Mary's Hope is a village in the Welgelegen resort of the

Coronie District Coronie is a district of Suriname, situated on the coast. Coronie's capital city is Totness, Suriname, Totness. The district border the Atlantic Ocean to the north, the Surinamese district of Saramacca District, Saramacca to the east, the Suriname ...

Suriname Suriname, officially the Republic of Suriname, is a country in northern South America, also considered as part of the Caribbean and the West Indies. It is a developing country with a Human Development Index, high level of human development; i ...

. The village can be accessed from the East-West Link.

Overview

Mary's Hope started in 1817 as a

slave plantation A slave plantation is an agricultural farm that uses enslaved people for labour. The practice was abolished in most places during the 19th century. Slavery Planters embraced the use of slaves mainly because indentured labor became expensive ...

, producing

cotton Cotton (), first recorded in ancient India, is a soft, fluffy staple fiber that grows in a boll, or protective case, around the seeds of the cotton plants of the genus '' Gossypium'' in the mallow family Malvaceae. The fiber is almost pure ...

, owned by Edward Conolly who was originally from Ireland. 138 people were enslaved on the plantation at the time of the emancipation of slavery in 1863. Later, the plantation changed ownership several times, and was in a neglected state. In 1872, Mary's Hope was the fourth largest settlement in the district of Coronie. On 15 December 1874, land was donated to a Roman Catholic mission to build a school, a church and a

rectory A clergy house is the residence, or former residence, of one or more priests or ministers of a given religion, serving as both a home and a base for the occupant's ministry. Residences of this type can have a variety of names, such as manse, p ...

. In 1875, a little church was built. In 1884,

Peter Donders Petrus Norbertus Donders (27 October 1809 – 14 January 1887) was a Dutch Roman Catholic priest and member of the Redemptorists. He served in various missions in the Dutch colony of Surinam. He started working ...

was the parson, and Mary's Hope had developed into the most important parish in Coronie. In 1892, the Church of Immaculate Conception was constructed. The church was built by Frans Harmes who also constructed the cathedral in Paramaribo. In 1922, Father J. de Kort embarked on a plan to create a rice

polder A polder () is a low-lying tract of land that forms an artificial hydrology, hydrological entity, enclosed by embankments known as levee, dikes. The three types of polder are: # Land reclamation, Land reclaimed from a body of water, such as a ...

. In 1935, the Sint Jozef vereniging was founded, a cooperation of rice growers, and Mary's Hope has developed as a rice growing community. The village is connected to the electricity grid, but has no telephone connection.

References

Populated places in Coronie District Plantations {{Suriname-geo-stub