By Aldeth Lewin From Virgin Islands Daily News

ST. THOMAS – Sunday is the last day for Kickstarter.com donations to the Caribbean Genealogy Library’s efforts to obtain copies of documents relating to the U.S. Virgin Islands’ transfer from Denmark to the United States.

Volunteer librarian Rob Upson said a group of volunteers will travel later this month to Washington, D.C. – or more specifically College Park, Md. – where the U.S. Archives are now housed.

The goal is to collect as many transfer-era documents as possible and digitize them to later post publicly on the library’s website.

“We estimate that we can obtain over 8,000 images for the project,” Upson said.

The United States purchased the Virgin Islands – formerly known as the Danish West Indies – from Denmark in 1917 for $25 million.

When the control shifted from one government to the other, the territory’s records became scattered across the globe.

The Danes removed a large portion of their records from the territory, and many of those are now housed at the Danish National Archives.

“They left documents essential to the administration of the islands, such as property tax records and probate records, and they remain in the islands to this day,” Upson says in a video on the library’s Kickstarter page.

The Danish government is in the middle of a project to digitize its records, including those relating to the territory.

“The U.S. Archives, however, has only made a limited set of records available via microfilm collections M1883 and M1884,” Upson says. “There are no plans to restart the microfilming process which began a little more than a decade ago.”

The library’s goal is to have all historical records relating to the transfer of the territory from Denmark to America available online for the 2017 centennial celebration.

In 2013, library volunteers conducted a small-scale digitization test at the U.S. Archives to understand what the collection holds and familiarize themselves with the process.

“The documents are rich in cultural and historic value and available for viewing at the CGL website,” Upson said.

The volunteers will meet with consultants and specialists in Virgin Islands history while in Maryland to determine the best use of time and resources to bring back as many archived records as possible.

Upson told The Daily News that the trip is planned for May 17-22. Not only will volunteers from the Virgin Islands be traveling up for the project, volunteers who live in the D.C. area will be assisting.

One of the volunteers is David Lynch, who has a blog called “200 years in Paradise” about his family research project that focuses on the Virgin Islands.

Upson said the project to get all the transfer-related records is important because it shows “the effects of becoming a U.S. territory on the people.”

He said one of the most interesting groups of records they hope to obtain are applications for passports made by V.I. residents when the transfer occurred.

“People, because they didn’t have a passport, had to apply, and all these supporting documents for those applications are there,” Upson said. “We know where this stuff is, but we can’t get it. So researchers and family historians are just with a lack of access right now.”

If the Kickstarter campaign is not fully funded to its $2,000 goal by 11:13 p.m. Sunday, the library will not receive any of the $1,345 that already has been pledged.

Upson said the Kickstarter campaign is just one of the fundraising avenues the library is taking to make the project come together, but it is a critical one, especially as the trip is only two weeks away.

To donate go to http://tinyurl.com/CGL-fund. Or go to Kickstarter.com and search for U.S. Virgin Islands Transfer-era Archive Record Digitization.

For more information about the Caribbean Genealogy Library call 714-2136 or go to http://rootsweb.ancestry.com/~vicgl.

– Contact Aldeth Lewin at 714-9111 or email [email protected].

Here is information about how to contribute to the Caribbean Genealogy Library’s Kickstarter campaign to send representatives to Washington, D.C. to obtain copies of documents relating to the territory’s transfer from Denmark to the United States.

The Kickstarter campaign ends at 11 p.m. Sunday and at press time, the fund was $655 short of its goal.

To donate go to http://tinyurl.com/CGL-fund.

Or, go to Kickstarter.com and search for U.S. Virgin Islands Transfer-era Archive Record Digitization.

For more information about the Caribbean Genealogy Library, call 714-2136 or go to http://rootsweb.ancestry.com/~vicgl

For more on this story go to: http://virginislandsdailynews.com/news/genealogy-group-seeks-help-to-fund-archive-project-1.1874588

IMAGE: www.rootsweb.ancestry.com