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Author William Cleveland is a longtime member of SVIH and the researcher and creator of a website dedicated to the sugar milling resources on St. Croix at https://www.stcroixwindmills.org/. In decades of research, the remains of over 125 mill locations have been documented with research ongoing. The legacy of sugar plantations remains written in stone and mortar across Caribbean islands. In the Crucian context, many recognizable plantation-era structures remain in some sta

By Stephanie Chalana Brown, October 2025 By 1917, Denmark sold the islands to the United States for twenty-five million in gold, an empire converting anxiety into currency. The transfer secured not only a sale but a permanent garrison, America’s first Caribbean foothold, the beginning of the same military geography that endures today. -Udenrigsministeriet memorandum, 26 February 1914 “There have … been instances where foreign warships have arrived without prior notification …

By Stephanie Chalana Brown, October 2025 “It is hereby communicated … that the German warship ‘Bremen’ will stay at St. Thomas from the 5th to the 7th of March.” — Udenrigsministeriet, (Ministry of Foreign Affairs) 21 February 1914, Journal No. 55 signed by Herluf Zahle “It is hereby communicated … that the German warship ‘Bremen’ will stay at St. Thomas from the 5th to the 7th of March.” It looks like paperwork, but it is politics written in ink. The signature belongs to Her