Manumissions of Enslaved Persons Recorded in Registers of Deeds in Montserrat National Trust Archives

The Register of Deeds in the British West Indian colonies was the fundamental and definitive record of all legal documents pertaining to property–real estate, personal possessions, and chattels, which included enslaved people. Laboriously transcribed from the originals, they served (and do still serve) as a permanent history of plantation sales, powers of attorney, wills proved, marriage contracts and so forth, including, as disposal of property or manumission by an enslaver. Montserrat was the least populated of the Leeward Island sugar-producing colonies, with a maximum number of enslaved persons estimated at 10,000 in 1775 and 6,400 in 1834. To be manumitted was a vanishingly rare possibility for any of them, as this small dataset of 1,237 individuals demonstrates.

英属西印度殖民地的契约登记册（Register of Deeds）是所有涉及财产——涵盖不动产、私人财物及动产（chattels）——的法律文件的基础性权威记录，其中包括被奴役者（enslaved people）。该登记册经从原件悉心转录而来，过去乃至至今均作为永久档案，留存了种植园买卖、授权委托书、经认证遗嘱、婚姻契约等各类法律文书，亦涵盖财产处置或奴隶主解放奴隶的相关内容。蒙特塞拉特是背风群岛产糖殖民地中人口最少的地区，据估算，1775年其被奴役者数量峰值约为10000人，1834年则降至6400人。正如这份包含1237人的小型数据集所展现的那样，对当时的被奴役者而言，获得解放的可能性微乎其微。