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Hotten's Original Lists of Persons of Quality is the classic work on 17th-century British immigration to the colonies. Not generally known, however, is that Hotten included only a portion of the lists available to him. Nearly two-thirds of the important Barbados Census of 1679/80 was not used and this left out more than half of the island's parish registers, all of the militia rolls, and various lists of landholders.

Thousands of immigrants settled on Barbados before planting new roots on the mainland and their records have gone undetected--until now, that is, for this work, based on records in the Public Record Office in London, supplies all of the material missing in Hotten. The parish registers give the names of all of those baptized or buried, with the dates and the names of the family members; the census returns list landowners' names with the number of freemen, servants, and slaves in the household; and the militia rolls list the militiamen by regiment and company, as well as the landowners responsible for furnishing troops. About 6,500 persons are named--their first mention in the records of the New World!