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Tracing Caribbean Roots: Finding Ancestors Before Emancipation

Sunday 21st June 2026

Black history meets family history as one Caribbean lineage is traced beyond emancipation through a remarkable historical case study.

 

Most people researching Caribbean family history eventually reach a point where records appear to stop connecting. In this online Black history talk, genealogist and author Paul Crooks examines a documented family lineage traced across the Caribbean and beyond, exploring what historical records can reveal about family connections, identity and ancestry after emancipation.

Paul Crooks is a genealogist, author and speaker specialising in Black history and African-Caribbean ancestry. He is known for one of the earliest documented reconstructions of African-Caribbean ancestry from the Caribbean to Africa using archival records, tracing his own ancestry from London to West Africa via Jamaica.

His work explores themes including ancestry, identity, migration, slavery, emancipation, Windrush and the interpretation of historical records. He is the author of A Tree Without Roots: The Guide to Tracing British, African and Asian-Caribbean Ancestry and the novel Ancestors. His research has been featured by the BBC and has helped inspire thousands of people to explore their own family histories.

Drawing on his own research, Paul Crooks examines how these records relate to the gaps, inconsistencies and unanswered questions that many encounter.

This session forms part of a wider series on tracing Black ancestry, examining how historical records can be interpreted to reconstruct family histories.

What You’ll Gain

• Why the Slave Compensation Records are often misunderstood
• Why some ancestry research stops progressing at this point
• How these records relate to gaps and inconsistencies in family history
• A clearer understanding of what may — and may not — be visible in the records

Who This Session Is For

• People researching African-Caribbean or Black British ancestry
• Anyone whose family history research has reached a standstill
• Those trying to make sense of records that don’t align
• Anyone seeking a clearer understanding of how slavery-era records affect family history research

Event Details:

Start Time: 7:00pm
Finish Time: 8:00pm

Tickets: From £6.13

Location: Online

Ticket packages include optional digital resources such as the African–Irish–Creole Caribbean Culture Guide, Descendants eBook and DNA Testing Demystified.

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