Anne Rossignol (1730–1810), was a famous ''

signare Signares were the Mulatto French-African women of the island of Gorée and the city of Saint-Louis in French Senegal during the 18th and 19th centuries. These women of color managed to gain some individual assets, status, and power in the hi ...

'' businesswoman and slave trader.Stewart R. King:
Blue Coat Or Powdered Wig: Free People of Color in Pre-revolutionary Saint Domingue
' Born on

Gorée (; "Gorée Island"; Wolof: Beer Dun) is one of the 19 (i.e. districts) of the city of Dakar, Senegal. It is an island located at sea from the main harbour of Dakar (), famous as a destination for people interested in the Atlantic slave trade ...

, she emigrated to

Saint-Domingue Saint-Domingue () was a French colony in the western portion of the Caribbean island of Hispaniola, in the area of modern-day Haiti, from 1659 to 1804. The name derives from the Spanish main city in the island, Santo Domingo, which came to refer ...

in 1775, where she became one of the three richest free coloured businesswomen in the colony, alongside

Zabeau Bellanton Elisabeth "Zabeau" Bellanton (1751-d. ''after'' 1782), was a French slave trader. She is known to have been the most successful business woman in the French colony of Saint Domingue prior to the Haitian Revolution. Life Zabeau Bellanton's backgrou ...

in Cap-Francais and Jeanne-Genevieve Deslandes in

Port-au-Prince Port-au-Prince ( , ; ht, Pòtoprens ) is the capital and most populous city of Haiti. The city's population was estimated at 987,311 in 2015 with the metropolitan area estimated at a population of 2,618,894. The metropolitan area is define ...

. She emigrated to

Charleston, South Carolina Charleston is the largest city in the U.S. state of South Carolina, the county seat of Charleston County, and the principal city in the Charleston–North Charleston metropolitan area. The city lies just south of the geographical midpoint o ...

during the

Haitian Revolution The Haitian Revolution (french: révolution haïtienne ; ht, revolisyon ayisyen) was a successful insurrection by slave revolt, self-liberated slaves against French colonial rule in Saint-Domingue, now the sovereign state of Haiti. The revolt ...

, and has been called the first free African to have emigrated voluntarily and freely to USA.

Life

Anne Rossignol was born as the daughter of the Frenchman Claude Rossignol and the African ''

'' Madeleine-Francoise of Gorée. She accompanied her father and his legal French wife to France as a child in 1736. In the documents, she was referred to as her father's natural

mulatto (, ) is a racial classification to refer to people of mixed African and European ancestry. Its use is considered outdated and offensive in several languages, including English and Dutch, whereas in languages such as Spanish and Portuguese is ...

daughter.

Gorée

She returned from France to Gorée on an unknown date. By birth she belonged to the privileged Afro-France signare community of Gorée: her sister Marie-Therese became the sister-in-law of the French Governor of Gorée Jean-Baptiste Estouphan by her marriage to Blaise Estouphan de Saint-Jean in 1749. Anne Rossignol was noted to be living in Gorée in the 1750s, where she had a son and a daughter, Armand and Marie-Adelaide, with the Frenchman Aubert, an official of the Compagnie des Indes. As other signare's, she would have participated in the slave trade.

Saint-Domingue

In 1775, Rossignol emigrated with her children from French Gorée to Cap-Francais in the French colony of Saint-Domingue. On Saint-Domingue, she became a successful businesswoman in slave trade and investments in real estate. She owned a number of buildings in Le Cap, some of them luxurious and located in parts of town normally inhabited mainly by white people, and resided in a palatial building. She also owned a number of personal slaves aside from the slaves she traded in. Her living standard rivaled some of the richest white people of the colony. In 1786, her daughter married the white surgeon Guillaume Dumont, and was given a dowry larger than what was given to many of the richest white planters of the colony. She is noted as one of the three richest coloured women in the colony, alongside

of Cap-Francais and Jeanne-Genevieve Deslandes of Port-au-Prince.

South Carolina

During the

Haitian revolution The Haitian Revolution (french: révolution haïtienne ; ht, revolisyon ayisyen) was a successful insurrection by slave revolt, self-liberated slaves against French colonial rule in Saint-Domingue, now the sovereign state of Haiti. The revolt ...

, Anne Rossignol fled to

in the United States with her daughter and her white son-in-law (her son having returned to Gorée). She is referred to as the perhaps first African to have freely emigrated to the United States. In Charleston, she established herself as a slave owner and planter and died as a very rich woman. Her life story is considered uncommon among the

free people of color In the context of the history of slavery in the Americas, free people of color (French: ''gens de couleur libres''; Spanish: ''gente de color libre'') were primarily people of mixed African, European, and Native American descent who were not ...

, particularly in the United States.

References

Sources