All Bahn Ya! - 19th Century St Croix Population

Section of 1846 census at Estate Fountain on St Croix

One thing I noticed when I started going through the St Croix census from the 1800s and early 1900s: most of the population said that they were from St Croix.  There didn’t seem to be a lot of immigration from Europe, the US, or even neighboring islands.  Since this seemed so prevalent, I wanted to know just how many of them were from St Croix, and how that number changed over time. 
So, I conducted a study of the birthplaces indicated on the Danish censuses from 1841-1911.  I discovered a couple of interesting features about the population profile so I figured I’d share. 

This post is about the composition of the St Croix population from pre-emancipation to right before the US purchase.  In particular, the overwhelming tendency to be Bahn Ya (Born here).
The St Croix census at www.visharoots.org holds over 210,000 records from the censuses spanning 70 years. In each census, the enumerator indicated the birthplace of each person.  Responses ranged from very specific: “Strobeck in Schleswig”, to the very vague: “the Spanish Main”, “West Indies” and “the great desert”.  In 1870, 8 people are identified as “Coolies”, or Indians (more on this in a later post).  The different Danish West Indian islands are listed separately (St Croix, St Thomas, St John) in the census. Most Africans simply listed “Africa” or “Guinea”.  There are over 900 distinct entries for birthplace in the census.  After grouping into countries and other similar regions, there are over 90.  Most areas contribute very little to the overall population during this time.

Over the full database, 87% of all people on St Croix during these 70 years were from St Croix.  This table shows the total people for each major geographical division.

Birthplaces from St Croix Census 1841-1911

	1835	1841	1846	1850	1855	1857	1860	1870	1880	1890	1901	1911	Total
St. Croix	3592	21934	21363	21412	21009	2794	21415	18977	15923	7888	14505	12058	182870
Other Caribbean	100	559	417	337	276	58	606	2714	1747	902	3265	2674	13655
Africa	691	2033	1361	977	536	40	324	79	19	2	4	3	6069
Europe	14	227	196	331	312	57	253	308	317	175	286	292	2768
St. Thomas	31	202	174	184	224	35	170	172	186	182	287	200	2047
United Kingdom	3	261	223	187	158	11	133	108	82	14	44	36	1260
St. John	4	72	55	51	55	4	44	74	50	18	40	29	496
USA	8	64	51	45	25	5	28	26	31	16	39	56	394
India				6				86	46	58	54	35	285
China								37	20	12	19	11	99
South America	4	8	7	10	5	2	5	7	3	5	16	20	92
At Sea		7	2	6	5			2	1	1	1	2	27
Canada		1	2	2	3	3		2	1		6		20
Grand Total	4447	25368	23851	23548	22608	3009	22978	22592	18426	9273	18566	15416	210082

These numbers are overwhelmingly Crucian.  In terms of overall percentages:

Contribution to total census from geographic areas

St. Croix	87.05%
Other Caribbean	6.50%
Africa	2.89%
Europe	1.32%
St. Thomas	0.97%
United Kingdom	0.60%
St. John	0.24%
USA	0.19%
India	0.14%
China	0.05%
South America	0.04%
At Sea	0.01%
Canada	0.01%

From this we can see that relatively few people came to St Croix from St Thomas (less than 1 percent) and St John (a quarter of a percent) during this time.  Then, as now, St Croix tended to stand apart from the other islands.  Only 1.32% of the population was from continental Europe (1.12% from Denmark) and a mere 0.6% from the British Isles. 

It is even more interesting to look at the population over time.  Here is a chart of the population variation over time from the Danish islands, Africa, and the other Caribbean islands.



In the period from 1850-1860, Crucians made up over 90% of the island population. Prior to that there was a significant, but declining, contribution of Africans.

The vast majority of Africans were brought to St Croix as slaves.  In 1803, Denmark abolished the transatlantic slave trade.  It was illegal to import African slaves into the Danish West Indies.  Slavery wasn’t abolished until 1848, but the importation was illegal.  By this time, most slaves were “creoles”, that is, native.  In 1803 the importation of “bosals”, or African-born halted.  The African population mixed with the creoles. Over time, with few new Africans coming to the island, the African population dwindled, their children being Crucians.  [Note: a small number of free Africans had come to St Croix.  Some in connecton with the slave trade, some to work as laborers or artisans. This practice continued throughout the 19th century.]

By 1835, when the first surviving censuses were taken, those Africans still living constituted 15.5% of the island’s population.  The population declined steadily until it was 0.02% in 1890.

In 1835, Crucians and Africans together constituted over 96% of the population. This composition was nearly constant until after 1860. Over the first half of the 19th century, the population of St Croix actually declined.  By 1846 it was down 17% from the 1797 peak, and continued falling into the second half of the 1800s.  The falling population was presenting a problem to planters.

Note the sudden change in the population composition at the 1870 census.  After reaching a peak of 93.2%, the Crucians drop in a decade to 85% and continue lower to only 78% in 1911.  This corresponds to the increase of people from other Caribbean islands shown in the chart above.

In the next part of this series I will look at the cause of this change and its significance as a piece of Island history.