The annual meeting of the Society of Virgin Islands Historians will be held in the Guinea and West India Company Warehouse/ Old Slave Market building at the corner of Company and Hospital Streets on Saturday, Jan. 19. This year’s conference theme is “Health in the West Indian Environment.”
Presentations on this theme will be made in two sessions. The first examines the writings of Edward Bliss Emerson, brother of Ralph Waldo Emerson, who came to St. Croix in the 1830s to recover from tuberculosis. During his time here he made extensive observations about St. Croix, the community of people visiting for recovery from illness from the United States and abroad, and the daily routines of the Danish West Indies. The second session will discusses what we know about the health histories of enslaved Africans and their descendants on St. Croix from the time the slave trade ended to emancipation (1803-48). The panel (program follows on next page) includes several researchers from Puerto Rico, St. Croix and Denmark.
The presentations will begin at 8:30 a.m. and will conclude by 1:30 p.m. Refreshments will be served. All of the presentations are free to the general public.
The Christiansted National Historic Site was created in 1952 by request from the Government of the U.S. Virgin Islands. NPS invites people to take advantage of an opportunity to come and visit the park to see some of the oldest buildings in the federal registry that the National Park Service maintains for the public trust, including the Slave Market/West India and Guinea Company Warehouse and Fort Christiansvaern. www.nps.gov
