The 1679 Barbados Census offers one of the earliest and most complete snapshots of colonial society in the English-speaking world. It captures land ownership, plantation structure, and demographic patterns at a time when Barbados was the wealthiest colony in the British Empire.

For genealogists and historians, it provides essential insights into early family names, migration, and the structure of a plantation society where enslaved Africans formed the majority. Making this census searchable deepens understanding of Barbados’ early history and the wider Atlantic world.

On 1^st April 1680, Governor Sir Jonathan Atkins sent a box of statistical material – including the December 1679 census – to William Blathwayt, Secretary to the Council of Trade and Plantations. This census is the most comprehensive demographic record compiled in England or its colonies up to that date, listing landowners, acreage, enslaved persons, indentured servants, and household residents.

On 21^st May 1680 Governor Atkins also sent a map of the island, created by Quaker Richard Ford around 1675. Although Governor Atkins criticised the map for omitting churches and fortifications, it remains a crucial early island chart.

Measuring roughly a half-meter squared, Richard Ford’s map shows the island fully inhabited and barely a patch uncultivated; the entire territory, criss-crossed by roads, is studded with English names and symbols marking plantation houses and mills. Even the title’s repetition of “mill” seems crafted to evoke an image of ceaseless, contiguous industry. As the key in the upper-right corner notes, these mills are all, “imployd in the grinding of Sugar Canes” underscoring the island’s total orientation toward sugar production.

In the early 1680s the free white population is estimated to have reached around 20,000; the enslaved black population, whose brutal forced labour supplied and worked the mills, outnumbered the whites by more than two to one. The violence, and indeed even the mere fact of slavery, is silenced by the map.

Rediscovery and Publication of the 1679 Barbados Census

When the 1679 Barbados Census data and Ford map of Barbados reached London in 1680, Governor Sir Jonathan Atkins had already been recalled and replaced by Sir Richard Dutton, and doubts about the accuracy of his figures led the Council of Trade and Plantations to largely disregard the census data.

These census documents remained ignored for nearly 200 years until genealogist John Camden Hotten rediscovered and published portions of them in 1874 in: “The Original Lists of Persons of Quality; Emigrants; Religious Exiles; Political Rebels; Serving Men Sold for a Term of Years; Apprentices; Children Stolen; Maidens Pressed; and Others Who Went from Great Britain to the American Plantations, 1600–1700“. The portions of the 1679 Barbados Census that Hotten published included:

• Householders in Bridgetown.
• Landholders for 5 parishes.
• Baptismal & burial registers for 5 parishes.
• List of persons ticketed to leave Barbados in 1679.

However, Hotten omitted:

• Landholder lists for 6 parishes.
• Baptismal/burial records for 6 parishes.
• Militia rolls for all 8 regiments.
• Lists of judges, councillors, and assemblymen.

This missing information was included in the work of James C. Brandow in 1982; “Omitted Chapters from Hotten’s Original Lists of Persons of Quality … And Others Who Went From Great Britain To The American Plantations, 1600-1700“.

In 2014, Peter J. Koby transcribed the 1679 Barbados Census from a microfilm copy held by the main library of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints in Salt Lake City, Utah, USA, for his Master’s thesis; Digital Visualisation Of Colonial Cartography: Patterns Of Wealth In The Sugar Colony Of Barbados. The appendix of his thesis includes a consolidated, parish-by-parish transcription of the 1679 Barbados Census. Using this appendix we have created two tables which are fully searchable for the 1679 Barbados Census:

• Table 1 – includes all the parishes (including Bridgetown)
• Table 2 – is a more detailed table that covers just Bridgetown.

This 1679 census reinforces a tripartite labour hierarchy:

• free white servants,
• bound white servants and
• enslaved Africans.

The 1679 Barbados Census shows Barbados at the height of its mature sugar-plantation system, when the island’s population had become predominantly enslaved.

Table 1 : All Parishes including Bridgetown

The table below can be filtered by Parish. It contains 2,951 rows of data so be patient with it loading!

Click here download the raw data in Excel format. The default table shows 10 rows of data. You can scroll horizontally scroll to see more data on the page.

The Bridgetown data has been added in under St. Michael. Under the Bridgetown entries, Servants are the addition of Hired Servants and Bought Servants from Table 2 Bridgetown.

For ease of searchability, we have made two small editorial updates:

• The 17th-century use of “Ff” at the start of surnames and Christian names has been modernised to “F.”
• Common abbreviations such as Jas. for James and Wm. for William have been standardised.

Click here to view the historical name style guide we used.

Table 2 – Bridgetown

The census data for Bridgetown included some additional variables that were not included in the Parish data such as:

• Wife
• Companion
• Children
• Hired Servants – already free and simply contracted for work. Their presence signals specialised labour such as artisans, overseers, bookkeepers, craftsmen or temporary workers whose skills were not easily replaced. It suggest the early formation of a free managerial layer.
• Bought Servants – shows the remnants of the dying indenture system. Bought Servants were bound for a term of years, after which they became free. Indentured labour had been crucial in the early 1640s – 50s when Barbados transitioned to sugar. By 1679, sugar had become so profitable, and mortality rates for servants remained so high, that planters overwhelmingly preferred enslaved African labour.
• Negroes – detailed as Slaves in the All Parishes table

The All Parish data for Bridgetown include merged data for:

• Servants (the sum of: Hired Servants and Bought Servants).

It did not include:

• Wife
• Companion
• Children

The Bridgetown table can be filtered by Parish – St. Michael – Bridgetown & St. Michael – Bridgetown (Jewish). It contains 405 rows of data so be patient with it loading!

Like the Consolidated Table above, you can also download the raw data in Excel format. The default table shows 10 rows of data. You can increase this if you want to see more data on the page.

An Analysis of the 1681 Richard Ford – A New Map Of The Island of Barbadoes and the 1679 Barbados Census listings

For the 1681 Richard Ford – A New Map Of The Island of Barbadoes the Estates and Landowners listed in the 11 Parishes have been extracted and compared to the 1679 Barbados Census and shown in a table below:

The map of Barbados shown below is an overlay of the estates shown on the 1681 Richard Ford – A New Map Of The Island of Barbadoes that have been cross-matched to the 1679 Barbados Census. Click on the map to open the interactive map. Alternatively click here to also open the interactive map.

Once the interactive map is open if you click on the pin you will see the estate details.

The above overlay map was created by importing a KML (Keyhole Markup Language) file showing the estates listed on Richard Ford’s 1681 map of Barbados into KMZView.

Click here to download the KML file: Matched_estates_1679census-1681FordMap.kml.

Transcription and Transposition Errors

There are two copies of the 1679 Barbados Census data:

• The original sent by Governor Sir Jonathan Atkins to London in 1680 was held originally by The State Paper Department of Her Majesty’s Public Record Office (Queen Victoria was the reigning monarch when the census data was rediscovered by John Camden Hotten hence the Her). The 1679 Barbados Census is now held by The National Archives in the UK.
• A second copy of the 1679 Barbados Census is held by the Barbados Archives in two leather-bound ledgers. This is a handwritten transcript of the original census.
  
  It is believed that the Barbados Archives transcript was created from the original document held in London during the 1890s. This was after the 1679 Barbados Census was rediscovered in the 1870s by John Camden Hotten, and the publication of his 1874 book: “The Original Lists of Persons of Quality; Emigrants; Religious Exiles; Political Rebels; Serving Men Sold for a Term of Years; Apprentices; Children Stolen; Maidens Pressed; and Others Who Went from Great Britain to the American Plantations, 1600–1700“.

Notice the difference between the handwriting and layout of the original held by The National Archives in London and the transcript version held in the Barbados Archives.

The data in Table 1 and Table 2 was transposed from the appendix of Peter J. Koby’s 2014 master’s thesis: Digital Visualisation Of Colonial Cartography: Patterns Of Wealth In The Sugar Colony Of Barbados.

Peter J. Koby in 2014 used a microfilm copy of the 1679 Barbados Census held by the main library of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints in Salt Lake City, Utah, USA. This is a photographic copy of the 1679 Barbados Census transcript held by the Barbados Archives. It was created by LDS on 11^th October 1978. The specific details of the LDS copy are:

Peter J. Koby thesis used data from the Barbados Archives’ transcript of the 1679 Barbados Census. As his source was a transcript rather than the original document, it should be assumed that transcription errors may exist when compared with the original version held at The National Archives in London.

If you spot any transposition errors please contact the author Jim Webster, by clicking on the BajanThings Contact Burts link and choosing from the Subject drop-down: “Barbados Maps/Plantations – Forward to: Jim Webster“. 

Key Refence Sources

The 1679 Barbados Census is available through the UK National Archives (reference CO 1/44, no 47 i-xxii). A the microfilm copy of The 1679 Barbados Census is held by the main library of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints in Salt Lake City, Utah USA. The latter was used by Peter. J. Koby for his Master’s Thesis in 2014.

The original lists of persons of quality; emigrants; religious exiles; political rebels; serving men sold for a term of years; apprentices; children stolen; maidens pressed; and others who went from Great Britain to the American Plantations, 1600-1700 : with their ages and the names of the ships in which they embarked, and other interesting particulars; from mss. preserved in the State Paper Department of Her Majesty’s Public Record Office, England Edited by John Camden Hotten, 1874.

The Barbados Census of 1680: Profile of the Richest Colony in English America by Richard S. Dunn, The William and Mary Quarterly, Vol. 26, No. 1 (January 1969), pages 3 – 30, Published By: Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture. An excellent document which provides a clear synopsis of the census and militia records sent to William Blathwayt.

Omitted Chapters from Hotten’s Original Lists of Persons of Quality … And Others Who Went From Great Britain To The American Plantations, 1600-1700, Edited by James C Brandow, Genealogical Publishing , 1982. John Camden Hotten’s 1874 book detailed above only included a part of the 1679 Barbados Census. James C Brandow’s book looks to present the data that was missed out of Hotten’s original work. The full version can be purchased on Google Play.

Digital Visualisation Of Colonial Cartography: Patterns Of Wealth In The Sugar Colony Of Barbados, by Peter. J. Koby – A Thesis in Geography Submitted in Partial Fulfilment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Science degree at The Pennsylvania State University, The Graduate School, College of Earth and Mineral Sciences in August 2014.

The Barbados Census of 1679 and the Legacies of Slavery in Early Modern England – An ongoing research project by Dr Michael Bennett of the University of Sheffield and Dr Misha Ewen of the University of Sussex, funded by the Economic History Society through the Carnevali Small Research Grants scheme.

On 29^th January 2026 Jim Webster made a presentation to The Barbados Museum & Historical Society – Genealogy Society: From Manuscript to Database: Making Early Barbados Census Records Searchable and Available. A copy of that presentation is posted on The Barbados Museum & Historical Society YouTube channel. The presentation was hosted by Harriet Pierce who manages the Barbados Museum’s onsite Library, the Shilstone Memorial Library and is the facilitator of the Barbados Genealogy Group.

Map and plantation resources on BajanThings

The Printed Maps of Barbados 1500s – 1980s (Overview).

Barbados Sugar-Works 1640 – 1924 (Summary).