Two-century-old land records displayed during a recent archives exhibition were found “purely by accident,” according to Archives and Records Management Unit Director Dr. Angel Smith.
Dr. Smith discovered the documents in the temperature-controlled “strongroom” designed to keep the territory’s oldest records in their current state.
Many of them, however, are in such poor condition that they are sealed and cannot be touched or opened because they would be further degraded, according to Dr. Smith.
The “strongroom” — located in the Old Administration Building complex on Main Street — is stacked full of boxes designed for archival use. Each box contains books wrapped in acid-free paper, according to Dr. Smith.
The documents have been assigned different “grades,” and some can be handled delicately while others cannot be touched at all, he explained.
Though previously under the Deputy Governor’s Office, the archives unit is now under the Premier’s Office.
Because of the change, Mr. Smith said he recently gave Premier’s Office officials a tour of the strongroom and pulled some records to show them the condition of the documents.
“In trying to stimulate the interests of my supervisors, in terms of the permanent secretary in the ministry and other persons, I would invite them to tour the archives to see what it is, because … they were not aware, because now this is something new under their department,” Dr. Smith said.
Land records
When he found the old land records, he did not realise what he had unearthed until he read the documents carefully.
“That’s when I saw jumping out at me this purchase of property by a free black man,” he said. “And I was like, ‘That can’t be possible: [a] free black man buying land in 1804.’”
This information, he added, came as a shock to him.
“I’ve done research on BVI history,” he said. “I never had access to these records. So even as someone who’s done in-depth research into this period, I had never seen them.”