Barbados Church Records

Barbados  Church Records

The oldest standing church on the Island of Barbados is St. James Church (picture on right). Joanne McRee Sanders published indexes and abstracts of many Barbados church records (see below). Recently, FamilySearch has started an initiative to make free online indexes to many of the same records, and has broadened the scope to include nineteenth century records derived from both church and civil collections.

Church of England
Original Barbados christenings and burials (1679-1680) are kept at the Barbados Department of Archives. The collection has been microfilmed: 1162149 Item 1

Bishop's transcripts covering the 1640s and 1650s were found in the Public Record Office in England (now The National Archives). They were published 100 years ago and are now available online (see Marriages).

Baptisms

 * 1637-1800 - Sanders, Joanne McRee . Barbados Baptisms 1637-1800 . Baltimore, Md.: Genealogical Publishing Company, Inc., 1984 . Free Name Search ; digital version at Ancestry ($); purchase at Genealogical.com; 972.981 K29s.


 * 1739-1891 - "Barbados Baptisms, 1739-1891," online database, FamilySearch - free. Description.

Marriages

 * 1643-1800 - Sanders, Joanne McRee. Barbados Records: Marriages 1643-1800 . Baltimore, Md.: Genealogical Publishing Company, Inc., 1982 . Free Name Search ; digital version at Ancestry ($); purchase at Genealogical.com; 972.981 K29sj v. 1


 * 1648-1652 - "Marriages at the Cathedral, Bridgetown, Barbados," Caribbeana, Vol. 1 (1910):33-34. Digital version at dLOC - free.


 * 1854-1879 - "Barbados Marriages, 1854-1879," online database, FamilySearch - free. Description.

Burials
Burials registered in some of Barbados's early Church of England parishes (more than 170,126 burial entries) are available on the website Tombstones.bb.

The records have been microfilmed and are widely available through the Family History Library's satellite Family History Center system. Some are also online:


 * 1854-1885 - "Barbados Burials, 1854-1885," online database, FamilySearch - free. Description.

Vestry Minutes
Church of England vestry minutes survive from the 1650s for select Barbados parishes. Pre-1700 records have been published:


 * St. Michael Parish, see The Journal of the Barbados Museum &amp; Historical Society, Vols. 14-17.
 * St. John Parish, see The Journal of the Barbados Museum &amp; Historical Society, Vols. 31 (pages 32-49), 33.

Clergymen

 * Fothergill, Gerald. A List of Emigrant Ministers to America, 1690-1811. London: E. Stock, 1904. Digital versions at Ancestry ($); Google Books; Internet Archive, 1965 reprint: . Addendum published in Caribbeana, Vol. 3 (1914):312-313. Digital version at dLOC - free.


 * Cadbury, Henry J. "Clergymen Licensed to Barbados, 1694-1811," The Journal of the Barbados Museum and Historical Society, Vol. 15, No. 2 (Feb. 1948):62-69. FHL LAT AM 972.981 B2j v. 15 1947-48

Miscellaneous Records

 * List and Index Society. Calendar of Letters from Canada, Newfoundland, Pennsylvania, Barbados and the Bahamas 1721-1793: Preserved at the United Society for the Propagation of the Gospel. London: Swift (P &amp; D), 1972. BRITISH Large Q Book 942 B4pro spec. ser. v. 5

A wiki article describing this collection is found at:

Barbados Church Records (FamilySearch Historical Records)

Quakers
By the 1650s early Quaker colonists arrived in Barbados from the British Isles, and soon spread their religion from Barbados to the east coast of America. An article that describes Quaker records about Barabados is:


 * Dwight A. Radford, and Arden C. White, "The Irish in Barbados," The Irish at Home and Abroad: A Newsletter of Irish Genealogy and Heritage, Vol. 2, No. 3 (1994/1995):92-97. WorldCat entry.