Free Women of Color with their Children and Servants in a Landscape,
painted by Agostino Brunias
To continue where we left off in last week’s article, we look at the manumission of slaves in Dominica and the lot of the free coloured and free blacks in Dominica during the decade before the Emancipation of Slaves in 1834.
Studying the Slave Registers, I recorded 73 manumissions of slaves for the period 1820-1823. I have divided these in several groups:
Group one : The liberated slaves were old , 50 years and over.
Group two : The second group of enfranchised slaves were “SOLD TO SELF ”
In a third group we find several female house slaves or “domestique” manumitted with their mulatto child or children. An example is Olivia, domestic, recorded as a “manumitted creole of this island” who was liberated by her owner Langford Lovell of the Londonderry estate, together with her 3 mulatto children in 1823.
Or Nancy, 41 years of age, an Africa-born cook of John W. Stewart, who was manumitted together with her two children respectively 6 and 3 years old.
There are several other cases of house slaves – cooks, washers, housekeepers – who were liberated by their masters together with their mulatto children.
A fourth group consists of slaves who were liberated or manumitted after the death of their master, by his or her Last Will and Testament .
Olive, a female slave of Mary Ann LeCointe was manumitted after the death of her owner .
Sally Mulatto, 31 years of age, a Creole “domestique”, was liberated after the death “by the Will of John Lionne”.
In 1798, French friar Dominique Conrad of the Capuchin Friars was sick and dying on his “plantation in the bay of Toucarry called Golgotha”. In his Last Will and Testament he wrote: “ for the attachment , fidelity and good service of the negro Victor towards me, I give him his liberty ….”
In February 1827 Rev. Fr. Jean de la Hoz Ximeno, curate of Roseau, wrote in his Last Will and Testament “I do hereby manumit and enfranchise my slaves Victor, Antoinette and my goddaughter Josephine upon condition that they shall reside with and serve my nephew Philip Ximeno, as long as he shall reside in this or any other English colony, during which residence they shall not be entitled to claim or enjoy their freedom… I also give to the said Antoinette 50 dollars and to the said Victor 25 like dollars, to be paid them immediately after my decease and requesting that he may retain the office of bell-ringer and that he may be allowed to occupy and live in the belfry” [ of the Roseau parish church].
Fr. Jean Ximeno, fell with his horse into a precipice above Pichelin and was killed on the 7th of May 1828. His nephew Philip left Dominica shortly after.
In the Slave Registers of 1823 we can find additional information: Victor, Antoinette and Josephine were recorded with 5 other slaves, as the property of “Abbee Jean”. Abbé Jean bought Victor, an Africa-born gardener from Louise Martineau. He was 50 years old in 1823. Antoinette, a mulatto girl was 9 years at the time and Josephine 1 year. She was the daughter of one of Fr. Jean’s slaves .
So as the free coloured and blacks increased in number they clamoured for political power and right to vote. As the majority of them was Catholic, they also sought influence and recognition in the local Catholic Church.
The Roman Catholic Relief Act or ROMAN CATHOLIC EMANCIPATION ACT was passed by the British Parliament in 1829 but it took till the 13th December 1831 before the king’s approval of the Bill of Emancipation of Catholics in Dominica reached Dominica.
In the meantime, a local bill for the emancipation of free coloured and blacks was presented to the king named “THE BROWN PRIVILEGE BILL “: “ AN ACT for the Relief of His Majesty’s Free Coloured and Free Black Subjects residing in this Island, April 1831. WHERE AS by law and custom, certain restraints and disabilities are imposed on the free coloured and free black inhabitants of this Island ,which it is just and expedient should be removed, we ,Your Majesty’s dutiful loyal and obedient subjects, the President, Council and Assembly of this Your Majesty’s Island of Dominica humbly pray Your Most excellent Majesty that it may be enacted and ordained: Be it therefore and it is hereby enacted that, from and after the passing of this Act, all Acts and such parts of Acts as impose any restraints or disabilities whatsoever on the free coloured and free black inhabitants of this Island, who are subjects of His Majesty, shall be and the same are hereby repealed and that such free coloured and free black inhabitants shall and are hereby authorized to exercise and enjoy all the rights privileges and immunities which are now enjoyed by white inhabitants of this Island”
On 6 September 1832 the Emancipation Act of the coloured and black free people finally came into operation. The two impediments to political power were now removed in Dominica: being catholic and coloured.
Barely a month later Governor Evan Murray-Mac Gregor welcomed the first Catholics and the first coloured people ever to take a seat in the Dominica Assembly. : “ My sincere congratulations are tendered to you on the election into this body of representatives, belonging to classes of this community, lately exonerated through His Majesty’s Pastoral care, from the pressure of religious and civil disabilities.”
The first catholic coloured members were Michael Boland for Roseau, William Whitnell for St. George, Lawrence Lionne for St. Mark.
DOMINICA , its treasures, its history 