Caroline leaves her enslaver’s household

The archive records Thésée leaving Cayenne on 23 January 1839. The notice identifies her through the person claiming ownership; recording women’s named acts of flight helps recover their presence in a...

Alexis is recorded as leaving Cayenne on 5 February 1839. A notice published by the colonial administration sought to identify and recapture him; the surviving source is therefore evidence of both...

The notice records Maxime, described by the colonial source as Creole and aged eighteen, leaving La Providence in Tour-de-l’Île on 6 February 1839. His age and the place of departure locate the act...

A notice names Chérubin as having left Cayenne on 12 February 1839. It offers no first-person account or motive; the event is included as a documented act of marronnage, not as a complete biography.

Lucile, approximately 28 years old in the notice, is recorded as leaving Cayenne on 3 March 1842. Her appearance in the archive is mediated by the colonial advertisement and an owner’s claim, but...

The colonial notice records Coralie leaving Cayenne on 19 March 1842. As with other marronnage advertisements, the source’s purpose was administrative identification; reading it against that grain...

François and Gervais left the Mondésir habitation at Macouria together on 14 November 1842. The notice describes one as a field worker and the other as a fisher, showing enslaved labor’s varied...

Achille, assigned to the colonial domain’s river crossing at Kourou, left on 4 June 1844 and was reported to have returned on his own on 22 July. The record does not explain his decision to return;...

On 4 March 1848, the provisional government created a commission to prepare abolition. This political opening followed the February Revolution and decades of resistance by enslaved people,...

On 27 April 1848, the provisional government decreed the abolition of slavery in all French colonies and possessions. The decree prohibited corporal punishment and the sale of people, and provided for...