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“Districts of the Bahamas (Labeled)” Licensed under Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.
History
The Bahamas, officially the Commonwealth of the Bahamas, is an island country consisting of more than 700 islands, cays, and islets in the Atlantic Ocean; north of Cuba and Hispaniola (the Dominican Republic and Haiti); northwest of the Turks and Caicos Islands; southeast of the U.S. state of Florida and east of the Florida Keys. Its capital is Nassau on the island of New Providence. The designation of “Bahamas” can refer to either the country or the larger island chain that it shares with the Turks and Caicos Islands. As stated in the mandate/manifesto of the Royal Bahamas Defence Force, the Bahamas territory encompasses 470,000 km2 (180,000 sq mi) of ocean space.
Originally inhabited by the Lucayan, a branch of the Arawakan-speaking Taino people, the Bahamas were the site of Columbus’ first landfall in the New World in 1492. Although the Spanish never colonized the Bahamas, they shipped the native Lucayans to slavery in Hispaniola. The islands were mostly deserted from 1513 until 1648, when English colonists from Bermuda settled on the island of Eleuthera.
The Bahamas became a British Crown colony in 1718, when the British clamped down on piracy. After the American War of Independence, thousands of American Loyalists, taking their enslaved Africans, moved to the Bahamas, where the Americans set up a plantation economy. After Britain abolished the international slave trade in 1807, the Royal Navy resettled many free Africans liberated from illegal slave ships in the Bahamas during the 19th century. Hundreds of American slaves and Black Seminoles escaped to the islands from Florida, and nearly 500 were freed from American merchant ships in the domestic trade by the Royal Navy. Slavery in the Bahamas was abolished in 1834. Today the descendants of slaves and free Africans form the majority of the population; issues related to the slavery years are part of society. The Bahamas became an independent Commonwealth realm in 1973, retaining Queen Elizabeth II as its monarch.
Source: Wikipedia
Queries and Surnames
Submit and View Queries and Surnames Submit a Query or Surnames for your lost Bahamian ancestor. Please use the linking feature only for genealogical material otherwise your query may be deleted.
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BURIAL RECORDS AND INSCRIPTIONSFROM NASSAU, NEW PROVIDENCE Anderson, Elizabeth Jane, wife of Honorable George Campbell Anderson. Died 1st October 1811,
Read moreThe Names of Loyalist Settlers and Grants of LandWhich They Received from the Bahamian Government: 1778 – 1783 Name –
Read moreNOTE: A. Talbot Bethell attributed the partial census contained in ORG Book C to the year 1671 when in fact
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