Grenada Emigration and Immigration

Online Records

 * 1817-1834 Former British Colonial Dependencies, Slave Registers, 1813-1834 (1817-1834 for Grenada), at Ancestry.com, index and images. ($)
 * 1737-1845 Grenada Plantation Records 1737-1845 includes some inventories of slaves (last dated 1834, when slavery was outlawed) include information about illness, cause of death, first names, ages, and sometimes country of origin, color and conspicuous marks (such as amputations) and scars. Details about the collection

Grenada Family Records Centre
The Grenada Family Records Centre (GFRC) is jointly run by the Grenada Register Office (GRO) and Grenada National Archives. The GFRC provides access to some of the most important sources for family history research in Grenada, including births, marriages and deaths and census returns.

The Grenada Family Records Centre Ministry of Education Building Botanical Gardens, Tanteen St. George’s, Grenada, W.I.
 * Contact Information

Grenada Emigration and Immigration
"Emigration" means moving out of a country. "Immigration" means moving into a country. Emigration and immigration sources list the names of people leaving (emigrating) or arriving (immigrating) in the country. These sources may be passenger lists, permissions to emigrate, or records of passports issued. The information in these records may include the emigrants’ names, ages, occupations, destinations, and places of origin or birthplaces. Sometimes they also show family groups.

Background

 * French settlement and colonization began in 1649 and continued for the next century. In 1649, a French expedition of 203 men from Martinique founded a permanent settlement on Grenada. The economy was initially based on sugar cane and indigo, worked by African slaves.[
 * On 10 February 1763, Grenada was ceded to the British under the Treaty of Paris. British rule continued until 1974 (except for a period of French rule between 1779 and 1783).
 * As Grenada's economy grew, more and more African slaves were forcibly transported to the island. Britain eventually outlawed the slave trade within the British Empire in 1807, and slavery was completely outlawed in 1833, leading to the emancipation of all enslaved by 1838.[20][29] In an effort to ameliorate the subsequent labour shortage, migrants from India were brought to Grenada in 1857.
 * A majority of Grenadians (82%) are descendants of the enslaved Africans. A small percentage of descendants of indentured workers from India were brought to Grenada between 1857 and 1885, predominantly from the states of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh. Today, Grenadians of Indian descent constitute 2.2% of the population. There is also a small community of French and English descendants. The rest of the population is of mixed descent (13%).

Scots
"Grenada, known for intensive sugar and cotton production, was the most attractive of the [Caribbean] islands to investors, and it is estimated that the number of Europeans there rose from 1,225 in 1763 to 1,661 in 1773. The majority were British, but Highland and Lowland Scots represented twenty-one per cent of all landowners (fifty-seven per cent of British ones) by 1772, and possessed roughly forty per cent of all land planted in sugar and coffee."

Indian Arrival Day

 * Indian Arrival Day is a holiday celebrated on various days in the nations of the Caribbean, Fiji, and Mauritius, commemorating the arrival of people from the Indian subcontinent to their respective nation as indentured labour brought by European colonial authorities and their agents.
 * On 29 April 2009, the Government of Grenada declared that the 1st of May would officially be designated as Indian Arrival Day. The Government also announced that Boucherie Road, the road leading to the site of the arrival of the Maidstone, would be officially renamed Maidstone Road to honor the arrival of Indians in Grenada. On 2 May 2009. Governor General Sir Carlyle Glean unveiled a granite plaque commemorating the arrival of the first Indians in Grenada. The plaque bears the inscription, '''"On 1st May 1857, in this bay the sailing vessel "Maidstone" anchored and landed 287 passengers having left India three months earlier, with 304 passengers. Between the years 1857 and 1890 other ships anchored in this and other bays bringing a total of 3,200 persons from India to work as agricultural indentured labourers in Grenada. This monument is dedicated to those who became the genesis of the Indo-Grenadian population of our nation".
 * Currently there are over 12,000 Grenadians of Indian and mixed-Indian descent (11% of the total population).

Emigration from Grenada

 * Grenada, like many of the Caribbean islands, is subject to a large amount of out-migration, with a large number of young people seeking more prospects abroad. Popular migration points for Grenadians include more '''prosperous islands in the Caribbean (such as Barbados), North American Cities (such as New York City, Toronto and Montreal), the United Kingdom (in particular, London and Yorkshire) and Australia.
 * 9,783 Grenadian-born people were recorded by the 2001 UK Census.
 * Since 1984, nearly 850 Grenadians arrive legally in the United States each year, and the number of Grenadian Americans was 25,924 in 2000. They began immigrating to the US primarily from 1950. Between 2007 and 2011, there were approximately 30,320 Grenadian-born residents in the United States.

For Further Reading

 * Grenadian Americans'''
 * Grenada Heritage: From the Caribbean back to Scotland
 * How to look for records of… West Indian colonies before 1782