Each woman here survives in fragments: a registration of the enslaved, an estate ledger, a punishment register. We read those fragments against one another and give back what the archive withheld: not an invented story, but a life recovered.
— Featured recovery · Episode One, in production —Three records · one life
Her name in the register
Maturine Burton
The colonial records could not hold her name accurately. In 1819 she is “Maturin.” In 1824, “Maturine.” A modern database compounds the error, indexing her as “Matwrin.” Three spellings, one woman, and none of the systems that recorded her treated her name as worth getting right.
Aripero Estate · Quarter of Oropouche, Trinidad
What the records preserved
1816
abt. 15 yrs
apprentice mason
Slave registration, under Patrick O’Brien
1819
abt. 18 yrs
Mason
Triennial return, Aripero · the word “apprentice” gone
1824
abt. 23 yrs
Twenty-four hours in the stocks
Punishment register, Aripero · offence recorded as “refusing to go to work”
The estate recorded her refusal. The earlier records preserved something else: what she knew how to do. She was a mason.
Recovery ongoing · this record grows with the work
A note on this page. This gallery grows one woman at a time, as each recovery is completed. We do not present a fragment as a whole life, and we do not fill this page with names before the work behind them is done.