Is Transfer Day the same as Virgin Islands Emancipation Day?

No. Emancipation Day, also called Danish West Indies Emancipation Day, falls on July 3, while Transfer Day falls on March 31.

Why is Transfer Day on March 31?

Denmark asked to be paid before April 2, and the convention required formal delivery to follow the payment, so the State Department set the payment for Saturday, March 31. Nothing in the diplomatic record gives a further reason for the date.

Did the people of the islands vote on the sale?

No. Denmark's electorate voted in December 1916 and the islanders were not allowed to take part, though St. Thomas and St. John had voted overwhelmingly for cession under the earlier treaty of 1867.

Transfer Day

Next celebratedWednesday, March 31, 2027

Virgin Islanders mark the handover of their islands from Denmark to the United States, a sale Danish voters backed in the first referendum ever held in Denmark and that the islanders themselves were never asked about.

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Last updated September 3, 2026 · by the Holiday Calendar TeamHave an update or spot an error?

YEARLY DATEMarch 31

OBSERVED INInternationally

CATEGORYCulture

SUBCATEGORYCivics

ORIGIN

Event Origin

FOUNDING ENTITY

Not documented

FIRST OBSERVED

1917

HOW THE HOLIDAY CAME TO BE

A ceremony held after the deal had closed.

Transfer Day marks the formal delivery of the Danish West Indies to the United States on March 31, 1917, the step the 1916 convention required once the purchase money had been paid in Washington. No source locates when the date was first made a legal holiday of the islands; it stands today in Title 1, section 171 of the Virgin Islands Code.

Read the 1916 conventionvia Office of the Historian

INTRO

Already American when the flags came down

The ceremony Transfer Day commemorates did not hand the islands over. By the time the Danish flag came down at St. Thomas on the afternoon of March 31, 1917, they had legally been American for seventy-three days.

The convention says so in its own words. Formal delivery was to follow payment, but the cession was "to be deemed complete on the exchange of ratifications of this convention without such formal delivery."

Denmark and the United States exchanged those ratifications in Washington on January 17, 1917. What a crowd gathered to watch at St. Thomas that March afternoon was the formal delivery, and the treaty had already said the cession did not wait on it.

ORIGINS

Transfer Day history

INTRODUCTION

Denmark's Caribbean colony had been losing money since the mid-1800s. Cheaper cane sugar from Brazil and East Asia undercut it, and so did European beet sugar.

The United States wanted the harbour at St. Thomas. What took half a century was getting two parliaments to agree in the same decade.

CHAPTER 01

Two treaties, two parliaments, no sale

The first attempt was signed at Copenhagen in October 1867, for St. Thomas and St. Jan at $7.5 million. Denmark ratified it. The Senate's foreign relations committee took no action until March 1870, when Senator Sumner reported it adversely.

The second failed the other way round. The Senate approved a $5 million treaty in February 1902, and the upper house of the Danish Rigsdag killed it by a tie vote.

CHAPTER 02

A war reopened the file

The war that began in 1914 revived American fear of Germany taking a base in the Caribbean, and the two governments resumed talking in private. Danish politicians were split, so they put the question to their own electorate on December 14, 1916.

Three weeks before the handover, King Christian X wrote an open letter to the islands. It closed: "While parting with you, We express the hope that you will bear in kind memory the centuries during which Denmark was your mother country."

CHAPTER 03

A piece of paper worth forty-eight tons

On the morning of Saturday, March 31, 1917, Secretary of the Treasury William G. McAdoo carried a Treasury warrant into the diplomatic reception room in Washington. He explained to the Danish Minister that the money had come on paper because the actual gold coin would weigh nearly forty-eight tons.

The date had come from Copenhagen: Denmark asked to be paid before April 2, and the convention made delivery follow payment.

CHAPTER 04

Four o'clock at the saluting battery

That afternoon a Danish guard of honour from the Valkyrien drew up before the barracks at St. Thomas, the American guard facing it. Governor Henri Konow proclaimed the islands transferred, the Danish flag came down to twenty-one guns, and then, in the words of the official programme, the guards of honour changed places.

The islands kept the date. Transfer Day now sits in the territory's statutory list of legal holidays, beside July 3 for emancipation and November 1 for D. Hamilton Jackson. The code does not say when it was added.

WHY THIS DAY MATTERS

Why Transfer Day Matters

CITIZENSHIP

Congress drew the citizenship line at January 17, not March 31.

Article 6 of the convention left the inhabitants' civil rights and political status to Congress, which did not grant them citizenship until the Act of February 25, 1927. That statute drew its line at January 17, 1917, declaring citizens all persons born in the islands on or after that date.

NAME

The statute never used the name Virgin Islands

The law Congress passed for the new possession on March 3, 1917 called it the West Indian Islands acquired from Denmark. A State Department circular told American consuls on April 19 that the islands would be known in the future as the Virgin Islands, a name already spoken aloud at the transfer ceremony.

RECKONING

The apology Denmark declined to make

Danish governments declined to issue an official apology for slavery in the islands across a debate that ran from 1998 to 2023. Denmark's prime minister came to the centennial ceremony on St. Croix in 2017 and spoke without offering one.

BY THE NUMBERS

Transfer Day by the Numbers

$25,000,000: Treaty price, in US gold coin
283,670: Danish votes cast for the sale
158,157: Danish votes cast against the sale
5 million: Danish West Indies pages digitised

TIMELINE

Timeline

Denmark colonises St. Thomas

St. Jan followed in 1718 and St. Croix in 1733, the three islands that became the Danish West Indies.

Washington lets the first treaty lapse

Denmark agreed to sell St. Thomas and St. Jan for $7.5 million, but Senator Sumner reported the treaty adversely in 1870 and it lapsed.

A second treaty dies in Copenhagen

The United States Senate approved the purchase in February, and the upper house of the Danish Rigsdag defeated it by a tie vote.

Lansing and Brun sign at New York

Secretary of State Robert Lansing and the Danish Minister Constantin Brun signed the convention of cession on August 4.

Denmark votes on the sale

The referendum of December 14 was the first ever held in Denmark and the first national vote open to women and servants.

The money moves, the flags change

A Treasury warrant was handed over in Washington on March 31 and the islands were formally transferred the same day.

GOOD TO KNOW

Surprising facts about Transfer Day

The same signature settled Greenland

On the day the convention was signed, Robert Lansing declared that the United States would not object to Denmark extending its political and economic interests to the whole of Greenland.

The Senate's only condition was about a church

It gave its consent on the understanding that the convention imposed no trust on the United States over any funds of the Danish National Church, a proviso written to keep the deal inside the Constitution's rules on church establishment.

The officer who took the islands was a substitute

Admiral William L. Rodgers was ordered up from Guantanamo, but it proved impossible to reach him. Commander Edwin T. Pollock was substituted instead and left Haiti on the night of March 28.

The go-ahead crossed the sea in twenty minutes

A special Navy wire ran to New York, then the Porto Rican cable, then a wireless call to the USS Hancock and a dash ashore. Only twenty minutes were needed to send the message through.

Denmark's vote could block the sale, not approve it

A no from half the votes cast would have bound the government not to sell. A yes only referred the question back to the Rigsdag, which then made the decision itself.

There is no justification for slavery. It is unforgiveable.

Lars Løkke RasmussenPrime Minister of Denmark, at the Transfer Day centennial on St. Croix, 2017

GET INVOLVED

How to Observe Transfer Day

Read the convention that moved the islands

The State Department's own documentary record carries the proclaimed text article by article, with the notes exchanged alongside it. It is short enough to read in one sitting.

Search the Danish colonial records for a name

The Danish National Archives has put the administration of the Danish West Indies online, with guides to finding a person, tracing property, and following trade and shipping. Its research guide sorts the sources by whether an ancestor was enslaved, free, or a European employee.

Follow the territory's own Transfer Day programming

The Legislature of the Virgin Islands marks the day with a statement and broadcast coverage, and in 2022 it ran special programming on Channel 26. In-person ceremonies with guest speakers are the traditional form, though they do not happen every year.

OBSERVE

Observe the whole month, not only the day

March is Virgin Islands History Month, and the Governor's Transfer Day statement treats the anniversary as its close. Reading it is a short way into how the territory frames the date now.

COMPARE

Compare what Denmark says about the same day

The Danish Parliament keeps a public page on the 1916 referendum, with the newspaper advertisements that argued for and against the sale. Women's organisations campaigned on both sides, and the page reproduces their appeals.

Test your knowledge

How well do you know Transfer Day?

1 / 8

Which country held its first ever national referendum over the sale of these islands?

Answer

Yes. Title 1, section 171 of the Virgin Islands Code lists March 31, Transfer Day, among the territory's legal holidays.

COLOPHON

Sources

How we know what’s on this page. References, not endorsements.

16sources

15primary records

16independently dated

Primary records

U.S. Department of State, Office of the Historian1917

Treaty Series No. 629: Convention Between the United States and Denmark for the Cession of the Danish West Indies

The proclaimed treaty text, with the Senate's proviso and Lansing's Greenland declaration.