Translation and explanation of the different field names in the index

This field lists the name of the enslaved. This is always the first name, because people in slavery were not allowed to have a surname. Sometimes people were known by a name other than their formal name. In that case this name was added, in brackets or as an alternative (‘Klaas or Nicholas’). The name sometimes contained additions to distinguish between people with the same name. Often this is a number (‘Anthonie 2’) or a property (‘Groot Kees,’ meaning ‘Big Kees’). Occasionally there is an abbreviation behind the name. Sometimes this is the abbreviation of a plantation to which someone previously belonged. Sometimes it is not clear what this abbreviation means.

There are two types of mutations: ‘inschrijving’ (registration) and ‘uitschrijving’ (deregistration). The slave registers are organised as an ‘accounting ledger’ of enslaved people per owner. Anything that imports an enslaved person into the folio of an owner is considered a registration (birth, purchase, transfer from previous series of slave registers), everything that exports someone off the list is considered a deregistration (death, sale, release). Especially in the case of a sale, deregistration from one owner’s folio also means that the person is registered to another owner. People who are sold multiple times therefore have multiple registrations and deregistrations in the ledgers. The registration date is the date on which an entry is registered in the register. This is not a date of birth: especially on plantations there can sometimes be months between birth and the final registration date. Until around 1850, only the registration date is usually recorded, in the period after that, the date of birth is often also stated. There are cases where people are registered without a date.

With the introduction of a new series of slave registers, persons were transferred from the folio of their owner in the old register to that in the new register. This transfer is not reported separately. Because it is not known on which date someone was transferred to the new series, we have solved this by taking the starting year of a series as the mutation date: 1830, 1838, 1848 or 1851. A particular group of people registered without a mutation date are people who have been registered or deregistered on the basis of a government resolution, a decision of the colonial government. This happened in all cases when special permission of the government was needed, for example when someone was manumitted, or when someone was sold abroad or when children were separated from their mother. In that case, the date of the government resolution is considered to be the change date.