DECADES OF migration has scattered Jamaicans across the world. Estimates suggest at least 800,000 Jamaicans and their descendants live in the United Kingdom alone — nearly a third of Jamaica’s current overall population.

Now, ancestry research — otherwise known as genealogy, is helping to reconnect the diaspora and enabling Jamaicans to reclaim a history spanning several continents and several hundred years.

Significant waves of migration from Jamaica in the 1950s and 60s routinely left families split across several countries on either side of the Atlantic.

Over time, many of these transnational families have become fragmented, making it more difficult to share both their knowledge and traditions across generations.

For second and third-generation Jamaicans growing up in the diaspora, basic knowledge of Jamaican history, geography, culture, and the reality of everyday life on the island can be hard to come by.

Culture

As a means of coping with racism and discrimination in countries like the United Kingdom and Canada, some first-generation Jamaican migrants deliberately disguised elements of their culture to protect themselves and their families. Children were taught to “speak properly”, masking pronunciations that failed to conform to “Queen’s English”.

Traditional Jamaican food dishes such as oxtail stew and curry goat were cooked less frequently to avoid complaints of “funny-smelling food” by neighbours.

As a consequence, knowledge of Jamaica and its rich cultures was simply never passed down to some. At the same time, Jamaicans living in the diaspora have often found it challenging to locate information about their own family histories.

The transnational fragmentation of families has led to lost knowledge, and some worry their family’s stories are being lost to time.

Keen to learn more about Jamaica, and their own family histories, some in the diaspora have been inspired to take up ancestry research.

In recent years, popular websites like Ancestry.co.uk and the growth of social media have significantly reduced barriers for would-be genealogists. “I can’t imagine how they did genealogy in the past”, Annette-Marie Smith, a researcher from north London whose par- ents left Jamaica around 1960 told me.

“We’re literally working entirely off laptops now … I wouldn’t be able to do it without the online resources”.

Smith began researching her family history in 2012, inspired by a cousin who’d managed to locate some ancestors’ birth certificates. She explained that for her, ancestry research was about filling in gaps in Jamaica’s history following the formal end of slavery and finding stories to pass down to her descendants. “It’s about leaving a legacy.

You feel that after your generation, no one will care, no one will know,” she said.

“We want to be able to say we weren’t just here in the moment, this is where we come from.”

Significant

In the past year, Ancestry.co.uk has seen a steady rise in interest from people keen to research their family histories — with a 45 per cent uplift in site traffic during the 2020 lockdowns.

Simon Pearce, family history expert at Ancestry, told me there had been a significant increase in new users during the pandemic and that recent research had shown a 25 per cent rise in the number of Brits interested in researching their family histories.

“Researching your family history helps you establish a deeper connection with your ancestors,” Pearce said.

“Creating a family tree on Ancestry can help build up a picture of the lives of those in your past”.

He added that records on the site such as the UK and Ireland’s Incoming and Outward Passenger lists could help members of the Jamaican diaspora identify ancestors who travelled from the Caribbean to the UK or those who went back to visit friends and family.

Meanwhile, social media now plays a significant role in helping genealogists from the Jamaican diaspora collaborate and learn about research methods. Canadian researcher Jacquie Stewart, who launched a Facebook community in 2015 to help members of the Jamaican diaspora learn about genealogy, said that Facebook had become an integral part of her research. “With the Facebook groups, we can support each other … we all have a piece of the puzzle”.

Facebook is by far the most popular platform for ancestry researchers from across the Jamaican diaspora. The largest communities on the site number several thousand members who support one another by sharing advice on getting started with genealogy, to helping decipher calligraphy on historical records.

As Jamaicans have worked together using social media as an organising space to learn more about their own individual family histories, they have also learnt more about Jamaica. “When you’re researching, you have to put things into context,” Stewart said. “I’ve learnt about the geography of Jamaica, how many parishes there are, where they’re situated. It’s really enriched me. I’ve always loved history, so it’s been a really good way of knowing more about Jamaican history.”

In some cases, Facebook groups have become spaces to reshape diasporic assumptions about Jamaica and challenge mainstream historical narratives. In one group, a post described a community of white German Jamaicans on the West of the island, prompting a discussion on the complexity of race and ethnicity in Jamaica. Reflecting on the importance of ancestry research for members of the Jamaican diaspora, Stewart stressed that genealogy is about much more than uncovering a single family tree.

“Black people are not portrayed in history books. We’re not spoken about.

“My ancestors were hard-working people who accomplished a lot of things and I want their stories to be known
by my children”.

“Everybody has a place in this world,” Stewart said. “And everybody has done their part in history somehow or some way.

“If we don’t tell our own stories, I don’t know who’s going to do it for us”.

Emeka Forbes is a writer, political consultant and charity trustee based in London. He writes about technology and culture, politics and civil society.