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  • Events

    Image of Picnicking on the beach at East End, circa 1909
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  • Maps

    Image of Oxholm 1800 map

    Step back in time and explore our map of historical sites on St. Jan, Danish West Indies in the year 1800, or view current topological and satellite maps of St. John, US Virgin Islands.

  • Connections

    View of American Hill Estate from Maho Bay

    History is all about connections! Explore the connections between our images, documents, articles, and map-locations through the keyword index.

  • Articles

    US acquisition of Virgin Islands, 1917

    Read selections from the SJHS Newsletter and other articles about the history and culture of St. John. Recent newsletter additions include:

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  • Presentations

    Cruz Bay Battery from a sketch by Fritz Melbye, Circa 1850

    View our slide-show presentation, "Enduring Eloquence", a brief background of historical images of St. John, by SJHS President David Knight.

  • Documents

    1722 list of first plantation owners on St. John

    View copies of primary documents relating to the rich historical legacy of St. John. Selected documents include a list of early settlers dating to 1722, plans for the Cruz Bay Battery drawn in 1780, a census for Lovango Cay from 1846, and many more...

  • Photo Collections

    Photo of Christ of the Carribean, Peace Hillf

    Explore our photograph collections which include: "St. John Scenes," "Postcards," "The Way It Was," "Who? Where?," "SJHS Events," "St. John –Impressions of a Happy Island by Peter Ernst," and "Grandma Riased the Roof by Ethel Walbridge McCully" .

    Photographs by Peter Ernst

    In 1975, Part–time St. John resident Peter Ernst published a marvelous St. John picture book known as “St. John-Impressions Of A Happy Island.” He published the book under the pseudonym Peter Buruba. All of the colored pictures were taken with his Hasselblad, a Swedish square format film camera… a type of camera that he still uses to this day.

    It seems that Peter first came to St. John as a young man in 1958, and one of the first persons he met was Miss Lucy Smith who showed him around the Island. He, like so many other visitors to St. John immediately fell in love with the island and on one of his many visits, some 10 years later, met the Gibneys and bought some land at Denis Bay from them.

    He named the property Buruba, after the largest tree on the property. (Peter explains that Buruba is a derivative and contraction of the first and last three letters of the Latin name for gumbo limbo, or Bursera simaruba.) Peter spent 5 years building his home and was a part–time resident on St. John up through the early 1980s, at which time his business ventures in Europe began taking more of his time. Over the years Peter has taken in excess of 60,000 pictures and has published a number of other books under the name of Peter Stella. Peter has graciously allowed the Historical Society to post his incredible pictures, taken in the 1970s, on our website. For this, we are most grateful, as it will provide greater access to his incredible photographic works.

    Photographs by Ethel McCully

    Also posted on the Society’s website, thanks to the generosity of Amy Roberts, are a series of black and white photos taken by Ethel McCully during the construction of her “Island Fancy” hide away at Maho Bay. Of course it was this house that was the subject of her now famous book: Grandma Raised the Roof. It is great to obtain and preserve this part of the Island’s history… (Please also note that included in the Peter Ernst photos are several pictures from the 1970s of Ms. McCully and here home at Maho.)