I was surprised, and intrigued, to be contacted in 2019 by Thomas Harding, who had come across the transcripts of the John Smith diaries that had been transcribed by my parents Graham and Merle Van Cooten, and was interested in … Continue reading →
Costa, Emilia. Crowns of glory, tears of blood : the Demerara Slave Rebellion of 1823. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997. As a teenager old family letters about the Van Cooten family in Australia triggered my interest in family history. … Continue reading →
In 2015, Bram Hoonhout, then a PhD student working on the 18th century history of Essequibo and Demerara, alerted me to the existence of references to Hendrik, Jan and Nicolaas van Cooten in the letterbooks of Theodore Barrell, a merchant … Continue reading →