“Refugee from St. Domingue Living in This City”

Abstract

Through Cuba and other points, the Haitian Revolution drove thousands of free women of color to New Orleans between 1791 and 1810. This significant influx coincided with the Louisiana Purchase, tripling the city’s Francophone free black population at a transitional moment. Through a close analysis of testaments recorded by refugee women soon after their arrival, this article investigates the gendered strategies they employed to survive their dislocation and rebuild their lives. Wills serve as a valuable source to uncover the social networks utilized by refugees resettling in New Orleans. The relationships captured in wills indicate how the process of migration both reproduced and transformed social relations from Saint-Domingue. Testaments also illuminate the spatial components of the testators’ relationships, enabling a reconstruction of refugee women’s social geography. Mapping these networks exposes where (re)connections occurred in the city and emphasizes the ways in which free women of color refugees shaped the development of New Orleans.