Elisabeth Dieudonné Vincent (1798-29 November 1883) was a
Saint Dominican Creole, businesswoman and international migrant. Born in 1798 in
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 ...
to an ''
affranchi
Affranchi () is a former French legal term denoting a freedman or emancipated slave, but was a term used to refer pejoratively to mulattoes. It is used in the English language to describe the social class of freedmen in Saint-Domingue, an ...
'' and French father, she was
illegitimate
Legitimacy, in traditional Western common law, is the status of a child born to parents who are legally married to each other, and of a child conceived before the parents obtain a legal divorce. Conversely, ''illegitimacy'', also known as ''b ...
, although her father did acknowledge her. In 1803, the family fled from the violence of 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 ...
to
Santiago de Cuba
Santiago de Cuba is the second-largest city in Cuba and the capital city of Santiago de Cuba Province. It lies in the southeastern area of the island, some southeast of the Cuban capital of Havana.
The municipality extends over , and contains t ...
, where they completed paperwork to show that they were free. In 1809, when the Spanish authorities expelled French colonists because of the
Peninsular War
The Peninsular War (1807–1814) was the military conflict fought in the Iberian Peninsula by Spain, Portugal, and the United Kingdom against the invading and occupying forces of the First French Empire during the Napoleonic Wars. In Spain ...
in Europe, she moved to
in
Louisiana
Louisiana , group=pronunciation (French: ''La Louisiane'') is a state in the Deep South and South Central regions of the United States. It is the 20th-smallest by area and the 25th most populous of the 50 U.S. states. Louisiana is borde ...
.
Vincent married in 1822 and with her husband, Jacques Tinchant, operated a business in New Orleans. The couple also earned money by renting out Vincent's slaves. In 1835 she amended her original marriage record in order to acquire a surname, removing the double stigma of illegitimacy and slave ancestry. Experiencing racial inequality and increasing restrictions as a result of the demanding
Black Codes
The Black Codes, sometimes called the Black Laws, were laws which governed the conduct of African Americans (free and freed blacks). In 1832, James Kent (jurist), James Kent wrote that "in most of the United States, there is a distinction in re ...
in the
United States
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...
, they moved with their family to France, where they operated a
dairy
A dairy is a business enterprise established for the harvesting or processing (or both) of animal milk – mostly from cows or buffaloes, but also from goats, sheep, horses, or camels – for human consumption. A dairy is typically located on ...
and
vineyard
A vineyard (; also ) is a plantation of grape-bearing vines, grown mainly for winemaking, but also raisins, table grapes and non-alcoholic grape juice. The science, practice and study of vineyard production is known as viticulture. Vineyards ...
s in
Gan
The word Gan or the initials GAN may refer to:
Places
*Gan, a component of Hebrew placenames literally meaning "garden"
China
* Gan River (Jiangxi)
* Gan River (Inner Mongolia),
* Gan County, in Jiangxi province
* Gansu, abbreviated ''Gā ...
. Poor economic conditions and violence during the
French Revolution of 1848
The French Revolution of 1848 (french: Révolution française de 1848), also known as the February Revolution (), was a brief period of civil unrest in France, in February 1848, that led to the collapse of the July Monarchy and the foundation ...
prompted the family to relocate to
Antwerp
Antwerp (; nl, Antwerpen ; french: Anvers ; es, Amberes) is the largest city in Belgium by area at and the capital of Antwerp Province in the Flemish Region. With a population of 520,504, in 1857, where they invested in their sons' new tobacco business.
Early life and family
Elisabeth Dieudonné was born in 1798 in
Jérémie
Jérémie ( ht, Jeremi) is a commune and capital city of the Grand'Anse department in Haiti. It had a population of about 31,000 at the 2003 census. It is relatively isolated from the rest of the country. The Grande-Anse River flows near the ...
,
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 ...
to a former slave woman, Rosalie of the
Poulard nation, and her partner, Michel Étienne Henry Vincent, a Frenchman who had at one point owned the royal monopoly for the sale of meat in
Les Cayes
Les Cayes ( , ), often referred to as Aux Cayes (; ht, Okay), is a commune and seaport in the Les Cayes Arrondissement, in the Sud department of Haiti, with a population of 71,236. Due to its isolation from the political turmoil of the capital, ...
. She was baptized in
Cap-Dame-Marie and though her parents were not officially married, her father acknowledged her as his child.
Elisabeth's mother was from an area bordered on the east by the
Senegal River
,french: Fleuve Sénégal)
, name_etymology =
, image = Senegal River Saint Louis.jpg
, image_size =
, image_caption = Fishermen on the bank of the Senegal River estuary at the outskirts of Saint-Louis, Senegal ...
valley and the
Guinea
Guinea ( ),, fuf, 𞤘𞤭𞤲𞤫, italic=no, Gine, wo, Gine, nqo, ߖߌ߬ߣߍ߫, bm, Gine officially the Republic of Guinea (french: République de Guinée), is a coastal country in West Africa. It borders the Atlantic Ocean to the we ...
coastline, stretching westward to
Mali
Mali (; ), officially the Republic of Mali,, , ff, 𞤈𞤫𞤲𞥆𞤣𞤢𞥄𞤲𞤣𞤭 𞤃𞤢𞥄𞤤𞤭, Renndaandi Maali, italics=no, ar, جمهورية مالي, Jumhūriyyāt Mālī is a landlocked country in West Africa. Mali ...
and encompassing the territory where the
Pulaar language
Pulaar (in Adlam: , in Ajami: ) is a Fula language spoken primarily as a first language by the Fula and Toucouleur peoples in the Senegal River valley area traditionally known as Futa Tooro and further south and east. Pulaar speakers, known as ...
is spoken. She arrived in Saint-Domingue just prior to 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 ...
. Slaves from
Senegambia
The Senegambia (other names: Senegambia region or Senegambian zone,Barry, Boubacar, ''Senegambia and the Atlantic Slave Trade'', (Editors: David Anderson, Carolyn Brown; trans. Ayi Kwei Armah; contributors: David Anderson, American Council of Le ...
were rare in Saint-Domingue and records confirm that the Poulard woman Rosalie was owned in the early 1790s by a
freedman
A freedman or freedwoman is a formerly enslaved person who has been released from slavery, usually by legal means. Historically, enslaved people were freed by manumission (granted freedom by their captor-owners), emancipation (granted freedom a ...
, Alexis Couba, who sold her to the merchant Marthe Guillaume. In 1793, Guillaume sold Rosalie to Jean-Baptiste Mongol, the local butcher, but within two years, she had been returned to Guillaume. In December 1795, Guillaume
manumitted
Manumission, or enfranchisement, is the act of freeing enslaved people by their enslavers. Different approaches to manumission were developed, each specific to the time and place of a particular society. Historian Verene Shepherd states that t ...
Rosalie, but the
British colonial governor Adam Williamson
Adam Williamson (born August 4, 1984) is a former American soccer player, who last played midfielder for the Ocean City Barons in the USL Premier Development League.
Williamson grew up in Petersburg, Cape May County, New Jersey and played socce ...
refused to ratify the official paperwork (this was during the British occupation of Haiti during the
French Revolutionary Wars
The French Revolutionary Wars (french: Guerres de la Révolution française) were a series of sweeping military conflicts lasting from 1792 until 1802 and resulting from the French Revolution. They pitted French First Republic, France against Ki ...
).
As Rosalie was technically free, but had no official papers to prove it, her status was ambiguous until the British withdrew in 1798. The following year, she appeared in the baptismal records as "Marie Françoise, called Rosalie, free black woman" and christened her daughter as a free-born child. By 1802, the French had restored slavery in
Martinique
Martinique ( , ; gcf, label=Martinican Creole, Matinik or ; Kalinago: or ) is an island and an overseas department/region and single territorial collectivity of France. An integral part of the French Republic, Martinique is located in th ...
and there were rumors that it would be reasserted over blacks in Saint-Domingue. To prevent that from happening to his family, Michel Vincent drafted a document in 1803 declaring that Rosalie and her children Juste Theodore, Marie Louise (known as Resinette), Etienne Hilaire (called Cadet) and Elisabeth, were all his slaves and were proclaimed free. Within months, the town of Jérémie was under siege by French troops and Rosalie, Michel and Elisabeth fled to nearby
Santiago de Cuba
Santiago de Cuba is the second-largest city in Cuba and the capital city of Santiago de Cuba Province. It lies in the southeastern area of the island, some southeast of the Cuban capital of Havana.
The municipality extends over , and contains t ...
. The other three children disappear from the records and it is unknown whether they were captured, went into hiding in Saint-Domingue, or managed to slip into Cuba, avoiding the record keepers.
Arriving in Santiago de Cuba with some 18,000 other refugees, Michel began working as a
farrier
A farrier is a specialist in equine hoof care, including the trimming and balancing of horses' hooves and the placing of shoes on their hooves, if necessary. A farrier combines some blacksmith's skills (fabricating, adapting, and adjus ...
and Rosalie raised livestock. As there were no French officials on the island, the ''Agence des Prises de la Guadeloupe'' (Guadeloupean Prize Agency), charged with selling
plundered ship property and funneling the proceeds from the sales to French troops, acted as an unofficial
court of equity for French refugees. On 14 March 1804, an ailing Michel Vincent filed his last will and testament with the agency for validation. Three days later, Rosalie paid the officials of the agency to register the manumission document for the entire family that Vincent had prepared before they fled Saint-Domingue. Within days Vincent died, but as his estate was insolvent, his property was sold to cover his obligations.
In New Orleans, Louisiana
In 1809, during the
Peninsular War
The Peninsular War (1807–1814) was the military conflict fought in the Iberian Peninsula by Spain, Portugal, and the United Kingdom against the invading and occupying forces of the First French Empire during the Napoleonic Wars. In Spain ...
in Europe, the governor of Cuba ordered all French refugees to leave. As neither was sure of their status, mother and daughter split up, with Rosalie returning to a now
independent Haiti and Elisabeth traveling with her godmother, Marie Blanche Peillon (the widow Aubert) and her
consort __NOTOC__
Consort may refer to:
Music
* "The Consort" (Rufus Wainwright song), from the 2000 album ''Poses''
* Consort of instruments, term for instrumental ensembles
* Consort song (musical), a characteristic English song form, late 16th–earl ...
Jean Lambert Détry, a Belgian carpenter, to
. Buying land in
Faubourg Marigny
The Faubourg Marigny ( ; sometimes called The Marigny) is a neighborhood of the city of New Orleans, Louisiana, United States.
Its boundaries, as defined by the City Planning Commission, are North Rampart Street and St. Claude Avenue to the n ...
, the couple each developed businesses. Détry worked as a contractor, hiring out
sawyers, and Peillon traded in land and slaves. When Détry died in 1821, he left an inheritance of $500 to Elisabeth, and she decided to marry. A marriage contract was prepared for her to wed Jacques Tinchant, son of a free woman of color called Suzette Bayot, another refugee from Saint-Domingue, and her former partner Joseph Tinchant. The contract was prepared without a surname and listed Elisabeth's name as Marie Dieudonné, her mother's first name and her own middle name.
![New Orleans Faubourg Marigny 1821](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/82/New_Orleans_Faubourg_Marigny_1821.jpg)
The couple married in 1822 and quickly established a business in which Tinchant worked as a builder and carpenter. To provide monthly income, they also hired out their slaves, Gertrude and her daughter Marie Louise, who had been given to them as a wedding present from Peillon. They lived with Peillon, but the relationship was difficult because of her controlling and litigious nature. She refused to give Elisabeth her inheritance from Détry, claiming to have settled their room and board costs with it. After a year, the couple moved out, and on 1 January 1825 they baptized their first child, François Louis Tinchant at the
St. Louis Cathedral, in New Orleans. He was shown as a legitimate, free
quadroon
In the colonial societies of the Americas and Australia, a quadroon or quarteron was a person with one quarter African/ Aboriginal and three quarters European ancestry.
Similar classifications were octoroon for one-eighth black (Latin root ''octo ...
. That year,
statutes
A statute is a formal written enactment of a legislative authority that governs the legal entities of a city, state, or country by way of consent. Typically, statutes command or prohibit something, or declare policy. Statutes are rules made by le ...
were passed which forbade
interracial marriage
Interracial marriage is a marriage involving spouses who belong to different races or racialized ethnicities.
In the past, such marriages were outlawed in the United States, Nazi Germany and apartheid-era South Africa as miscegenation. In 19 ...
and laws were increasingly passed in
Louisiana
Louisiana , group=pronunciation (French: ''La Louisiane'') is a state in the Deep South and South Central regions of the United States. It is the 20th-smallest by area and the 25th most populous of the 50 U.S. states. Louisiana is borde ...
to restrict the freedom of people of color. Other children followed, including Joseph (born 1827), Pierre (born 1833), Jules (born 1836), and Ernest (born 1839). In 1833, they manumitted Gertrude and acquired another slave in her stead, a black man named Giles (also known as Clark).
By 1835, Tinchant and his half-brother, Pierre Duhart, formed a company in which they developed land and built houses for resale. In November, hoping to erase the stigma of illegitimacy and slave ancestry enshrined in her marriage record, she asked a notary to correct her given name in the marriage record to Elisabeth and to show her surname as Vincent. As documentation, they provided a copy of Elisabeth's baptismal certificate, which was most likely brought by her mother on a visit she had made in April. Though the acknowledgement by her father that Elisabeth was his daughter did not technically confer the right for her to use his surname, the notary, who had a long business relationship with Tinchant, agreed to accept the document and correct the marriage record. Over the next few years, legislation in Louisiana imposed ever harsher restrictions on free people of color, including limits on schooling and requirements for annual registrations to prove their free status. Many of Tinchant's family members left Louisiana for France, and the couple followed them in 1840 after arranging to sell Marie Louise to Gertrude for $800 (around $ in ).
In France
![Vignoble de Monein](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/ff/Vignoble_de_Monein.jpg)
In 1840, leaving their oldest son Louis in New Orleans, the couple settled in the
Basses Pyrenees
Bass or Basses may refer to:
Fish
* Bass (fish), various saltwater and freshwater species
Music
* Bass (sound), describing low-frequency sound or one of several instruments in the bass range:
** Bass (instrument), including:
** Acoustic bass gui ...
region, where Tinchant's brother, Pierre Duhart, and parents had already established themselves. They bought a farmhouse with furnishings, of land, two barns, and livestock in
Gan
The word Gan or the initials GAN may refer to:
Places
*Gan, a component of Hebrew placenames literally meaning "garden"
China
* Gan River (Jiangxi)
* Gan River (Inner Mongolia),
* Gan County, in Jiangxi province
* Gansu, abbreviated ''Gā ...
for
F27,000 (around $ in ). In the village was an elementary school, but Tinchant and Vincent chose to send their children to the nearby ''collège royal'' in
Pau as it offered a better curriculum. Shortly after they arrived, Tinchant's mother died. The following year, the couple had their last child, Edouard (born 1841). Though he was born in France, because his father was American-born and his mother lost her nationality upon her marriage, Edouard was not entitled to French citizenship, though the couple registered his birth.
With no prior experience in farming, the couple employed
sharecroppers
Sharecropping is a legal arrangement with regard to agricultural land in which a landowner allows a tenant to use the land in return for a share of the crops produced on that land.
Sharecropping has a long history and there are a wide range ...
to tend their dairy, grain fields, and
vineyard
A vineyard (; also ) is a plantation of grape-bearing vines, grown mainly for winemaking, but also raisins, table grapes and non-alcoholic grape juice. The science, practice and study of vineyard production is known as viticulture. Vineyards ...
s. Failed harvests, government rigidity, and poor economic conditions led to the spread of
republican ideals in schools from Paris to more rural locations. In 1848, growing opposition to France's constitutional monarchy led to upheaval in nearby Pau, where all of the couple's sons were in school. In 1851 the coup d'état of
Louis-Napoleon
Napoleon III (Charles Louis Napoléon Bonaparte; 20 April 18089 January 1873) was the first President of France (as Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte) from 1848 to 1852 and the last monarch of France as Emperor of the French from 1852 to 1870. A nephew ...
turned the country away from republicanism. Although the children remained in school through 1854, the family began making plans to leave. They sold their farm for less than they had paid for it and temporarily moved to
Jurançon
Jurançon (; oc, Juranson) is a commune in the Pyrénées-Atlantiques department in Nouvelle-Aquitaine, France.
Population
See also
*Jurançon AOC, a wine from this commune
*Communes of the Pyrénées-Atlantiques department
The following ...
. The proceeds from the farm were loaned to the couple's eldest two sons, Louis and Joseph, who set themselves up as
cigar maker
A cigar is a rolled bundle of dried and fermented tobacco leaves made to be Tobacco smoking, smoked. Cigars are produced in a variety of sizes and shapes. Since the 20th century, almost all cigars are made of three distinct components: the fill ...
s in New Orleans. Searching for a European trading partner, the brothers chose to settle in Belgium, which had no state monopoly on tobacco production.
In Belgium
![De Palingbrug te Antwerpen in 't jaar 1880](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6a/De_Palingbrug_te_Antwerpen_in_%27t_jaar_1880.jpg)
In 1857, the family relocated to
Antwerp
Antwerp (; nl, Antwerpen ; french: Anvers ; es, Amberes) is the largest city in Belgium by area at and the capital of Antwerp Province in the Flemish Region. With a population of 520,504, , where Tinchant and Louis worked to establish a cigar store and manufacturing firm, which they called ''Maison Américaine''. One by one, the brothers went to the United States, where they created a successful international tobacco business, with Joseph in New Orleans; Pierre working along the
Gulf Coast
The Gulf Coast of the United States, also known as the Gulf South, is the coastline along the Southern United States where they meet the Gulf of Mexico. The coastal states that have a shoreline on the Gulf of Mexico are Texas, Louisiana, Mississ ...
; and eventually Edouard settling into the business in
Mobile, Alabama
Mobile ( , ) is a city and the county seat of Mobile County, Alabama, United States. The population within the city limits was 187,041 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, down from 195,111 at the 2010 United States census, 2010 cens ...
. Jules operated from
Veracruz
Veracruz (), formally Veracruz de Ignacio de la Llave (), officially the Free and Sovereign State of Veracruz de Ignacio de la Llave ( es, Estado Libre y Soberano de Veracruz de Ignacio de la Llave), is one of the 31 states which, along with Me ...
, Mexico and Ernest was located in Antwerp. Tinchant died in 1871 and Vincent survived him by over a decade. Elisabeth Vincent died in Antwerp on 29 November 1883. She and Tinchant were buried in the
Schoonselhof cemetery
Schoonselhof Cemetery (''Antwerpen Schoonselhof'') is located in Hoboken, Antwerp, a suburb of Antwerp, Belgium.
Schoonselhof Cemetery has an islamic and Jewish section.
There is also a Commonwealth war graves plot containing the graves of ...
along with three generations of their family.
Legacy
![Letterhead for Tinchant Fréres, ca 1895](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1e/Letterhead_for_Tinchant_Fr%C3%A9res%2C_ca_1895.png)
Vincent's sons Joseph and Edouard both served in the
6th Louisiana Regiment of the
Union Army
During the American Civil War, the Union Army, also known as the Federal Army and the Northern Army, referring to the United States Army, was the land force that fought to preserve the Union (American Civil War), Union of the collective U.S. st ...
during the
American Civil War
The American Civil War (April 12, 1861 – May 26, 1865; also known by other names) was a civil war in the United States. It was fought between the Union ("the North") and the Confederacy ("the South"), the latter formed by states th ...
. At the end of the conflict, Edouard was a delegate to the Louisiana
Constitutional Convention of 1867, where he proposed equal civil rights for women and without regard for race. Three generations of the family worked in the tobacco trade, but the business finally collapsed as a result of disruptions caused by
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
. Several family members fought in the resistance and Joseph's granddaughter died at
Ravensbrück concentration camp
Ravensbrück () was a German concentration camp exclusively for women from 1939 to 1945, located in northern Germany, north of Berlin at a site near the village of Ravensbrück (part of Fürstenberg/Havel). The camp memorial's estimated figure o ...
, where she had been sent for her political activities.
The story of Vincent and her family add to the history of
statelessness
In international law, a stateless person is someone who is "not considered as a national by any state under the operation of its law". Some stateless people are also refugees. However, not all refugees are stateless, and many people who are st ...
and citizenship, as well as the impact of legal status and paperwork on people of color. Literacy and an understanding of the importance of documentation were crucial to maintaining the status of her family and ensuring their freedom. Despite the political unrest of her lifespan, the family was able to successfully negotiate differing racial divides and varied legal systems, which challenged their ability to attain equal civil status. According to historian
Afua Cooper
Afua Cooper (born 8 November 1957) is a Jamaican-born Canadian historian. In 2018 she is an associate professor of sociology at Dalhousie University. She is an author and dub poet. As of 2018 she has published five volumes of poetry. , Vincent's history confirms that through shifting ethnic and national identities in the 19th century, black and free colored people were able to pursue economic success, freedom, respectability, and security across numerous international boundaries. Historian
James Sidbury notes that the "micro-history" of Vincent's family confirms that previous historical narratives have distorted understandings of the complex experiences of the
African diaspora
The African diaspora is the worldwide collection of communities descended from native Africans or people from Africa, predominantly in the Americas. The term most commonly refers to the descendants of the West and Central Africans who were e ...
. The many documents relating to Vincent dispel the notion that their stories lie only in oral histories.
Notes
References
Citations
Bibliography
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Vincent, Elisabeth Dieudonne
1795 births
1883 deaths
People from Jérémie
People of Saint-Domingue
French farmers
French women farmers
19th-century Belgian businesspeople
Afro-Caribbean history
19th-century businesswomen
French people of Fulbe descent
Haitian emigrants to the United States
Haitian emigrants to France
Haitian people of French descent
Haitian emigrants to Belgium
Belgian women in business
Haitian women in business
19th-century Haitian businesspeople
French slave owners
Haitian people of Senegalese descent
19th-century women landowners
Black slave owners in the United States
Free people of color
American women slave owners
American slave owners