Marie-Cessette Dumas

Marie-Cessette Dumas was a female slave in the French colony of Saint Domingue. She was the mother of General Thomas-Alexandre Dumas, the grandmother of novelist Alexandre Dumas, and the great-grandmother of playwright Alexandre Dumas, fils, and has been called a "great matriarch to a saga of distinguished men".[1] She was a slave of African descent kept by the Marquis Alexandre Antoine Davy de La Pailleterie. They lived at a plantation called La Guinaudée[2] (or Guinodée[3]) near Jérémie of the French colony of Saint-Domingue (now Haiti), until Antoine's departure in 1775.

  1. ^ Jacobo Valcárcel. "A black slave, Marie-Cesette Dumas". Archived from the original on 2011-12-22. Retrieved 16 October 2012.
  2. ^ Letter from Chauvinault, former royal prosecutor in Jérémie, Saint Domingue, to the Count de Maulde, June 3, 1776, privately held by Gilles Henry.
  3. ^ Marriage contract and marriage certificate, both November 28, 1792, Musée Alexandre Dumas (Villers-Cotterêts, France). A copy of the certificate is also held in Archives de l’Aisne (Laon, France), 304 E 268.