For this paper, there are a few books and articles, but none of them explicitly focus on Charleston.  I had to go through several drafts of the same paper to get to where I am now.  My first draft was a report, flat out.  

What I did wrong:  I’d detailed the research process that I followed, right down to the search terms I had used.  I included some of the books that I found on the subject, but there was no accompanying analysis.  I included some evidence, but there was nothing really concrete to tie it all together. 

What I did right: I isolated four themes: destination, Institution of Slavery, the French Connection, and Individual Identity.  These four themes represent the wide range of evidence that I collected.  In defining them they had became unique to Charleston’s history.  The tendency of these four themes to overlap and become more entwined than four definitive themes caused organization problems though.

With the second and third drafts, I wrote more of an historiographical analysis.  In these drafts, I analysed the available scholarship and presented the themes in relation to Charleston.  

What I did wrong: My writing was out of touch.  I don’t know if I was succumbing to the summer heat of Charleston or what, but I was not writing like an academic. 

What I did right:  I analysed the other sources.  This helped me to further define the four themes that I had developed. 

In what became the present final draft, I truly had it figured out.  I don’t know if an impending deadline was the perfect catalyst for productivity, but I really didn’t get a good hold of my writing until October hit.  The paper finally came together, a collaboration of all the papers before it, but without all the faults and errors.  I could not have developed such a paper without failing at it so many time before.  I attribute the final product to truly hashing it out on paper several times. 

I finally finished the research paper and submitted it to a grad school as a writing sample. More on that later.

So I am eagerly awaiting the letter…

Currently we are in Paris.  We will be here until Saturday and then off to Angeot in the Alsace region. 

I’m rather excited because my good friend Marietta is in Paris right now staying at her mothers.  I hope that we can meet some time before she leaves for Holland. 

My father wants to interview our French relatives on immigration with a “what if” clause.  What if my great x 5 grandfather had not come to the United States?  Are there any Roueches living with similar traits, mannerisms, or likes/dislikes to me or my father?  

All the details can be found at RouecheDocumentary.com 

Next step on my to do list for graduate school is to write the writing sample.  I wrote about four pages last week and have a pretty thorough outline.  I do not expect to have much difficulty finishing the first draft by the end of this week. 

The one problem that I keep encountering is putting too much extra history in the paper that is supposed to be a historiographical paper.  I need to restrain myself from adding too much detail about the Haitian Revolution itself, which is not the focus of the paper. 

Currently I am developing my research into an outline that will eventually morph into a historiographical paper.  My aim is to have something concrete that can aid any future researcher or knowledge seeker on the topic of Saint Domingan refugees to Charleston, SC.  Since I hope to eventually leave Charleston for graduate school, this paper will also serve as my writing sample for those applications.  

I put together a notebook containing everything I have compiled or written on this subject, i.e. the bibliography, names database, newspaper database, and outlines/notes.  It is encouraging to see everything that I have in print and organized in a notebook. 

On Thursday at the Avery Research Center, there were four panels; “Gullah and Creolization,” “Abolitionist Discourse,” “Resistance,” and “Slavery, Plantations, and landscape in American Visual Art.” There was also a lunch on the Gullah/Geechee Nation with Queen Quet, of the Gullah/Geechee Nation. I enjoyed everything about her presentation, her presence is commanding and her voice is strong.   She spoke of her battle to gain international recognition for the people of the Gullah/Geechee Nation from the local level, all the way to the United Nations. Her insistance to speak Gullah/Geechee when she addressed the UN when she was advised not to is inspiring.  That, to me, is making history.

At the Citadel on Friday there were again four panel discussions;  “Racism, Racial Science, and the Representation of Race,” “Maroonage, Dispersal, and the Roots of Forced Migration,” “Infrastructure and Ideology,” and the “Experience of Slavery.”  I was encouraged by two of the presenters on Friday’s panel, they were both young recent PhDs, and their research was very interesting, especially the one on “Slave Trading Entrepôts and their Hinterlands: The Continued Forced Migrations after the Middle Passage to North America” by Greg O’Malley. I was able to draw parallels from his work to mine. It is important to note that Haitian history is a history of migrations and movements that extends into modern day.  O’Malley is researching personal accounts about the passage from where the captured Africans entered into the US to their final destination  as slaves.  I see parallels between wondering what happened to those French colonists and Creoles who came to Atlantic port cities of the US and where they ended up.

This conference was important to me because I hope to pursue a Masters in Public History and do exactly this, organize and plan a conference or exhibit for the public.  Attending this conference was an invaluable experience through the discussions with the different presenters, the setting, and the extracurricular events of the conference. What I liked about this particular conference was the fact that the participants were not limited to scholars and academic papers, but the discussions where connected through an interdisciplinary idea that the International Slave Trade exists in history books and academic papers, but also in its descendants and their heritage, and their interpretations through art, literature, music, and especially their identity.

This week at the College of Charleston the Carolina Lowcountry and Atlantic World (CLAW) is hosting a conference marking the bicentennial of the ending of the international slave trade.  The conference begins on Tuesday, March 25 and runs through Saturday, March 29.  The schedule of events include a Requiem on Tuesday evening, daily panel discussions, and presentations at Magnolia Gardens and Middleton Place, among others.  I hope to attend the daytime events including the panel discussions and a lunch on the Gullah/Geechee Nation. 

I am excited to attend this conference for several reasons, mainly because I have not attended many conferences and none of this magnitude.  Also for my internship, Saint-Domingue/Haiti had a major impact on the abolition of the international slave trade because no doubt the successful slave rebellion and first independent black nation struck fear in every colonial power who depended on slave labor in their colonies.  

Old Slave Mart Museum

CLAW

 I took a field trip to the Magnolia Plantation and Gardens on Wednesday with my friend Hunter.   He is in town for spring break and we wanted to do something outside and a little educational.  Since I have never really visited any of the tourist attractions around the city, a plantation seemed like a lot of fun.  Hunter and I both grew up in Rock Hill, near where Historic Brattonsville  is located.  As children, we visited this historic site many times, and I think Hunter was even a “costume interpreter” once upon a time.  I remember women churning butter in historic dress, touring the blacksmith’s cabin, watching the sheep sheerer, and walking out onto the battle field of Huck’s Defeat.  Needless to say we were not prepared for the Amusement Park that is the Magnolia Plantation and Gardens. 

I enjoyed our visit though because it was so crazy.  There were all sorts of animals running around in a petting zoo, a crowded tour of the big house, a brief, but amusing boat tour, and then acres and acres of camellias.  The camellias, I’m guessing, are the reason tourist flock to this plantation.   The swamp walk is really cool, and we were some of the last tourists of the day and had the entire swamp to ourselves.  I think that the swamp walk is free to the public because the entrance is before the ticket booth, so I recommend taking an afternoon to walk it.  I should have done a little more research  though before we spent our $36 each.

It was a great experience for me.  I live in a city full of history, but
I really don’t take advantage of the attractions.  I am just now learning to appreciate the local history and how the city of Charleston promotes itself.  I guess I’m pretty lucky to have lived once in house that was over 150 years old, even though it lacked all modern amenities. 

 I think one of my favorite articles found so far is this list of Books for Sale. 

Anyone that knows me, knows that I drink a lot of coffee.  I’ll shamelessly admit that I probably spend more time at Kudu Coffee than anywhere else in this city!  Anyway, one of the ideas that I cannot shake when thinking about various avenues that this project could possibly take is the idea that Saint Dominguan refugees might have attempted to plant coffee in South Carolina.  I am eager to find anything that might suggest this happened or did not happen.  What gives me hope is this article that I found on growing Indigo, which I know they grew in South Carolina prior to the Haitian Revolution, but is proof that Saint Dominguan planters attempted to transplant their Caribbean crops and methods to their new homes.

 This advertisement posted by a French Gentleman, is exemplary evidence of the position of a lot of  Saint Dominguan refugees once they arrived in Charleston.   There was a demand for French language tutors and music teachers, and these French expatriates were well-positioned to fill these positions. 

Now that I’ve had a chance to rant about the technical stuff, on to the important stuff.   My list of relevant newspaper articles is growing daily.  At times it is a little overwhelming, but I’ve received great advice from Dr. Butler at our weekly meetings.  In searching names and places, there are so many avenues to take, so many terms to search, names and cross-references.  I start in one direction and find myself running in another.  This really is an exercise in organization.  Dr. Butler urged me to create a list of search terms that I can strikeout and add to indefinitely.  That way I keep myself a little grounded when it comes to new ideas for a search or new names. 

What takes the most time and method are all the different ways I can search for a specific name and place.   For example: if I search the name “Benoist,” there are three Benoists currently known to have a connection with Saint Domingue.  I then either restrict the search to South Carolina newspapers after 1791.  Or, I type in another keyword, like Saint Domingue, Haiti, Hayti, unfortunate sufferer(s), refugee(s), Charleston, French family, and/or French gentleman/lady.   I could potentially find dozens of articles or nothing at all for each of the three Benoist.  

I got my hands on the 150th Anniversary pamplet of La Société  Française de Charleston.  In this pamphlet, published in 1966 by the Société Française, there is a brief history of the French presence in Charleston, a list of the founding members, and a list of subsequent members and their date of joining.  Through these two lists, I have a tons of names to search to figure out their place of origin and if there is a Saint Domingue connection.  So these searches have become my current focus. 

COMING SOON: Haitian Literature page