Christal, Thank you, every bit of information helps in the search, I just found a directory to the holdings of the Moravian records of the Virgin Islands, and I am trying to decipher it, it is is danish!. So I know what you mean about language. Ann ----Original Message Follows---- From: monsanto@interneeds.net (Christel) Reply-To: CARIBBEAN-L@rootsweb.com To: CARIBBEAN-L@rootsweb.com Subject: Re: Moravian Records in West Indies continue Date: 6 Jun 2003 16:52:27 -0700 Hi, my two cents for what it is worth. I have done research in 19th century Moravian records, not in the United States, but in Holland. But the German is probably the same. I am German, but it was extemely difficult to read the records. I was rather succesful in the baptism records, they kept there of different relatives I was looking for, and I had an enormous break, with one slave grgrgrmother, but their other records of the visits to the different places and their conferences: almost not to be read. I went for weeks, every week for one day. The tip of getting relevant information from the archivaris before you go, seems to be very good. Find out, if they have baptism records from the Virgin Islands and ask how they are arranged. By plantation or by church. Consider, if the people were still slaves there exist probably two different sets of names: the ones they had before baptism and the ones they received at baptism. I was looking for a family on a plantation owned by English owners. The names of their slaves were a little different from the surrounding plantations owned by the Dutch. Finally I found the mother and grandmother of the whole group: her name in the slave records was Hebe, what do you think the Moravian brothers made of that? "Ibi", they spelled what they heard. Be prepared. Success in your endeavors Christel ==== CARIBBEAN Mailing List ==== For information on individual islands, research aids, island bulletin boards or history please visit the CaribbeanGenWeb project at http://www.rootsweb.com/~caribgw/ "Sharing the information." _________________________________________________________________ MSN 8 with e-mail virus protection service: 2 months FREE* http://join.msn.com/?page=features/virus