“Because of the Friendship He Feels for the Bride”: Patrimony, Fatherhood, and Marriage in French Saint-Domingue

Colonialism complicates family life in a variety of ways. For French-born men in Saint-Domingue, French rules about patrimonial division and inheritance conflicted with their desire to provide for the children of color they had during their sojourn in the colony. The Custom of Paris limited the size and nature of gifts, and new rules about record keeping meant that copies of gift notarizations would be sent back to the metropole with the man listed as a primary party. Certain French fathers would therefore wait until their daughter’s marriage–a traditional time to bestow major gifts–to provide significant amounts of property. To avoid scandal, they would carefully avoid claiming paternity and thus would not appear in the marriage contract in any capacity until the giving of gifts by guests, often at least two pages into the record. Claiming a friendship (amitié) for the bride, they would provide enslaved workers, land, and/or livestock, thus establishing the next generation.

This paper draws on French legal commentaries, local decrees, chronicles, and over 3,000 notarized documents from Léogane and Saint-Marc, Haiti to show the ways certain French men sought to free and establish their daughters of color during the late eighteenth century. Particular care will be given to situate these new households of color within colonial society writ large to better illuminate their experiences and later economic strategies, including their participation in manumission through marriage and the coffee economy.