Blue Coat or Powdered Wig: Free People of Color in Pre-Revolutionary Saint Domingue

Chapter One. The Notarial Record and Free Coloreds

The NotarialRecord and Free Coloreds To understand this book, it is important to understand the data on which it is based. In addition, the nature and function of the notarial system illustrates some important facts about both the colonial society of Saint Domingue and the place of free people of color in that society. Therefore, this first chapter considers the notarial system of the colony, primarily by examining notarial documents. Notaries in the French system, both pre-revolutionary and modern, were important government officials who ensured that contractswere framed in accordance with the law, which helped to guarantee the legally binding nature of those contracts . The notary had to be preparedto testify to facts that he had been called upon to witness in the performance of his duties. In practice, the law courts of the colony generallyaccepted notarized statements asfactual without needing to callupon the notary in person. Notaries have existed in the French legal system since the Middle Ages, but administrative reforms of the 17708 made their rich archives available to colonial historians . Starting in 1776, notaries were required to make a duplicate copy of all their registers and to file them with the royal archives. Some duplicate copies exist of notarial acts from before this period. However, making these copies was a special service executedby the notary for an additional fee.Thus, the pre-1776 notarial archives contain only those acts executed by people with extra money to spend on preserving a duplicate record of their transactions. This makes the few notarial records surviving in the North and West provinces from before 1776 somewhat suspect in terms of their representativeness. After the 1776 edict, all notarial acts 3 C H A P T E R O N E 4 • The Colony and Its People were, in theory, preserved, and all persons executing such acts were subject to the fee for the second copy. Some notaries were better than others at obeying the 1776 law, and so some lacunae exist in the documentary series. Nonetheless, it seems that almost all of the post-1776 files of these, the front line of royal government in the colony, have survived. The sample consists of 3,520 notarial acts and 719 other primary documents. This represents all notarial acts in the registers of eight notaries from sixparishes in which a free person of color was either a principal actor or a major participant. This sample includes about 4 percent of all notarial acts preserved in the archives for this period. The parishes are: 1. Cap Fran9ais, the colony's principal port and the center of the most highly developed sugar-growing area (the notaries Jean-Fran9ois Dore and Jean-Fran9ois Bordierjeune) 2. Fort Dauphin, a smaller port and commercial center also in the northern sugar-growing area (the notary Andre Leprestre) 3. Limonade, a parish divided into a coastal sugar-growing area and a highland coffee-growing area. The highlands were the home of many people of color (the notary Jean-Louis Michel) 4. Port-au-Prince, the colony's capital and market center for the newer and less highly developed West province (another notary surnamed Michel, who did not use his personal name in his records) 5. Croix des Bouquets, also known as Cul de Sac, an area containing both sugar and coffee plantations (the notary Renaudot) 6. Mirebalais, an isolated rural community in the central mountains, producing livestock and indigo as well as some coffee, which was a stronghold for people of color during the Haitian Revolution (the notaries Lamauve and Beaudoulx). Some free coloreds were frequent users of the notarial system, such as the militia leader Jean-Baptiste Magny dit Malic, who appears forty-eight times in the sample. Most free coloreds had only a few items to notarize, and the average frequency of appearance is under three. Remembering that each notarial document had at least two, and usually more, main actors, approximately 4,000 distinct free individuals, almost 75percent of them free coloreds, appear in the sample along with 4,197 slaves. Of the 4,239 documents, 958 included at least one participant from a family that was among the "economic elite" of free coloreds, those individuals or families with three acts in the sample evaluated at over 10,000 Kvres. Members of the military leadership group executed 493of the documents, and members of the planter elite The Notarial Record and Free Coloreds • 5 group figured...