THE FRENCH AND OTHER CATHOLICS

Newsday’s Millennium Special

January 1, 2000

Page 10

The fourth wave to arrive in Trinidad after the Amerindians, the Spanish and the first Africans, were mostly descendants of French people from other Caribbean islands.

One of these ‘French Creoles’ was Philip Rose Roume de St. Laurent, who was born in Grenada. Roume de St. Laurent was able to obtain the ‘Royal Cedula of population’ from the Spanish King Charles III on the 4^th November 1783, a memorandum which granted free lands to foreign settlers and their slaves in Trinidad. The only stipulation was that the settlers were Roman Catholics. As a result, French families, and also some Irish, German, Italian and English arrived.

The settlers started to arrive in Puerto d’Espana, plantation owners with their slaves who were driven from their estates in Grenada, Martinique and Guadeloupe by the turbulent times and the conquering British. Some were royalists who fled from the French Revolution in France and its aftermath in the Caribbean.

Under what was to be the last Spanish governor, Don Jose Maria Chacon, who assumed office in 1784, a steady stream of immigration was established and the population of Puerto d’Espana increased from under 3,000 to 10,422 in five years. In 1797, the figure of population of Trinidad stood at 18,627; 2,500 of which were ‘white’, 5,000 were ‘free blacks and people of colour’, 10,000 were slaves and 1,082 Amerindians.

Land was given to these settlers in accordance with the number of slaves they brought, and little by little they cut down the forest, created fields and orchards, and established an agriculture-based economy (sugar and cocoa) for the island.

The French settlers brought their culture to Trinidad. French words are still part of the local dialect of Trinidad, often in their broken ‘Patois’ form. Innumerable Trinidadians of all shades of skin colour have French ancestors somewhere in their family trees. They cultivated the jungle and converted it into farms, or plantations as they are called in the tropics. They built beautiful mansions with wooden fretwork and wrought-iron balustrades, some of which still exist today and are treasures of our national heritage. A distinctive style of dress developed, with the ladies wearing white dresses, with colourful ‘foulards’ at their necks and ‘madras’, checkered handkerchiefs from India, on their heads.

With this population explosion, Governor Chacon had to implement many innovations. He constructed government buildings for the public services, built a road to St. Joseph and a military barracks there, created the town of San Juan, instituted the parish of San Fernando in 1786, which he divided into two wards, created a police service, a fire department, a medical board and the first port health authority. Today, Chacon is remembered by the name of the National Flower of Trinidad, the ‘Chaconia’, and a street in Port of Spain, Chacon Street.

The term ‘French Creole’ is by no means restricted to persons of purely French parentage born in the West Indies. It also included the free people of colour, the children of the French planters of the early times with their African slaves, and later, their mulatto, quadroon and octaroon mistresses. Some of these children were recognised by their fathers and legitimized and freed, receiving educations at French universities and inheriting land and property. Several families settled in the south of Trinidad, many in Port of Spain, their children becoming in turn the doctors, lawyers and school masters in the latter part of the 19^th century. They were, however, a minority, almost a curiosity in the social structure of the colonial society.

Nothing remains of the Frenchness of Trinidad’s French Creoles, except some family names. As a recognisable group with distinct traditions, language, customs or outward appearance they have vanished completely. But they gave, in their decline, to the country personages like Poleska de Boissiere, Jose Dessources, Captain A. A. Cipriani and Dr. Eric Williams, Trinidad and Tobago’s first Prime Minister.

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