St. Croix Circulation Over Time
This map shows the books that were used at a Moravian School for Afro-Caribbean children in Friedensthal, St. Croix from around 1825-1857, according to manuscript records. Some guesses have been made due to incomplete titles and a lack of definitive information about the editions. At first, Moravians used books in a local Dutch creole dialect, but then replaced them with books in the "English style." After a rebellion forced the end of slavery in 1848, a greater number of books were available on the island, as a list of reward books given at a school examination shows. The books on the list were largely published by tract societies in Britain and the US--organizations that envisioned a universal Christian childhood that would be achieved by circulating their books around the globe. Some of these books seem to acknowledge their "secondary" audience in the colonies; for instance, The Traveller teaches its readers that scissors were invented in Africa.
Credit: Courtney Weikle-Mills