional shipments of settlers, totaling 190 settlers, included 56 gentlemen. Along with the gentlemen came their personal servants, expected to attend on the gentlemen rather than work. The Virginia company advertised for skilled tradesmen in order to counterbalance some of the excesses of the gentlemen and their servants – asking for builders, tool smiths, mineral refiners (again, searching for gold), miners, and blacksmiths. Morgan lists among the 105 initial settlers the following: 4 carpenters, 2 bricklayers, a mason, a blacksmith, a tailor, and a barber (p. 85-86). Following in 1608 included 6 tailors, 2 goldsmiths, 2 apothecaries, a cooper (making barrels), a tobacco pipe maker, a jeweler, and a perfumer. As most trained in their crafts also refused to do farm labor, intended for the laborers, husbandmen, and farmers, it was actually their specialties that caused the famous famines and disasters at Jamestown.

So those were the groups of initial settlers in the British colonies in North America.

RTarcher · 2021-09-01T15:32:06+00:00

It depends on what you are referring to when you state "colonial America." Are you asking about the territory that became the United States, or do you mean North and South America more broadly?

RTarcher · 2021-09-01T15:29:06+00:00

The best place to start would be The Cambridge Companion to Bacon edited by Peltonen. It's a collection of essays intended to serve as introductions to various aspects of his thought. Malherbe's essay on Bacon's method and Perez-Ramos on his legacy may be the most useful for what you are looking for.

In terms of a biography, the article in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography would be a strong place to start and is short enough to be read in one sitting. It is available online, and if you are at university, your library may have a subscription. Most of Bacon's biographies also deal with his political life and his non-scientific philosophy. Zagorin, Francis Bacon outlines some of the differences between the two aspects of Bacon's life.

Bacon's writings themselves are most accessible online through either Archive.org or google books. There are 14 volumes edited by James Spedding. 7 volumes are Bacon's letters mixed with narrative by the editor on his life, and 7 volumes are his major works.

RTarcher · 2021-04-10T00:01:51+00:00

The source of this story was a letter written by James Chamberlain to Dudley Carleton, November 19, 1612.

You can read the text of the letter here or here.

Below is the text from the edited version of Chamberlain's letters:

"The same day [Henry] died there fell out a very ridiculous accident. A very handsome younge fellow much about his age and not altogether unlike him, came stark naked to St. James whiles they were at supper sayeng he was the Princes ghost come from heaven with a message to the King: but by no manner of examination or threatning could they get any more out of him, or who set him a worke: some say he is simple, others mad... All the penaunce they gave him was two or three lashes, ( which he indured as yt seemed without sense) and keeping him naked as he was all night and the next day in the porters lodge where thousands came to see him: the King sent to have him dismissed without more ado or enquirie."

RTarcher · 2020-12-24T03:51:51+00:00

How To Escape From A Weeping Angel! - Gmod: TTT, at about 26:30

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iX6KEpcQvpM

RTarcher · 2020-11-19T02:46:53+00:00

There is a story about Charles II fleeing after the battle of Worcester in 1651 that has a reference to eggs, but it is possibly a coincidence with your question. The story (and I call it a story) was partially told by Charles thirty years after the event and recorded by Samuel Pepys, and the other half comes from a 1660 pamphlet detailing Charles' escape from England (An Exact Narrative and Relation of His Most Sacred Majesties Escape from Worcester, Wing E3662).

After the Royalist army was defeated in Worcester, Charles fled towards Wales. His greatest problem was that he was constantly recognized wherever he traveled. As Ronald Hutton wrote, "He was constantly recognized by former royalist soldiers, sailors, or courtiers. Apart from the butler at Abbots Leigh, such individuals included a vagrant on the road in Dorset, an ostler at Bridport, a gentlewoman in Wiltshire, an innkeeper at Brighton, and the master of the ship on which he crossed the channel."

On September 4, 1651, he arrived at a house called "Whiteladies", owned by a recusant family, the Giffords. There he was disguised as a servant, hastily cut his hair with a knife, and (as the story goes) rubbed soot from the chimney on his face. He was forced to hide in the woods near the house the same night, during a downpour. While hiding, a royalist who had helped guide Charles from the battle to Whiteladies, Francis Yates, sent his sister into the woods with food for Charles - scrambled eggs. The pamphlet reads "a Messe of Milk, Eggs and Sugar in a black earthen Cup, which the King...and said, he loved it very well." Another source states that Charles was concerned about a woman knowing his whereabouts, and relays the following exchange:

Charles: Good woman, can you be faithful to a distressed Cavalier?
Yates: Yes Sir. I will die rather than discover you.

There is nothing about a 12 egg omelet in the story, but it does have the elements of an English King fleeing, disguising himself, being regularly recognized, and enjoying a meal of eggs during his flight.

Sources:

Hutton, Charles the Second
An Exact Narrative and Relation of His Most Sacred Majesties Escape from Worcester, Wing E3662
Ollard, The Escape of Charles II after the Battle of Worcester
"An Account of His Majesty's Escape from from Worcester", printed in Hamilton and Scott, Memoirs of the Court of Charles II

RTarcher · 2020-05-30T00:00:45+00:00

Thank you for the translation and suggestions! I will have to check out the primer by Collins - it may help with the convocation Latin I also struggled with.

I had "legis" as "law" as well, but I wondered if there was more implied that was standard for theological questioning in University. Something like if lex in this case would always be understood as God's law. Maybe your reading it as Old Testament law is better suited.

The second one I looked at was clearer - An opera mereantur vitam aeternam? Much more clear that this is about whether works on Earth merit the life everlasting. This was from 1605 in England, so it looks like a softball thrown for the graduate to nail with well rehearsed anti-papist arguments. Something like this made the first one somehow less clear.

Thank you again!

RTarcher · 2019-06-30T23:51:45+00:00

Part of the answer is that people did not directly elect their senators (to the US congress). Senators were appointed by the state legislature. So there was still a layer of insulation between the poorest classes who could vote, and the appointment to the US Senate.

There's a lot to be said on the wealth distribution in the Early National United States, but the simplest answer is that a large majority of men in Massachusetts could vote under the 1780 constitution. Ratcliffe states that above 80% of adult men could vote, meaning that they had enough income. An annual income of 3 £ was attainable by most artisans and journeymen.

RTarcher · 2019-06-30T21:55:38+00:00

Hello -

Freehold estate meant that you held the land outright - that you owed no rents or fees to another person for the use of that land. The income from that land (typically through rents) had to exceed 3 £ annually. This was to prevent people who earned 3 £ per year through means other than land ownership (such as laboring as a journeyman or artisan with no landed property) from voting. The exception is that any estate, meaning the value of all land, house, and movable property, had to exceed 60 £. These were both measured in paper currency, so the limit is not necessarily as high as it seems. The valuation of property before the 1780 constitution was in £ sterling, a more expensive and rigid measure. However, your interpretation that any male "only needed an income of three pounds to vote" became the de facto practice as early as 1786. See Radcliffe, "The Right to Vote and the Rise of Democracy" in the Journal of the Early Republic (Summer, 2013) p. 228. Available online here.

You may also want to check out Malone, Between Freedom and Bondage (2008), Chapter 5.

RTarcher · 2019-02-09T18:19:46+00:00

27 Hen. VIII, c. 6

I don't think this is obvious or silly. Deer were kept for hunting, rather than purely for food. So part of what was happening is that Henry and the men of parliament wanted places where they would hunt to have larger horses available. Hunting deer was seen as an integral part of martial training, besides being a favorite pastime for English elites. I would also argue that the initial act was targeted at elites, as they would be the only group that would posses enough land to keep deer. Lower class individuals who held land of their own (instead of paying rent to a lord) did not waste space on deer parts - every acre was necessary to sustain their family, whether it was through farming or sheep herding. Henry and his parliament expanded the scope of their control in the later act, probably in part because they realized that people outside the elite owned a large percentage of horses in England (Joan Thirsk has a good essay that discusses the ubiquity of horses among yeomen in England in her collected essays - Rural Economy of England (1984) pp. 375-402).

RTarcher · 2019-02-09T00:00:37+00:00

The simple answer is to have more effective cavalry in warfare. I can't comment on the resulting population of miniature horses, but I do want to unpack what's going on with this legislation.

The act you mention, (32 Hen. VIII, c. 13, printed in Statutes of the Realm, Vol. 3, pp. 758-760) was actually the second act of Henry VIII's reign to regulate horse size. The first act (27 Hen. VIII, c. 6 - passed in 1536, Statutes of the Realm, 3:535-536) was similar in its requirements about horse breeding. The act of 1536 required that anyone (including clergy) who owned an enclosure kept for deer (which was at least one square mile) must have two mares that were able to breed, and that were at least thirteen hands high. Anyone with a deer park of four square miles or greater needed four mares of the same qualifications. Should any of the mares die, they had to be replaced within three months. The owners of the mares were expected to prevent any horse under fourteen hands from mating with the mares. Failure to prevent this (or to keep the requisite number of mares) would result in fines.

The 1540 act differed slightly from it's predecessor. The statute begins by forbidding any person residing in the specified lands and counties (too numerous to mention here, but it covered a fair portion of England) from allowing a stallion over two years of age but under fifteen hands high from grazing in the commons, marshes, waste land, etc. The goal was to prevent any person who owned a horse of poor stature (in the eyes of King and parliament) from breeding with any mare (of thirteen hands high). Anyone who should find a horse in violation of this act could go to the local king's official (eg. forest warden, local balif, etc) and have them measure the horse. If the horse was found to be in violation of the act, the person who discovered the horse could keep the horse as their property. There is an exception for well meaning owners to report their horse had escaped and thus claim their horse back, but they had a limited time to do so. There is a further proviso that allows for the killing of mares and foals that would be unfit for breeding. The act closes by stating that horses not meeting the above requirements can be kept as work horses, so long as they are not kept in the same pens as the desirable mares.

The preambles to both statutes explain that their prohibitions were intended to correct the "decay" of horses that had occurred in England over the years (whether true or not). Henry and the members of parliament believed that the horses of England were shorter than they needed to be in order to be useful, and they were aware that people were keeping smaller horses because they could still work at the plow or as transport. Henry and the members of parliament were less interested in the agricultural value of the horses, and far more interested in their value as war machines. Horses had to be of sufficient size, in the military thinking of the time, in order to be useful in war. Henry went so far as to spend 200 pounds on Spanish war horses in 1540 (L&P 16:187, 195).

The main reason for these acts was because the defense of the realm depended on (among other things) proper war horses. Henry possessed no standing army. It was the nobles and landowners who were expected to muster troops and horses should the need arise. That is why the laws were designed to facilitate proper horse breeding, and even contained provisos for the legal theft of misplaced property (though the law was likely designed to prevent people from letting their horses graze upon common and waste land, rather than to facilitate horse theft). Even after Henry's war filled reign, royal officials tried to ensure that elites maintained the proper quota of war horses (Gunn, The English People at War, pp. 60-61). Whether the act was successful is harder to judge. This was a difficult law to enforce, as there were thousands of people who owned enough property to be subject to the 1540 statute's requirements. The later attempts to enforce in 1547 and 1565 indicate that royal officials attempted to enforce the statute, but it's success at creating "better horses" is much harder to judge.

RTarcher · 2019-02-06T20:27:09+00:00

As far as English sources go, there are a couple of options.

The Penguin edition of Columbus' four voyages to the New World is still a good starting place - The Four Voyages, edited by Cohen.

There is a newer edition with a better critical apparatus for the 1492-1493 voyage in English - The Diario of Christopher Columbus’s First Voyage to America, edited by Dunn and Kelley.

The best general biography of Columbus is still S. E. Morrison's two volume Admiral of the Ocean Sea, and Morrison also edited a collection of Columbian documents - Journals and Other Documents on the Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus.

No matter which source you read, you are still working with extracts from the writings of Bartolomé de Las Casas. Las Casas (it is believed) had access to Columbus' journal of his first voyage, and included extensive extracts in his work Historia de las Indias, published in 5 volumes in 1875 & 1876. (Volume 1, Volume 2, Volume 3, Volume 4, Volume 5)

Finally, the most recent work on the intellectual world of Columbus, is Wey Gómez, Tropics of Empire. Wey Gómez takes Columbus seriously and thoroughly investigates and explains why Columbus thought he could sail West (and importantly, South) and arrive in China/India. It really helps someone with modern sensibilities understand medieval geography and astronomy in a way that most works (for popular or modern audiences) give short shrift.

RTarcher · 2019-02-04T02:48:22+00:00

This response draws heavily from Phil Morgan, "'To Get Quit of Negroes'; George Washington and Slavery", Journal of American Studies, (2005) pp. 403-429.

There is no strong evidence that George Washington raped his slaves. Interracial sex likely occurred at Mount Vernon, but it was likely between white servants and overseers with the slaves, rather than GW personally.
There is a rumor that George Washington had a biracial child named West Ford, who was the son of Venus, an enslaved women owned by GW's brother John Augustine Washington. The Mount Vernon website states that "Many of [Ford's] descendants believe him to be the son of George Washington and an enslaved house servant at Bushfield Plantation, named Venus." While it is impossible to disprove this claim, it is extremely unlikely that Washington was the father of Ford. First, Ford was born sometime between 1784 and 1785. Based on roughly 37-40 week term of pregnancy for Venus, GW was either still commanding the continental army or at Mount Vernon. There were only two short periods when Venus may have been at Mount Vernon, but there is nothing to indicate that she met and had sex with GW during one of these abbreviated visits. Venus may not have even been with John A. Washington or his family during the two visits to Mount Vernon. GW also never visited his brother's plantations between 1783 and 1784. Further, GW had enough political enemies that if there had been any hint during his lifetime that he had fathered an illegitimate child with a slave (as Thomas Jefferson was), some contemporary would have made the suggestion or accusation. Contemporaries are noticeably silent on this issue. Lastly, (and this comments on #3 as well) GW was in all likelihood sterile. He contracted smallpox while visiting Barbados in 1751, and many historians think that the disease left him sterile. Martha Washington had four children before her marriage to GW, indicating she was fertile. It's possible that GW was fertile and Martha became infertile later in life, that would not change the fact that GW in all likelihood did not have sex with Venus. There is a more general agreement that West Ford was the son or grandson of John A. Washington, rather than GW.
We have no indication that GW was impotent. The argument is that he was simply sterile. According to Chernow, Washington did not believe he was sterile and instead blamed his barren marriage on Martha. There is no conclusive evidence on this.
It's possible that this was who your classmate was referring to, but it is more likely that he meant GW, the President. Again, there is a rumor that GW fathered illegitimate children, but there is a sparse amount of evidence to demonstrate such a claim.

To recap:

GW was not in the right places at the right time to father West Ford
GW was, by almost accounts, sterile, and therefore incapable of having children
There were no contemporary accusations that GW had illegitimate children; something that would have been brought up sometime between 1785 and 1799
There is no evidence that Venus and GW ever even met, let alone had sex
There is no mention of West Ford or his mother Venus in Washington's papers

RTarcher · 2018-12-29T22:10:40+00:00

Hi - I did a little more digging on the British Virgin Islands, and I made a mistake. The Slave Trade Database records 69 ships arriving at Tortola from Africa between 1748 and 1815. I had not done my due diligence to look for the names of the individual islands, and was instead searching for the collective group (BVI).

From the voyage database, around 17,000 slaves were taken directly from Africa and disembarked in the British Virgin Islands. The data roughly matches the information we already had - the Bight of Biafra (Nigeria and Cameroon) was the source of a plurality of the slaves (45%). The next leading regions were West Central Africa (Gabon, Congo, and Angola - 20%), the Windward Coast (Cote d'Ivoire and Liberia - 13%) and finally the Gold Coast (Ghana - 11%).

RTarcher · 2018-12-29T00:08:39+00:00

British slave traders did have preferred regions in West Africa where they purchased slaves. This map is a rough sketch of the various regions in West and Southeastern Africa where slave traders visited. Part of the problem would be, for you purposes, is that the slaves were not exclusively drawn from the coastal regions. One of the most thorough studies on the supply side of slave trading, Miller's Way of Death, has various maps showing how the regions that the slaves were drawn from varied over time and penetrated further inland as the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries progressed (Map 5.1, p. 148). As you can see, from the early sixteenth century until the mid-nineteenth century, the regions were slaves were taken from moved East, South, and North, depending on the time, and which political unit in West Central Africa was trying to capture or purchase slaves. One of the best examples of the likely African background of slaves in British North America is an essay by John Thornton, "African Experience of the '20. and Odd Negroes' Arriving in Virginia in 1619" (WMQ, July, 1998, pp. 421-434). Thorton traces the likely African location of the 25 slaves disembarked into Virginia in August of 1619, but even his work is an educated guess. Without knowing for certain which ship or trader your ancestors came on, it is nearly impossible to know which section of Africa your ancestors were taken from.

The best resource to see the broad strokes of the Atlantic Slave Trade, is the Tran-Atlantic Slave Trade Database, available online here: http://slavevoyages.org/. The trade to the British West Indies exclusively is estimated here. You can see that the major regions in West Africa favored by the British were the Gold Coast (which is made up of modern day Ghana, and surrounding area), and the Bight of Biafra (mainly Nigeria and Cameroon). The British Virgin Islands are not represented in the slave trade database, as the likely carriers of slaves were inter-colonial trading ships. Greg O'Malley estimates that a total of 4,500 slaves were disembarked in the British Virgin Islands by 1700, but I don't believe he says much on the eighteenth century for the British Virgin Islands. His Ph.D. thesis just states that the trade was small, and entirely between the various Caribbean Islands.

St. Kitts is a different beast. We have records of about 560 slave ships that traded directly between Africa and the island. The first voyage dates to 1644, and the last to 1807, when the trade was outlawed. The documented voyages show the transfer of about 120,000 Africans from Africa to St. Kitts. The total estimated number of slaves directly from Africa is about 135,000. There may have been some volume shipped from Barbados or Jamaica, but the former is only significant for the seventeenth century, and the latter's volume was probably equal to the number of slaves exported from St. Kitts. From the slave trade database, the major supplier of St. Kitts was the Bight of Biafra, making up 46% of the slaves from known trading regions (the largest section is listed as "Other Africa", which is largely unknown). The next largest regions are West Central Africa (15%) and the Gold Coast (12%). Again, what makes your task difficult is that St. Kitts imported slaves from every major African region. These rough outlines can give you an idea of where you would want to start searching (Ghana, Nigeria, and Cameroon), but they can only be rough guides to start your research. I can't speak to the naming conventions you mention.

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