Jeanette - free negro woman

The rain beat so hard on the shingled roof that it was difficult to speak softly in the room where the old woman lay dying. Outside, the gusts seemed to turn the trees inside out. In the bay, the schooner ‘Crispin Whyne’ reared up on her mooring, twisting on her anchor chain. The ship’s boat plunged through the waves, driven by the easterly wind. Four big men were at the oars, another giant at the tiller. Their lone passenger, a bundle of damp oil cloths over wet clothes, shivered. Her rain-washed face held no expression.

They brought the long boat ashore with the help of the huge waves, running it up past the high water mark on the curve of sand and making fast to an old almond tree. Night had come quite quickly. The giant tiller man picked her up from her seat. His huge black arms cradled the little woman as they all set out up the hill to the old house above the main bay on the Caribbean isle of Petite Martinique.

Judith Philippe was just in time to see her mother die. Old, toothless, nearly bald, the dying woman glimpsed her daughter’s pretty face.  Her eyes, once sparklingly bright, still a light brown in her coal-black face, closed for the last time. “Jeannette Free Negro Woman” of Grenada, Petite Martinique and Carriacou, was dead. Around her, her fair-skinned, slim-built daughters in long white dresses tightly clasped at the waist, their heads tied in the old style, moved about the lamp lit room in slow motion. Her two sons sat at a table by the window, a bottle of rum and two shot glasses between them untouched. The rain fell unabated.

Many, so many years ago, she, Jeannette, her mother, had walked up to the big house above Tyrell’s Bay, Grenada. They had stood at the main door until the man had noticed them. They were both slaves, his slaves. Her mother had left her there. There were no words between them. She was remarkably beautiful in her youth. The painted miniature in Judith’s hand still attested to this. Monsieur Philippe gave her freedom. Together, they had ten children, five girls and five boys.

The free mulatto woman Judith, Jeannette’s third daughter, and her eldest son Honoré, were the executors of a considerable fortune. Judith herself was the matriarch of one of the Caribbean’s more significant families. This dynasty of black women heirs to estates on Carriacou, Grenada and the entire island of Petite Martinique is remarkable in that their descendants include revolutionaries in the Fedon revolution in Grenada of the 1790s, a very wealthy landowning family of south Trinidad, European-trained medical practitioners, and the celebrated author of ‘A Free Mulatto’, a paper presented to the House of Lords in Britain that was more than likely the first civil rights case upheld in the western hemisphere by a superior court. The Philippes also produced towards the end of the 19th century, a mayor of Port of Spain, a Solicitor-General of the Crown colony of Trinidad and an author.

In the publication ‘Description of the Grenadines’ by S.V. Morse, published in 1795 and quoted by Lorna McDaniel in her paper ‘Madame Philip-O: Reading the returns of an 18th century free mulatto woman of Grenada’, there is a description of Petite Martinique:

“Petite Martinique lies about a mile and a half south west from Petit St. Vincent - it is the joint property of Jeanette Philip, a free negroe woman, and a number of her Mulatto Children, Left them by a French Man of that name... it contains four hundred and seventy seven acres of which four hundred and sixty four are proper for cultivation. Both the soil and surface of this island are better than most of the Grenadines - There are three white men, five free coloured people, and eighty nine slaves - There is a large mountain near the middle of the Island which rises to a considerable height.”

It was from this island base that the course of destiny was charted and set. For reasons unknown, the brothers Honoré’s wealth was delivered to her in 1793 as was that of her other siblings Suzanne and Louis upon their decisions to relocate to Trinidad. The family generated wealth. Those who came to Trinidad took advantage of the Cedula of Population of 1783. Louis Philippe owned large sugar plantations in the Naparimas and was possibly the largest slave owner amongst the free coloured people in Trinidad at the time. Lorna McDaniel writes that Judith also had access to a leasehold house in England at 33 Great Coram Street in London, where she traveled in 1807.

“It is known that her nephews, Jean Baptiste and St. Luce, were students in England during that time and her mission to Europe most likely included their concerns.”

Judith was the generous benefactress to neighbours and friends, and godmother to 22 children. She could neither read nor write; neither could her sister Jeanne Rose. The school on Carriacou, established on her land, enrolled 96 free coloured children and 7 slave children. As Lorna McDaniel writes:

“African women like Judith’s mother, whether enslaved or free, were the source of this new mobile class, the ‘coloured’. They, mating with white planters, not only created a politically and military active progeny, but often acquired manumission, education, power and wealth for their mixed-race children and sometimes for themselves. The increase in social power within succeeding generations of the Philippe family is accompanied by the exclusive education that many mixed-race progeny acquired who were allowed education in Europe.”

Capitulation and the Region

As a backdrop to the capture of the island of Trinidad by the British in 1797, it is useful to have an idea of what was taking place in the region generally.

The European wars for territories in the Caribbean reached boiling point in the 1790s. The French Revolution of 1789 served to add civil war to the equation. Turbulence and violence, racial hate and revolt reigned in the ring of islands, in St. Lucia, Grenada, Dominica, among the maroons - former slaves who had taken to the Blue Mountains of Jamaica’s central range -, and most violent and catastrophic of all, in Haiti.

This ‘ring of fire’ had commenced in North America, as the descendants of immigrants there battled against British control.

There was heavy fighting in the Eastern Caribbean. In 1794, British troops took Martinique. A month or two later, they landed in Guadeloupe. There, for the first time, they came up against Victor Hugues, the former inn keeper of that island and now leader of the French Revolution in the Caribbean. He had sailed from Marseilles, France, the year before, armed with republican fever, gold, a handful of loyal henchmen and a guillotine. Hugues was a daring man; people said that he was coloured and hated the ‘békés’, the whites, for being placed by them beyond the diameter of society despite his grasp of culture and his intelligence.

Hugues was possessed of great energy and resolution. The message of the revolution was like a gospel to him.

The squadron under his command attacked the British in 1795 in Basseterre and forced them out of Guadeloupe by the end of that year. The reign of terror took the lives of over one thousand royalists.

Victor Hugues then set to work to drive the British out of these islands and to convert people to the cause of the revolution of republican France. He sent agents to St. Vincent to stir up the population. He sent troops on the heels of the agents, and before long the English were hardpressed to keep Kingstown, while the French, made up of black and coloured troops, and the Caribs held the rest of the island. Hugues dispatched his agents to Jamaica, where for the third time a full-fledged war was waged by the maroons, slaves who had freed themselves, and the British troops. They were so heavily engaged that no reinforcements could be sent to relieve General Maitland’s fever-stricken English soldiers in Haiti. By 1798, the English were compelled to leave Haiti, and in Jamaica, the black maroons had been crushed.

Victor Hugues, undaunted, turned to Grenada, where there was tension between the English and the French. He was a genius at sowing division and a brilliant manipulator! His agents promoted revolt in Grenada. they were followed by picket men, who built up cells or small cadres. Then, soldiers were brought in. A coloured Grenadian planter, Julien Fedon, was chosen as leader. A group of French and free blacks was formed, and then revolutionary troops were sent in from Guadeloupe.

The rising under Fedon broke out at midnight of 2nd March, 1795, surrounded the town of Grenville and engaged in English garrison. They soon overran the town killing all, sparing none.

Fedon withdrew to his estate Belvedere, 2000 ft above sea level on the Mt. St. Catherine. He established three camps, named the ‘Field of Liberty’,  the ‘Field of Equality’ and the ‘Field of Death’. Soon the governor and his staff had been taken, and Fedon warned that any attempt to attack the island would mean their death.

Meanwhile, Victor Hugues was attempting to destabilise Trinidad, and to demoralise Don José Maria Chacon, the governor. He offered to send his men to ‘help’ the governor to ‘control’ the island. Chacon in Trinidad responded by sending a few Spanish soldiers to join the British in Grenada in their planned attack on Fedon’s mountan fortress.

Terrible rainstorms lashed Grenada on the day that Fedon’s encampment was attacked. The English troops were pinned down by relentless fire from above. Fedon’s troops felled huge trees. The English commander inexplicably killed ihmself. Yet the attack was maintained.

At the ‘Field of Death’ a terrible massacre had taken place. The hostages were executed. The governor’s wife and daughters, his aid and accompanying officers were all killed in a hail of bullets. Some 55 persons died. There were a few survivors , among them Dr. John Hay, Fr. McMahon and Mr. Kerr.

The British armed a contingent of loyal slaves, the ‘Corps of Loyal Black Rangers’, and pursued Fedon’s men while garrisoning St. Georges. In April, Sir Ralph Abercromby arrived in Grenada with troops and attacked the mountain stronghold. He defeated Fedon there, but not before another 20 hostages had met their deaths.

Noone saw Fedon die. He was seen trying to sail away in a small boat and is said to have drowned. Thus ended the Battle Mt. Qua Qua.

Over 150 years later, in the latter part of the 20th century, Grenada again experienced revolution, overthrow and massacre of more than 100 citizens at the fort in St. Georges. Is this a case of history repeating itself? Or is this a matter of unresolved issues playing themselves out? Perhaps history repeats itself because of unresolved issues. It is said that people who do not know their past are doomed to repeat it. This is one of the ‘raisons d’etre’ for the Historical Digest!