Black Crown & Henri Christophe

Paul Clammer's Black Crown: Henry Christophe, the Haitian Revolution and the Caribbean's Forgotten Kingdom is a meticulously researched biography of one of the central figures in the annals of the Haitian Revolution and 19th century Haiti. Based on a mixture of all available sources, Clammer, who has written travel literature on Haiti, has consulted archives, visited the sites associated with Christophe's state, and used European, Haitian, and US sources to reconstruct the life of Christophe. As one might expect, his early origins in Grenada remain shrouded in mystery. Even his participation in the struggle for US independence remains a mystery. However, Christophe, once in Le Cap, was able to establish himself and build connections. During the Haitian Revolution, he rose to positions of ever greater importance until he became one of the upper echelon of military officials under Toussaint Louverture. Joining with Dessalines, he fought for Haitian independence against Leclerc and Rochambeau. Clammer, based on surviving correspondence of Christophe and other sources, favors the argument that Christophe was not directly involved in the assassination of Dessalines, and once the deed was done, was positioning himself strategically. The conflict with Petion and the South subsequently divided Haiti into two separate states, with Christophe as the essentially uncontested leader in the Nord. By the time he declared himself king, Christophe had neutralized potential competitors (even doing so during the Haitian Revolution against maroon leader Sans Souci and others).

The most interesting chapters of the biography cover the reign of Christophe as king. Ruling the Kingdom of Haiti, Christophe sponsored the construction of beautiful palaces like Sans Souci, promoted plantation agriculture, instituted legal codes that at least, in theory, guaranteed certain rights for cultivators, and engaged in all the theatricality of power and magnificence to present an image of Haiti as a civilized land making progress for Western audiences. Clammer's deftly written and detailed accounts of Christophe's diplomatic engagements with Britain and Europe on the one hand, and the struggles he engaged with against his own subjects and the republic to the South, make for engaging and fascinating reading. Unfortunately, the surviving source are not as rich as one would like for understanding a more complete portrait of the kingdom. Surviving ledgers give tantalizing clues about sugar and coffee production, with the state-enforced plantation system falling behind on sugar. Indeed, near the end of his reign, Christophe began distributing land to soldiers, perhaps as many as 8000 in one letter cited by Clammer. However, the vast majority of the land grants were for tiny farms, although Christophe did appear to have engaged in broadening land ownership and creating more titled nobles. Sadly, Christophe was unable to suppress a revolt that began in Saint-Marc and was supported by Jean-Pierre Richard, an African-born leader of Cap Henry who had been imprisoned by Christophe at the Citadel and forced to do hard labor. 

Since his stroke appears to have inspired malcontents and rebels to take action, and once loyal subordinates chose to do nothing or join in the rebellion, Christophe knew his end was near. The black king who sought to create a strong nation, was overthrown. The North was reunified with the rest of the country and Haiti as we know was consolidated. The Christophe experiment, however, represented the last of the revolutionary era leadership who were at least somewhat successful at maintaining export-oriented plantation agriculture. Christophe's state, which sparked resistance from local cultivators (though his frequent tours of the countryside and audiences suggests he must have at least occasionally ensured the Code Henry's protections for workers were respected), represented another path for national development. More successful than the southern republic, at least for a short while, the Christophean experiment offers us a view of what Haiti could have become had Christophe been able to balance the desires of the rural majority and perhaps had not treated some of his own subordinates so harshly or capriciously. 

Pedraza Everywhere

Although the documentary trail is incomplete, it looks like one of our forebears was a descendant a family that frequently married cousins in the 18th and 19th centuries, the Pedraza. The earliest one we can find is a Lorenzo Pedraza, who died in 1812. His wife, Rafaela de Arroyo, passed away in 1800, in Caguas. We also know that a son of this couple, Hilario Pedrasa de Arroyo, married a Dorotea de Sierra Pedrasa in 1788 (also in Caguas). Since Dorotea's mother was a Juana Pedrasa and Hilario's father also a Pedrasa, we think the two were probably related. 

We believe that Hilario Pedrasa and Dorotea de Sierra were the parents of the Ramona Pedraza we are interested in. According to the parish books of San Lorenzo, a Ramona Pedraza, daughter of Hilario and Dorotea, married Domingo Montanez (son of Juan and Maria Reyes) in 1813. The Montanez and Pedraza have a long history in the 18th and 19th centuries, at least in the area of Caguas and San Lorenzo. We believe the daughter of Domingo Montanez and Ramona Pedraza, married a Montanez who likely descends from the same lineage. 

This daughter, Isabel or Ysabel Montanez Pedraza, married a Guillermo Diaz of Guayama. According to the little we could find in the parish books, Guillermo Diaz was a hijo natural of a Isabel Diaz. We know both were pardos or morenos. Fortunately, a number of documents assert that the parents of Ysabel Montanez Pedraza were Domingo and Ramona Pedraza, pardos libres. Ysabel's death certificate from the late 1800s also identifies her father as a Domingo Montanez. 

To make things even more confusing, a Maria Ramona Pedraza was said to have married a Ramon Benitez in 1821. Get this, Maria Ramona Pedraza's parents were listed by the parish priest in San Lorenzo as Hilario and a Teodora (Dorotea?) Sierra! Perhaps Ramona remarried then or there was a mix-up  on the part of the parish priest.

If our theory is correct, then Domingo Montanez's parents were Juan Montanez and Maria Reyes. Now we need to find out the origins of Isabel Diaz, Guillermo's mother. The Pedraza and Montanez appear to have been related and marrying each other since the second half of the 1700s, but the origins of the Diaz line remains a mystery. Furthermore, we were unable to determine the origins of Lorenzo Pedraza, the father of Hilario. 

African Ancestry Update (2025)

Although we knew Africa was not the focus of the 2025 update for Ancestry, we still thought there might be some changes. Instead, with the exception of a decrease of 1% for Senegal, our sub-Saharan African estimates are essentially the same. For our Haitian parent, nothing changed either except for a minor increase in their Benin & Togo estimate (up by 2%). They retained their minor estimates for various smaller regions while we still have a division of "Nigeria" into Central Nigeria, North-Central Nigeria and Nigeria. 

None of this is too surprising. It looks like the 2025 update is largely unchanged from the 2024 update. And as we already expected, we are more West African than Central African In fact, it would appear that our Haitian parent and I harbor substantial ancestry derived from the Slave Coast and Bight of Biafra, which is also backed by the records of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade and Saint Domingue (colonial Haiti). I personally find it intriguing that so little sub-Saharan African ancestry was passed on through the Hispanic side.

The only real change to our African ancestry was the inflated North Africa estimate of 4%. The first time we got our results, the estimate was 2%. Then, following the update, it dropped to 1%. Inexplicably, it shot up to 4% this year. While we did see an estimate of 1% Canary Islands, we doubt we have substantial :Guanche" ancestry that might explain this. It seems like the creation of new areas for Spain and the Iberian peninsula altered or created problems for other nearby regions or categories. Indeed, this might be why we suddenly see a 2% Sephardic Jewish estimate while previous updates never included that. Of course, we do have very distant Sephardic Jewish matches from the eastern Mediterranean or North Africa as well as North African Muslim matches...

Marie Gaury of Okap

Whilst perusing Moreau de Saint-Méry's compilation, Loix et constitutions des colonies françoises de l'Amérique sous le Vent, we came across yet another Gaury from the early 18th century. Although there is probably no connection with the Gaury of Bainet and her race is not specified, the Marie Gaury who won a case against the father of her child could have been mixed-race. If so, and her roots lay in Saint-Christophe, perhaps she was a relative of the Gaury in Croix-des-Bouquet and Bainet.