Henriette Saint-Marc

Henriette Saint-Marc (c.1750-1802) was a spy and martyr of the Haitian revolution.

Biography

Early life

Henriette Saint-Marc was born to a black slave mother and a white father, a civil servant from Saint-Domingue. She would have had the status of “libre de couleur”, a category that included non-white people born free or freed.[1]

Prostitution

In the early 1800s, Henriette Saint-Marc lived in Port-au-Prince. She was renowned for her beauty and works as a prostitute. She is said to have seduced many French soldiers. Later accounts, perhaps apocryphal, tell of her extracting information from them and passing it on to Toussaint, luring some of them into ambushes and stealing weapons and ammunition.[1][2][3][4]

Capture and execution

In 1802, Henriette Saint-Marc was accused of supplying weapons to Haitian fighters in the town of Arcahaie, shortly after Toussaint Louverture's deportation. She was arrested and sentenced to death. She was hanged in the marketplace.[5][1][6][7]

Legacy

In 1988, writer Jacques Rey-Charlier dedicated a play to her, “La Passion d'Henriette Saint Marc”.[1][8]

An establishment in the town of Corail bears her name.[9][10]

References

1. "Henriette Saint-Marc | Biographie | Fondation pour la memoire de l'esclavage". FME (in French). Retrieved 2024-08-30.
2. "2 janvier, Jour des Aïeux : le Mouvement Point Final rend hommage aux Héroïnes de 1804". lenational.org/. 2015-09-23. Retrieved 2024-08-30.
3. "Guillaume William | Elles ont marqué l'histoire mais classées dans l'oubliette !". Xaragua Magazine (in Canadian French). Retrieved 2024-08-30.
4. "Mémoires des Femmes d'Haiti : Henriette Saint-Marc". www.haiticulture.ch. Retrieved 2024-08-31.
5. Augustin, Jean Ronald (2020-04-28). L'esclavage en Haïti. Entrecroisement des mémoires et enjeux de la patrimonialisation (in French). Presses de l'Université Laval. ISBN 978-2-7637-4381-3.
6. Rémy, Marlène Thélusma (2008). Contribution de la femme haïtienne à la construction et à la survie de son pays: un bilan quantitatif et qualitatif (in French). L'Harmattan. ISBN 978-2-296-05810-1.
7. Ligue féminine d'action sociale (1953). Femmes haïtiennes (in French). H. Deschamp.
8. "Jacques Rey Charlier". Île en île (in French). 2019-09-28. Retrieved 2024-08-30.
9. "Apprendre un métier dans un contexte de troubles sociopolitiques en Haïti". UNFPA-Haiti (in French). Retrieved 2024-08-30.
10. "Des espaces sûrs pour les femmes et les filles survivantes de violences dans le Grand Sud". UNFPA-Haiti (in French). Retrieved 2024-08-31.