The Germans in Saint- Domingue

Augusta Elmwood

Note from the Editor: This text was first published by Mrs. Augusta B. Elmwood of New Orleans in the October 2000 issue of The Saint-Domingue Newsletter (Volume 12,Number 4). The text is reproduced here in its entirety, in its original form, without alteration or modification of either style or spelling.

Author?s note: This article was originally inspired by the German names I found in the Bombarde indices. I enjoyed researching it and have learned a great deal about this little-known aspect of Saint-Domingue history. If readers have any further information, corrections, or ideas (an extraction project?), or find any references to this interesting subject (published sources or original material), I would very much like to hear from them.

The surviving sacramental registers of baptisms, marriages, and burials for the église catholique of St-François, Bombarde, saint-Domingue include only the years 1784 through 1788.1

Yet the records document more than just life events they tell of the presence of an "exotic" group of people (as one contemporary writer described them) Germans who had come to Saint-Domingue twenty years earlier, as refugees of a sort. They had been recruited in Europe, as part of the French expedition of 1763-65 to colonize Kourou in French Guiana, on the northern coast of South America. This effort was a disastrous and total failure. About 14,000 people died because of poor planning and tropical disease.2

On 2 August 1764, the Minister wrote to the colonial administrators of Saint-Domingue that the King, in order to augment the white population of the colony, was sending 2, 470 Germans there from Cayenne (French Guiana). They would, it stated, be sent with tool, clothing, and provisions.3

Between November 1764 and January of 1765, the Germans (and some Acadians, victims of the grand derangement in Acadie) arrived at Cap Français, taking colonial officials completely by surprise apparently, the royal correspondence had not caught up with them.

A majority of the new arrivals (especially the Acadians) were sent on to Môle St-Nicolas. The Môle, located on the far point of the under populated northern peninsula of the Saint-Domingue, was then considered one of the strongest naval stations in the New World.4

But about a thousand of the Germains were settled inland and to the south of Cap Français, in the parishes of Sainte-Rose and Dondon. They were lodged temporarily in empty barracks, but by January of 1765, each family had its own house and 4 carreaux of land, which included a small-planted garden. Unfortunately by December of that year, three-quarters of them had died from disease and the rigors of a climate quite alien to their own. The survivors were relocated to Môle St-Nicolas, to be integrated into those who had gone there straightaway a year earlier.

However, the Germans and the Acadians did not get along, and Fuzée Aublet, director general of the Môle, separated them. Some 300 of the Acadians moved on to Louisiana. The rest, he sent to rather barren areas on the southern coast of the northern peninsula, one at Plate-Forme and the other on the Baie d?Henne, knowing they were fisherman and that the sea was their livelihood and their destiny.

The Germans, who excelled at animal husbandry and agriculture, were settled in the newly created town of Bombardopolis located inland from the Acadian settlements, on the edge of a vast prairie. Aublet had named the town after his benefactor, a M. Bombarde (who had pulled strings at Court to get him appointed Royal botanist at Cayenne), and added a classical touch with the Greek ending "opolis", although later maps show simply "Bombarde".

Bombarde was laid out on a square plan, 32 blocks, divided by 20 intersecting streets, situated so as to take the best possible advantage of the breezes. Although several main streets bore names honouring the French family and ministers, some of the other names were German in origin. There was nothing pretentious about the town, the houses were humble abodes built with roofs of straw.

The Germans immediately and zealously set to working their lands, which were at one end of a great cool, fresh plain, high above the sea, where the view went on and on, and the air circulated freely. Several small rivulets and springs furnished the inhabitants with water. The Bombarde nights were pleasantly cool and during what was caller the "cold" season, the mornings dews often reminded one of the white frosts of France. Apparently, the topography of the northern peninsula was so varied that conditions a mere ten miles away in any direction might be totally different and insufferable. The Germans discovered this in 1765-66 when some of them were settled amongst the Acadians, closer to this coast, at Plate-Forme and Henne, they promptly left.

Routes of commerce opened between the Môle and the three "refugee" towns on the south side of peninsula. The area developed and by September 1765, all of the inhabitants were comfortable lodged, and plans for barracks and fortifications were drawn up. In April 1766, Bombarde counted 776 Germans. In July 1766, Môle St-Nicolas was made and entrepôt an international, open port and the "trickle-down" effect helped Bombarde to prosper, the Germans sold all their surplus produce there in the markets. In 1784, when the Môle entrepôt status was revoked, they turned to the cultivation of coffee, and by 1787, the parish had produced 250,000 livres (pounds) of coffee. As a tribute to industry of the Germans, it is worth mentioning that in 1793 the British forces, which had taken over Môle St-Nicolas, were totally dependent on Bombarde for their produce and poultry.5

Moreau mentions the Germans in Saint-Domingue only briefly during the 1770s, when their lands (along with the King?s habitation) were officially surveyed. Almost a generation later, in February of 1789, they petitioned the government to divide up these Royal lands near Bombarde, among them, as they were mostly fallow and not reaping any great profits. Moreau also mentions the hurricane of 1772, after which the area was seized by a cruel dry spell, which lasted until 1774.

In spite of Bombarde?s prosperity, and probably because of the initial, hard conditions and high mortality rates, the town remained small. By 1770 the German population in the parish had de creased to 334 (down from 776 in 1766). Twelve years later, in 1784, the parish of Bombarde had only 600 whites (French and Germans), 50 free people of color, and 900 slaves. In 1789, the town had two companies of militia, on of which was composed of Germans. These militia companies along with some free men of color totalled 160 men-at-arms.

Moreau?s work ends in 1789 and, thus, does not address how the Germans were affected by the slave revolts at Cap Français in August of 1791. However, on September 1793, the inhabitants of Bombarde (mostly Germans) capitulated to the British troops from Jamaica, that had just invaded and occupied Saint-Domingue. But their loyalty remained uncertain, especially as no British troops were available to garrison the place. In fact, half year later, the Germans defected to the Republicans and repulsed an attack by British marines.6 In 1796, Lt Thomas Phipps Howard, a soldier stationed in Saint-Domingue during the British occupation, referred to Bombarde in his journal: "[It is] inhabited by a Colony of Germans, where there is a tolerable strong Fort tho? the Place itself is but an inconsiderable Burg".7

But this "inconsiderable Burg" made a considerable difference in the lives of the Germans who arrived there thirty years before with nothing but willingness to work and a desire to succeed. Moreau paid this tribute to the Germans: they are, he wrote, " a sober and laborious people, whom France has neglected [as colonists]. Their success and prosperity were the result of their own economy and efforts, the sweat of their brows and the strength of their arms, in spite of living in a climate so alien to the one from which they transplanted. From the beginning they have paid a cruel tribute because of this transplantation, but their industriousness promises them a only bright and shining future."

A perusal of the decennial tables alphabétiques for church registers of the town of Bombarde (1784-88) reveals the following 49 names which are obviously of German origin. A survey of the actual records would probably reveal more, including, perhaps, some places of birth in Germany. No doubt the Saint-Domingue notarial archives at Aix-en-Provence, France would be even more fruitful:

Anhauser Ferdig Herman Odo Singlas
Appel Flick Hoffmaennin Openheiser Sippemane
Branberg Flock Laissert Risser Thal
Brindel Fogel Langerat Schell Verner
Christ Gaab Lenard Scheloite Volfensperger
Connerath Gratz Linek Scher Vook
Creber Haine Louthinger Scherman Wackner
Ey [Ei?] Haortz [?] Martz Schliere Wattre
Felshaver Hay Meyr Schneider Woock
Felzeaur Helmispac Miller Schnellemin

RÉFÉRENCES

1. Latter Day Saints microfilm no. 1094171, "Eglise catholique St-François, Bombarde, Haiti" (Salt Lake City : Filmed by the Genealogical Society of Utah, 1974). Indices to the registers are on LDS microfilm no. 1904159, item 1, "Saint-Domingue. Greffes des Tribunaux civils. Tables alphabétiques des registres paroissiaux ??. The original registers and indices are housed at the Archives d?Outre-Mer in Aix-en-Provence, France.

2. James E. McCellan III, Colonialism ans Science. Saint Domingue in the Old Regime (Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992), 61-62; and the New Encyclopaedia Britannica, Macropaedia. Vol 7. (Chicago: Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., 1970), 714.

3. Mederic-Louis Élie Moreau de Saint-Méry, Description topographique, physique, civile, politique et historique de la partie Française de l?isle Saint-Domingue. Revised and expanded edition. Edited by B. Maureland E. Taillemite. 3 vols. (Paris : Société de l?histoire des Colonies Françaises et Librairie Larose, 1958), 232-33, 267, 735-37, 752-61. Unless otherwise cited, the information in this article was found in Moreau?s work and translated by this writer. Although Moreau cites official correspondence which states that 2, 470 Germans were sent to Saint-Domingue, nowhere in his work does he account for the placement of all of them. An examination of the C9A papers (Correspondance générale , Saint-Domingue, 1664-1792) might illuminate this subject considerably.

4. David Patrick Geggus, Slavery, War, and Revolution The British Occupation of Saint Domingue 1793-1798 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982, 108, 114, 233.

5. Ibid

6. Ibid

7. Robert Noan Buckley, The Haitian Journal of Lieutenant Howard, York Hussars, 1796-1798. (Knoxville : University of Tennessee Press, 1985), 37