The Museum staff carry out extensive research work on a wide variety of subjects. This has meant that since the Museum opened it has been building up an extensive Local Studies Library as well as an Archive.
Anybody can make an appointment to view the documents held by the Museum and the staff will be pleased to help you navigate the collections. As this is a reference collection no items can be removed from the viewing rooms.
The Museum also has the best collection of historic images of the Turks and Caicos Islands. These range from early line drawings and illustrations up to modern day photographs and digital images. In total the Museum holds over 6000 images dating from the 1860s to modern day in its photographic archive.
Archival Documents
In a small place like the Turks & Caicos Islands, our ancestors paid little attention to preserving History. Coupled with island humidity, high temperature, and insects, this lack of attention has left us with few records from the past. The Museum has seen to it that surviving historic Government records were placed in a more controlled environment. Unfortunately, there is at present this no public access to the material held in the government archive.
While documents on the Islands themselves have survived poorly, repositories in England, the U.S., Jamaica, and the Bahamas are being searched for records pertaining to the Turks & Caicos Islands. Where possible, the Museum has acquired microfilm copies.
Our collection now includes:
U.S. Consular papers copied from the National Archives in Washington, D.C., dating from January 10, 1818, to May 31, 1906. Eighteen microfilm reels.
Anglican Church papers copied from documents found in St. Mary’s Church on Grand Turk. Marriage, baptism, and death records from several parishes on Grand Turk and Salt Cay, beginning in 1790s and ending in 1920s. Microfiche.
Colonial documents from the Public Records Office, London. Dating from 1760s through the 19th century. Includes ordinances and correspondence. Microfilm.
George J. Gibbs Letterbook, 1874–1878. Copied from Smithsonian Institution’s National Anthropological Archives MS #7172. Includes correspondence on a variety of topics including anthropology, ornithology, and genealogy. photocopy.
Local Studies Library
The Museum holds the largest collection of publications, newspaper cuttings and magazines relating to the Turks and Caicos Islands within the country. Material dates from around 1800 to modern day and includes a wide range of subjects.
This an essential resource for anyone carrying out research on the history of the Islands. However, it is only a reference and not a lending library.
Lists of the material held is being placed on a data base for quick retrieval, and this database is available for viewing by any visitor.
Photographic Collection
A Museum is able to tell the story of the development of a country through objects. However, to help tell the stories a picture is worth a thousand words. Pictures show the people who made history, the events, the buildings, the industries and are an easy means to illustrate the changes that have occurred.
The Museum holds over 4000 images in its paper and slide photographic archive, dating from the 1860s to modern day. All images have been scanned at 300dpi and visitors may view the original images or the digitised images.
The Museum also holds over 4000 digital images, mostly modern ones. There are no paper copies of these images but they are available for viewing on the data base at the Museum.
Visitors to the Museum can see many of the images displayed in the Museum exhibits, and many have been used in the Museum Newsletter, Astrolabe. The photographs are filed by subject and are quickly accessible in our research building.
The collection does have limitations: the historic centres of Grand Turk, Salt Cay, and South Caicos are better recorded, as are the 1960s and 1970s. These limitations are historical: photographers were where the main populations were, or physical: Donors of the large collections were only present in the Turks and Caicos islands for short, specific times.
The Largest collections were donated by:
Ted Philippona (1960s)
Barbara Currie Dailey (late 1970s and 1980s)
Some of the photographic images held in the archive are used to illustrate this website. There is also a Museum Publication Turks and Caicos Islands in Old Photographs written by Nigel Sadler (published December 2003) which contains 40 pages of images from the Museum holdings. The publication is available from the Museum Shop.