As part of an extensive project to research Cayman Islands Heritage and connections to UK ancestry, Cayman Islands Government Office intern Natalie Ugland reports on her findings….
“For the past couple months I have been helping out at the West India Committee where David Wells and I carried out in depth research on the history of the Cayman Islands. Our goal is to obtain more information about the first settlers in the Cayman Islands and where they came from with the aims of finding stronger links between the Cayman Islands and the United Kingdom.
The majority of the research carried out took place in the West India Committees extensive library, where copious amounts of books, old tourism brochures and even old maps of the Cayman Islands can be found. Unfortunately Cayman’s history is not very well documented in the earlier years, however with some digging we managed to find some interesting information. We spent several days out at the National Archives looking at birth, marriage and death certificates to make any connections with the English settling in the Cayman Islands. We had some luck locating possible areas where Caymanian settlers might have come from in the UK, and old army records showing the involvement of Caymanians joining the British Army. The research collected will help to create better learning material to educate people on the Cayman Islands and why we are a British Overseas Territory, and furthermore to create better learning materials for schools to better educate pupils on the real Caymanian history which schools in Cayman are currently lacking…”
Natalie Ugland, Cayman Islands Government Office Intern.
