Your Trinidadian Surname Is French — 16 Acres In Their Own Name Before The British Ever Landed

In 1783 the Spanish crown opened Trinidad to any Roman Catholic who would swear allegiance. The decree was not written by a Spaniard — it was drafted and sold to Madrid by a French Creole planter from Grenada. The terms: 32 acres of free land for a white Catholic settler. And 16 acres, in their own name, on a registered grant, for a free person of colour. Half. Which was still more than any free Black family could claim by right anywhere in the British Caribbean. They came, in thousands, from Grenada, Martinique, Guadeloupe, Dominica, St Vincent and Saint-Domingue. By 1797 the British counted 2,086 white people on this island — and 4,476 free people of colour. Free Black and mixed-race Trinidadians outnumbered whites more than two to one, many of them holding registered title to land, and the Articles of Capitulation had to promise in writing that they would be protected "like other inhabitants." Then Picton and Woodford took it back, piece by piece — until a 27-year-old Black doctor named Jean-Baptiste Philippe sailed to London in 1823, put the case to the Colonial Office, and won. The disabilities were struck out in March 1829. Nine years before emancipation. In this video: why a French surname takes three completely different roads to a Black Trinidadian family, the one-word test that tells you which road is yours, why Joseph, Charles and Baptiste send you to a church register instead of an estate ledger, what the spelling drift in Ollivierre and Serrette is actually recording, the free Black slaveholders I am not going to pretend away, and the four archives you go and open. Comments: give me the French surname and the church your family was christened in. I want to see if the names cluster by parish. Subscribe to The African Genome. #Trinidad #TrinidadAndTobago #FrenchCreole #Patois #BlackHistory #AfricanAncestry #Surnames #Caribbean #Grenada #Ancestry #CedulaDePoblacion