When Australian Nicholas Warner visited Trinidad in April to watch his home team play its second Test match against the West Indies at the Queen's Park Oval, he had no clue that he would leave the island with a new awareness of his Trinidadian roots. Warner, an official of the Australian government, has since added a son of the soil-Charles Warner, a 19th-century attorney general of Trinidad-to his family tree. He also found out he may be a distant relative of Works Minister Jack Warner. Historian Gerard Besson was the man behind the discoveries. "I guess because it rained so much during the Test series he couldn't enjoy the cricket so he decided to do a 'lil' Warner research," he said. Besson managed to trace Warner's ancestry all the way to the 1650s and saw that his Caribbean roots ran deep. "In researching his family in Trinidad, he understands that he's connected to two members of Parliament, because one of his earliest ancestors in Trinidad married into the Cadiz family, of which Minister of Trade and Industry Stephen Cadiz is a part," said Besson, who took less than a week to make the ancestral findings. "His ancestors in Trinidad were British colonial administrators." Besson said he took Warner to the cemetery in the Botanical Gardens to show him Charles Warner's grave, and to Belmont to see an old house on Industry Lane where Hilton Warner and the black Warners lived. "I told him he had a lot of relatives who are the descendants to various Warners who have lived here...It's also very likely he could be related to Jack Warner." A historian for over three decades, Besson says Warner was just one of scores of people who sought his expertise to help solve their family history puzzle. Genealogy is an invigorating study and finding out "where we came from," Besson says, is something more and more people want to know. "Before, it was only rich people who thought about doing this, but because of the recent enthusiasm for genealogical research, over the last several years, people, both local and foreign, have looked into their origins to sort their roots in Trinidad. They want to know about the missing links in their ancestry so that they can put everything together. It gives them a sense of place in the wider world."
Where did we come from?
Genealogist Shamshu Deen, who chronicled the search for his own ancestors in the 1994 book Solving East Indian Roots in Trinidad, has been documenting the arrival of Indians in this country for over 30 years and has contributed significantly to the area of genealogical research, mainly in the East Indian Diaspora. Deen, who was responsible for tracing the ancestors of Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar and former Prime Minister Basdeo Panday, says an increasing number of people are opting to trace their lineage and discover more about themselves and their family. But it's easier, he points out, for those of East Indian descent. Indo-Trinidadians can discover the exact day their ancestors arrived and where in India they came from. They can also find out their age, religion, occupation in India, and whether they were accompanied by family members, as well as the estate they were sent to as an indentured labourer. Because Africans were brought to Trinidad as slaves, Deen says, those records are difficult to come by. "The bulk of Indians came later than Africans, as a result of the abolition of slavery. Their documentation was better kept because it was a contract system they came on...Even those who died on the boat were also included in those documents." Still, he admits there are some challenges to tracing one's roots all the way to India. One is the fact that people sometimes exaggerate the ages of their ancestors, and documents don't always support their estimates. Another challenge is tracing ancestors by name, as about 80 per cent of Indians arriving were registered with one name, such as Ramlal, Edoo, Nasiban or Parbatie. Also, "The spelling of last names changed dramatically over generations, so that after four or five generations no one remembers the name of the arriving ancestor," he said. "Recently, slave lists were launched at the National Archives, through the Unesco Memory of the World Project, which will facilitate those of African descent to trace their ancestry."
Historian Prof Bridget Brereton agrees, but points out some other obstacles. "Many thousands of present-day Afro-Trinidadians have ancestors who migrated here after slavery. "They might have arrived here from Barbados or St Vincent. It's also tricky to use the names of the enslaved people because they were not necessarily the names they had," she said. She says the two main ways of tracking down one's ancestral roots are through interviews and documentary sources, which should be done simultaneously. One can also gain valuable information through the Registrar General's Department, at Registration House on South Quay, where registers of births, deaths and marriages, deeds and ownership of land are kept. And visiting the National Archives, in Port-of-Spain, she says, is also valuable.
There one can find newspaper records and other forms of documentation on the arrival of African, Indian and even Chinese indentured labourers. Brereton says discovering one's roots is important as it helps shape one's sense of self and provides a greater appreciation of one's culture and history. "Most people find a great deal of satisfaction in knowing about their ancestors and knowing something about the culture that their ancestors came from. That knowledge helps to make people more connected and rooted to their society," she said. "It can help to make people more committed to their society when they have an understanding of how their ancestors got here."