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MY LAPLACE FAMILY HISTORY
*** Saint-Christophe ***
**** Nevis ****
*** Puerto Rico***
All islands of my heritage on my mother's
family history
My mother was of the LaPlace Family of St.Kitts. Her French heritage was of St.Barths, a nearby smaller island. Her French heritage came with people that came from St.Barths and settled for a time on the larger English island colony of St.Kitts. They were seeking economic opportunity and security. My Great Grandparents were married in St.Barths in 1861 and soon after settled in St.Kitts. My mother's father was born of these French from St.Barths. He would later break with Bartian tradition and marry an English heritage women, my Grandmother Adams of the St.Kitts/Nevis planter family....(see page 2 for more on St.Kitts and Nevis by clicking at the end of this page.)
My LaPlace, Greaux, Magras, Jacques, Vittet, Valdelorge, Berry, Mayer, Cartier, Aubin, Tardieu, Danet, Leboeuf, Brin, Mutrel, Ledee, Bernier and other ancestry were of the founding families of the small French island colony of Saint-Barthelemy. The LaPlace Family surname was spelled "de laPlace" in the 1715 Census of the Isle of Saint-Barthelemy. This list of "men not under arms" starts with my Great\6\Grandfather Pierre de la Place. Other related families, such as my Ledee Family ancestors, are listed with the ancient French spelling "Laydet". It is suggested that my Magras Family ancestors surname is a corruption of the Irish name MaGraw.
All this French ancestry dates back to the late 1600's in Saint-Barthelemy. That small island colony is presently known as St. Barths to French speakers and St.Barts to English speakers.... (see page 2 for more on St.Barths by clicking at end of this page)
Early in the 17th Century after a start in the French sectors of nearby St. Kitts, a second wave of French settler families headed for St.Barths as the French charter company placed a population on the island to assure their claims in an additional northern Lesser Antilles island. Hostilites with the English meant trouble for France in the northern Antillies. That trouble would disrupt life in the area for years. (see page 2 for more on this history.)
The Founders
The first settlement of my ancestral families of St.Barths, the LaPlaces and others, occured when they were lured away from France with the promise of land in "The New World". They were to grow indigo and other cash crops of the day. They were to make the land on which they toiled their own after the worked off their bonds. (see page 2 for more on the crops of St.Barths.)
When indigo proved not to be viable and rewarding, my "engage" ancestors, (the French word for a class of bonded people), cultivated sea-island cotton and tobacco. Over the years the struggle was one of plain and simple people of French heritage challenged by the hardship of the new frontier of European colonization. These tough ancestors would cling to their small rocky island in the face of war and capricious weather.
Wars between the European Powers and with Spain in the Caribbees set the stage for the small part of a larger drama in Europe. This drama would be played out by these humble ancestors in the "New World" as their old world lords battled in Europe.
These ancestors from many parts of northwest France would escape the turmoil in Europe only to have it follow them to the New World.
But, continuing wars and hurricane after hurricane failed to drive these ancestors from their beloved Saint-Barthelemy. The families were removed forcefully from St.Barths more than once and returned each time. Today, the 2500 "country" people and many of those living in the small harbor capital town of Gustavia, are related to one another and my mother's line.
Slavery, or forced labor using Africans, reached St.Barths early in its' history. Although St.Barths its self was not a good place for large-scale farming the harbor town of Gustavia would provide a central place for the "sale" of Africans brought to the New World via the "Middle Passage". A slave trade was a key part of St.Barths economic life. Other island colonies such as nearby St.Kitts and its' sugar cane estates were founded on the forced labor of Africans. Some of these Africans would be kept in St.Barths and later Census' of the place taken before and after Abolition indicate that Africans lived in the homes of my ancestors. These people were slaves held by this ancestors. The horrifying concept of forced labor and "ownership" of other humans is the heritage and history of the place, a history shared by both slave holder and slave. That history set the course for much of my ancestor's future life and the next 100 years. Forced labor was not only immoral but a disaster for all.
The earlier attitude that the French company had was that the white people, such as my bonded ancestors, brought in from France, made poor and unrealiable workers. The overseers thought the whites were generally lazy and hard to manage. More importantly these peasant whites could legally work off their indenture and seek other means of support such as farming their own land. This aspect made my white ancestors less acceptable to the company. Only Africans bought in without any rights seemed to the nearsighted estate owners a way to make money. Forced labor would soon not only be an horrible crime done to Africans, but hurtful to whites in the Caribbean and a shortsighted ecomonic plan leading to long term trouble and agony. New methods of sugar cultivation and processing were not put in place because it was thought by those in power that humans toiling with no pay or rights was a means to wealth with lesser long term investment. History would prove that the powerful and corrupt overclass was dead wrong in the long run. They were morally wrong and shortsighted as business planners.
The Swedes
During the last decades of the 18th Century the French ceded the small backwash island colony of St.Barths to the Swedes. Sweden was seeking colonies in "The New World" ever since that Kingdom's false start on the North American coast in the area now called Delaware. Sweden took control of Saint-Barthelemy retaining the name and allowing the French Catholic population a large degree of religious and social freedom. But they continued African slavery for a time. They did improve the civil institutions and dramaticly expanded the economic status of the place by designating and operating the port town as a "freeport".
My Ventre Family Ancestors
My Ventre Family ancestors of Marseilles in the south of France arrived a-mid the turmoil of the early part of the Swedish take-over. In his book "Le Peuplement De Saint-Barthelemy", M. Jean Deveau speaks of the Ventre Family early in the history of the island. M. Deveau has provided me a copy of a document dated 1795 in which most of the property of my Great\6\Grandfather Charles Ventre is disposed of by the family prior to their sailing across the Atlantic.
The Ventre Family comes to St.Barths
The Ventre Family* came to the New World as a large family of three generations. They sailed on their own ship in 1795. The ship was operated by my Great\5\ Grandfather Jean Ventre. Once called "La Marie Magdeleine" the schooner, now called "La Seine" or "TheMermaid", for the trip, headed to The New World.
(*Over the years the spelling of this family surname has been both Ventre and Vantre. In France it is spelled Ventre as far as I know.)
The Ventre ship was boarded by Revolutionaries and the contents confiscated. But the Ventre Family were allowed to sail on to St.Barths. This sea-merchant Ventre Family established a shipping and warehousing business in Gustavia.
After an initial success the Swedish experiment in St.Barths came to an end. It had struggled under Swedish rule for nearly a century. But before that happened the port town became something of a metropolitian place. The War for Independance in America placed the small island and its' freeport harbor town on a needed shipping exchange route for the new American government. America sort materials from friendly European Powers such as France to support its' war effort with England. St.Barths saw prosperity come from the confusion of the War and the tiny island's position in trade.
Gustavia
Many languages were spoken in Gustavia and the use of English and other languages for trade and commerce is fairly wide spread even today. An English langauge newspaper called the "Report of St.Bartholmew" was published from late in the 1700's till about 1816.
An Economic Struggle
In the early 1800's the desperate conditions that my French ancestors of St.Barths found themselfves in led many of them to leave the island, and seek improvement elsewhere in the Caribbean. Most had no intention of abandoning their island, but rather their plan was to find wealth elsewhere and return to their beloved St.Barths when they could. Many went to St.Vincent, later to Puerto Rico. Most, including my immediate line did return to St.Barths.
The Call to Puerto Rico
Some of my Bartian Great\Great\Great Grandparents went to Puerto Rico. These Great\Great\Great Grandparents of the Ledee Family and Ventre Family arrived in the town of Guayama in southeast Puerto Rico in about 1807. Guayama sits on a coastal plain along the Caribbean Sea and could be seen as having potential as a place to cultivate sugar cane.
My Great\Great Grandfather Barthelemy Ventremarried a Ledee women, Jeanne Louise Ledee, in Guayama in 1835. They had about 6 children, one of which was my Great Grandmother Marie AdelaideVentre. She was born in 1840. The Ventre Family name was spelled Bantre while in Puerto Rico.
It appears that the attraction of free land and use of slaves made Puerto Rico a good place to gain wealth. Great\3\Grandfather Pierre Paul Ledee died in Puerto Rico in 1820. At his death he freed 2 slaves. His last daughter Jeanne Louise was my Great\2\Grandmother.
A Return to St.Barths
The Ventre Family returned to Gustavia St.Barths in about 1850. The family appears in the Census of Gustavia of 1853. Great Grandmother Adelaide is listed as girl living with her parents. In a few short years she would marry my Great Grandfather LaPlace there in St.Barths.
Joseph Auguste LaPlace and Marie Adelaide Ventre married in 1861 in the church at L'Orient, but would settle in nearby English St.Kitts.
Great Grandfather, Joseph Auguste Laplace, was born in 1840 to my Great\Great Grandparents Eustache Auguste LaPlace and Jeanne Rose Greaux of St.Barths. I have the "inventories" of their property in the Saline area of St.Barths. It appears that my Great Great Grandparents may have been living in St.Kitts during the time of Great Grandfather Joseph Auguste's birth.
Life in St.Kitts
My LaPlace Family of St.Kitts would have many children, including GrandfatherLouis Emmanuel Augustus Laplace, the eldest. Great Grandfather Joseph Auguste LaPlace was an auctioneer at the time of his death in 1880. That year was cruical to the West Indies; it was the first year that the sugar cane of the British Antillies, St.Kitts and other island colonies, were not protected by law in Britain. A law passed Parliament which allowed for the first time western European sugar from sugar beets to rearch British tables. The impact of the new law was almost immediate. Caribbean sugar prices fell precipitously. In little more than a decade my Great Grandmother, the widow Marie "Adelaide" LaPlace, would write to her son Aldric, (Aldric Barthelomew LaPlace), then living in New York City, "a schilling a day would keep bread on the table".
Great Grandmother Adelaide and all of the LaPlace Family and St.Kitts were in deep economic trouble. Antillean sugar would sell for a tenth of what it had in the 1870's. A long decline in St.Kitts sent the mostly white and coloured planters and managers to other places. Grandfather LaPlace and his brother, Eustache "Ernest" Augustus LaPlace, would hold on for another decade or two. Grandfather appears to have eventually taken a job in Basseterre, the harbor capital town of St.Kitts. "Uncle" Ernest spent time in nearby Charlestown Nevis. He and his wife had their children there.
Grandfather LaPlace was living on Cayon Street in Basseterre when my mother was born in 1905. The area is known as Irishtown, proportedly the place of an eariler Irish population that passed through St.Kitts in the 1670's and 80's. These Irish established the area before they moved on to the more southerly island of Monserrat.
Grandfather Louis Emmanuel LaPlace married outside of the "French" Catholic community of his French St.Barths people. Many French appear to have come to St.Kitts from nearby St.Barths to get work in the sugar fields. The St.Barth French always married other French Catholics from St.Barths; anthropologists refer to this social policy as endogamy.
Grandfather LaPlace broke with St.Barths tradition and married an "English" Anglican women. He had a family and then lost his wifeCatherine Jane Nichollsto cancer. He married once again, and again outside of the "French" of St.Barths. He married an "English" Anglican women, the widowed daughter of a planter. Grandmother's name was Elfreda Ethelinda Adams.
When Grandmother married Grandfather LaPlace her name was Sayers from her first marriage; she had one surviving child from her first marriage to Francis Charles Sayers, a planter. Grandmother's father was Robert James Adamsand her mother Mary Ann Elizabeth Webster. Her Grandfather was the planterJohn Adams; I do not yet have her Grandmother's name. It appears that the Webster Family was from the island of Anguilla.
My mother,Lucil Wilhemina LaPlace, was the last child of Grandfather's second marriage. After Grandmother LaPlace, nee Adams died, some year after my mother was born, Grandfather Louis took the three girls from his second marriage to New York City. The year was 1908. There in New York City they joined the children of Grandfather's first family. These children had been sent ahead to the United States some years before.
To America
The three children of Grandfather's "second family" were placed in an orphanage for a number of years as Grandfather found his way in the new land of America. A larger story is to be told.
The "First" Family
As mentioned Grandfather LaPlace's "first" family started with his marriage toCatherine Jane Nicholls. They were joined in 1881. Catherine Jane was born in the Irishtown section of Basseterre in 1853. She and Grandfather LaPlace had six children.
Lewis Frederick, born in 1882
Catherine Jane fell ill after the birth of her last child in 1893 and died that year of what must have been cancer. Her last child, Marie Catherine LaPlace, died a few short months after birth. Great Grandmother Adelaide and her daughter Lucy cared for the other children as Catherine Jane was dying. The LaPlace Family was then living on Cayon Street in Basseterre.
Great Grandmother Adelaide herself fell ill during this time and died months before her daughter-in-law Jane. The surving children of the "first" family were sent off St.Kitts after their mother's death.
Catherine Jane's first child and only son, Louis Frederick Laplace, and her oldest daughterOlive Santhe, were sent to Charlestown in Nevis. There in Charlestown Uncle Fred clerked, most likely for his Uncle Ernest, whom I believe was managing an estate there in Nevis. Aunt Olive attended a school for girls there in Charlestown. Olive died there in Charlestown at 14 years of age of influenza. It seems that Uncle Fred went to the United States at that point, perhaps about 1899. Fred first went to Georgia and then on to New York City.
The second daughter of Catherine Jane and Grandfather LaPlace, Argentine Josephine LaPlace, (she was called "Argie" by family members), came to the U.S. by joining the religious Order of the Sisters of the Good Shepherd in Brooklyn. Aunt "Argie" took the religious name Sister Mary of Saint John Birchmans. She resided in a cloistered Convent located in Brooklyn for a period of time. Later, she appears to have lived at Villa Loretta in Peekskill, New York. She is shown in photographs with her aunt (Lucy Laplace), then known as Sister Mary of St.Teresa of Jesus and Aunt "Lucy" by the family. More on Grand Aunt Lucy later.
"Argie" is buried at Holy Cross R.C. Cemetery located in Brooklyn. Her grave is part of a common site located at the front left-hand side of the main entrance of the cemetery. The site is listed to the Religious Order of the Sisters of the Good Shepherd.
Grandfather's other daughters of his first marriage, my AuntsElodie Adelaideand Antoinette Imelda Laplacecame to the U.S. earlier than the others. These daughters lived in Manhattan with their older brother Fred.
Aunt Elodie appears to have married in about 1920. Her descendants lived mostly in New York City. Aunt Elodie died in 1959. She is buried at Calvary Cemetery in Queens under her married name - Kinsley. The records indicate that Argie, Elodie and Imelda applied for and received U.S. citizenship between the years 1902 and 1909.
The "Second" Family
Grandfather LaPlace's "second" marriage to my Grandmother Elfreda Ethelinda Adams produced three children, including my mother.
Florence Lucy, born 1902
My Grandmother Adams-Sayers
After the death of his first wife and while still in St.Kitts, Grandfather LaPlace, alone and with small children for a number of years, married my Grandmother Adams-Sayers in 1901. Grandmother was born in 1867. She was a widow at the time of this second marriage. Her first marriage was to a planter named Francis Joseph Sayers. Grandmother had one surviving child by her first husband. Born in 1898, he was named Arthur MorrisonSayers. "Morrison" eventually came to the U.S. and was adopted by his Aunt Jane Adams, Grandmother's sister. Grandmother's first marriage also produced a second son named Maurice who died a few months after his birth.
The Adams' of Sandy Point
My mother's maternal Adams Family had deep roots in St.Kitts and Nevis. These roots are generally considered "English". Unlike my mother's Catholic paternal side, my Adams ancestors were Anglicans.
Grandmother Adams' English Protestant family appears to have first landed and settled in the island colony of Nevis. This island, nearby to St.Kitts, though different from St.Kitts in many ways, has long been associated with St.Kitts. All indications are that the Adams' may have been "exiles" fleeing the Stuart Restoration in England during the late seventeenth century*. The Adams' may have arrived as early as 1660. The Adams' were of the planter class. They owned and managed some of the sugar estates in northern St.Kitts, as well as some in Nevis.
Later Grandfather LaPlace would work in a leportorium in the Sandy Point area -- the place is now called Hanson House. I am told that it remains and still has one resident. Grandfather's experience at the lepertorium may have led to his eventually finding employment in America at a major hospital in New York City. Once in America he worked as an assistant in the Pharmacy at Belleuve Hospital.
A Generation Of The LaPlace Family Leaves St.Kitts
Grandfather LaPlace was not the first of the LaPlaces of the immediate family to come to America. His younger brother was in New York City in about 1892. Letters from his mother Adelaide, written from St.Kitts the year that she would die, tell us that the widowed women was not having an easy time. All of her children that survived childhood would leave St.Kitts. Here is what the family of Great Grandfather Joseph Auguste and Marie Adelaide Laplace looked like:
Louis Emmanuel Augustus, born 1861 (My Grandfather)
(see page two for more on the trip)
Olive Santhe, born in 1883
Argentine Josephine, born in 1886
Elodie Adelaide,born in 1889
Antoinette Imelda, born in 1891
Marie Catherine, born in 1893
Ursula Elfreida, born 1903
Lucil Wilhemina, born 1905 (My mother)
Marie Antoinette Lucy, born 1863
Eustache Ernest Augustus,born 1865
Thomas, born 1865
Joseph, born 1870
Joseph Emile,born 1871
Joseph Aldric,born 1873
Aldric Bartholomew,born 1875
Marie Adelaide Augusta,born 1878