St. Thomas
St. Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands
Saint Thomas is an island in the Caribbean Sea and a constituent of the United States Virgin Islands (USVI), an unincorporated territory of the United States. Located on the island is the territorial capital and port of Charlotte Amalie. As of the 2000 census, the population of Saint Thomas was 51,181, about 47 percent of the U.S. Virgin Islands total.
Pre-colonial history
The island was originally settled around 1500 BC by the Ciboney people. They were later replaced by the Arawaks and then the Caribs. Christopher Columbus sighted the island in 1493 on his second voyage to the “New World”. The Caribs seem not to have survived the first decades of contact with Europeans, either due to disease or deportation and extermination. Pirates likely made use of the island as an occasional base in the next 150 years.
Danish colonial period
Map of U.S. Virgin IslandsThe Danish established a presence on Saint Thomas as early as 1666, and by 1672 had established control over the entire island through the Danish West India and Guinea Company. The land was divided into plantations and sugar cane production became the primary economic activity. As a result, Saint Thomas and neighboring islands of Saint John and Saint Croix became highly dependent on slave labor. In 1685 the Brandenburg American Company took control of the slave trade on Saint Thomas, and for some time the largest slave auctions in the world were held there. Saint Thomas boasted a fine natural harbor, known as “Taphus” for the drinking establishments located nearby. In 1691 the primary settlement there was renamed Charlotte Amalie in honor of the wife of Denmark’s King Christian V. It was later declared a free port by King Frederick V.
While the sugar trade had brought prosperity to the island’s free citizens, by the early 19th century Saint Thomas was in decline. The continued export of sugar was threatened by hurricanes, drought, and American competition. In 1848, slavery was abolished and the resulting rise in labour costs further weakened the position of Saint Thomas’ sugar producers. Given its harbors and fortifications, Saint Thomas still retained a strategic importance, and thus in the 1860s the United States government considered buying the island and its neighbors from Denmark for $7.5 million, but failed to find domestic legislative support for the bid.
St. Thomas street sign letting drivers know that they are supposed to drive on the left hand side of the road, even though they are using US-spec left hand drive vehicles.
American acquisition
In 1917 St. Thomas was purchased (along with Saint John and Saint Croix) by the United States for $25 million, as part of a defensive strategy to maintain control over the Caribbean and the Panama Canal during the First World War. P.W. Sparks, a U.S. Naval officer, designed the flag that now represents the United States Virgin Islands. Sparks married a local Virgin Island woman, Grace Joseph Sparks; when Sparks’ superior, Rear Adm. Kitelle, commissioned the design for the flag, P.W. Sparks asked his wife and her sister, Blanche Joseph (later Sasso) to sew the first flag. That flag was used until such time as a factory produced flag could be acquired. The flag’s inspiration came from the U.S. Presidential seal. Sparks decided to have the eagle facing the olive branches (which represented peace) rather than the arrows (which represented the three islands: St. Croix, St. Thomas, and St. John). (At the request of the Sparks family, this piece of history was entered into the Congressional Record in Washington, D.C., on April 30th, 1986, vol.132, No.56, by the congressional delegate, Ron de Lugo.)
U.S. citizenship was granted to the residents in 1927. The U.S. Department of the Interior took over administrative duties in 1931. American forces were based on the island during the Second World War. In 1954, passage of the U.S. Virgin Islands Organic Act officially granted territorial status to the three islands, and allowed for the formation of a local senate with politics dominated by the American Republican and Democratic parties. Full home rule was achieved in 1970.
The post-war era also saw the rise of tourism on the island. With relatively cheap air travel and the American embargo on Cuba, the numbers of visitors greatly increased. Despite natural disasters such as Hurricane Hugo (1989) and Hurricanes Luis and Marilyn (1995), the island’s infrastructure continues to improve as the flow of visitors continues.
Transportation
The island is serviced by Cyril E. King Airport. Like Great Britain, cars travel on the left side of the road. However, unlike Great Britain, the steering column is located on the left side of the vehicle.
Notable people from St. Thomas
World champion boxer Julian Jackson was born in St. Thomas
Actor / Director / Producer Kelsey Grammer was born on the island in St. Thomas
Hip hop musician Doug E. Fresh was born in St. Thomas
Camille Pissarro (1830-1903) born July 10th on the Caribbean island of St. Thomas, Danish West Indies; to Abraham Gabriel Pissarro, of Sephardic (or “Morrano”) Jewish ancestry, and Rachel Manzano-Pomiace, a Dominican of Spanish descent. Pissarro was a key member of the French Impressionist group of painters. The Pissarro family, French and Jewish in origin, had settled in the Danish colony of St. Thomas.
Denmark Vesey : His Planned Slave Uprising in Charleston, South Carolina
In about 1767, Denmark Vesey was born on the island of St. Thomas in the Danish West Indies, which today is the U.S. Virgin Islands. At a young age, Denmark assumed the surname of his owner, Joseph Vesey, who was the captain of a slave ship. Before they settled in Charleston, South Carolina in 1783, Denmark traveled along with his master on many slave-trading voyages.
While in Charleston, Denmark managed to educate himself as well as learned to read. In 1800, seventeen years after his arrival in Charleston, Denmark won $1,500.00 in a street lottery and used $600.00 of his winnings to buy his freedom. Now free, he stayed on in Charleston and worked as a carpenter. But Denmark was not satisfied, because although free, all blacks were looked upon as subservient, a status he was forced to adopt brought about by Charleston’s white society.
With each passing day, Denmark witnessed the continued injustice tolerated by the slaves he saw in Charleston, which drove him to seek out and read abolitionist literature. With this knowledge, and the fact that he was aware of a successful slave revolt that occurred in Haiti in the 1790s, he began to organize and plot a similar slave uprising for Charleston.
Denmark’s plan was to attack the arsenals in Charleston and seize the weapons. Upon accomplishing this, he would arm all the slaves who in turn were to burn the city and kill all the white people. Although not exact, this type of plan was similar to that which John Brown orchestrated at Harpers Ferry years later.
With his plan finalized, Denmark and nearly 9,000 slaves from the city of Charleston and nearby plantations were at the ready. However, fortunately, as it turned out for the city, the day before his plot was scheduled to begin in 1822, a loyal house servant, privileged to the plan, alerted the white authorities. They in turn made the necessary, and military preparations to ready the city, and consequently, Denmark, now unable to fulfill his plan, called it off.
Over a period covering the following two months, 130 blacks were arrested and brought to trail. Of these, sixty-seven were accused and convicted of taking part in this slave revolt. Thirty-five of the sixty-seven, including Denmark, were hanged; the remaining thirty-two were exiled.
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