When a young Muslim man from a village in Uttar Pradesh, India stepped off the boat onto the soil of British Guiana in 1884, aged all of twenty-one, he probably had little idea how much further his descendants would eventually travel.^[1]Haji McDoom was one of nearly 239,000 Indians who left the economic distress of nineteenth century India in search of better opportunities and who traveled through the indentured labour system to plantations within the British Empire in need of workers.^[2]Like many of his compatriots of that era, after Haji McDoom served his five-year term he chose not to return to the land of his birth.^[3]He instead elected to take ten acres of land in Peters Hall, the sugar estate where he had worked, in lieu of his passage home.  He married twice.^[4]With his first wife Mariam he fathered four children and then with Mahadaya, or Zhora, he raised another three.^[5]This book records the story of the seven branches of the family that descended from each of these children:Caramat Ally, Sultan Ali, Rojan Saban, Om Kulsum, Altaf Husain, Ahmad Kamal, and Aziman.^[6]Save of course for those who married into the family, all of you mentioned in this book share the genes of Haji McDoom.

[2] We do not know Haji's first name(s), if indeed he had any.He earned the title 'Haji' after visiting Mecca as a pilgrim and it appears on his headstone.Upon his return he handed the family businesses over to his two eldest sons, Caramat and Sultan.Source:Napha Bacchus (née McDoom).Indentured labour began in 1834 with the transport of Indians to Mauritius following the Emancipation Act that ended slavery within the British Empire.Abuses led to regulation of the practice in 1844, which is also the year in which emigration to British Guiana was first sanctioned.

[3] Plantation owners wanted the indentured workers to remain as long as possible within the territory and various incentives were created in order to encourage them to do so.

[4] Haji's first wife, Mariam, also came from Uttar Pradesh, India, but in 1885.Her emigration pass indicates the Zillah was Bareilly, the Pergunnah was Saloon, and the village was Jaico.See footnote two above for a definition of these terms.There is an oral account that the two met on the ship from India and married before it landed.However, as the official records show they traveled in different years (he in 1884, and she in 1885) and on different ships (he on the Bann, and she on the Howrah), this seems unlikely.Haji's second wife, Mahadaya, also from India, was a widower and originally a Hindu.Contrary to a popular story, she was not Mariam's full or half-sister.More about her life can be found later in the book.

[5] The accurate spelling of names is of course always difficult, especially for the first two generations.However, wherever possible I have relied on official records.For example Caramat Ally McDoom is the spelling given in his British Guiana passport.I list his second brother's (Sultan) middle name as 'Ali' as this is how one of his sons, Shaukat McDoom, believes it was spelled.But I have seen no official record to corroborate this.

[6] There was in fact an eighth child, Sproston McDoom, a third son from the union with Mariam, who was born after Caramat and before Sultan.Sproston married and had one daughter, Rakyun.All three died, however, at a very early age as a result of an influenza epidemic some time between 1914 and 1921.They were buried in Peters Hall and have no descendants.Sources:Napha Bacchus and Nizam Ali.