13704: Harvey: Re: 13692: Krause: Did the Underground Railroad Lead to Haiti? (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: sean harvey <seanharvey@juno.com>

You were probably unable to locate traces of the African-Americans who
migrated to Haiti during the early 19th century because almost every
single one of them wound up on the east side of the island, in what is
now the Dominican Republic but at the time of the emigration was part of
Haiti. Most of the migrants were shipped out to areas that were in need
of economic development -- notably the Samana Peninsula. You can stil
find English-speaking descendants of these migrants in Samana, and they
have an African Methodist Church which was erected there for them by
donors from the US. Many of the younger generation have pretty much fully
integrated into the Dominican culture at this point, but during the
Trujillo era they persisted in maintaining their language and culture
despite sustained persecution from that dictator.

Dr Martha Ellen Davis clarified to me once that these migrants were not
escaped slaves but rather freemen from the northern US states who were
sick of living in a slave-owning nation and had saved up money for the
passage.

sean harvey



On Sat, 16 Nov 2002 07:34:36 -0600 (CST) Bob Corbett
<corbetre@webster.edu> writes:
>
>
> From: Paul Krause <krause@interchange.ubc.ca>
>
> Regarding African-Americans in Haiti in the 19th Century, the best
> overview is C. Dixon,  African America and Haiti. Dixon himself did
> not
> go to Haiti to see if there are any descendants of the 3,000 or so
> emigrants who settled there from 1861-65. The overwhelming majority
> of
> these died or returned to the mainland. While in Haiti several years
> ago
> when I was doing research on one family who emigrated to the
> Artibonite
> in 1861, I did some digging regarding the question of contemporary
> descendants of the emigres. No luck.
>
>