Alcide cVOrUgiiy. 87 



APPENDIX A. 



The Family of d'Orbigny. 



The family of d'Orbigny, of which records exist in French archives 

 dating from 14J:4, when Barons of that name served Louis XL of France, 

 became extinct on the death of Henri d'Orbio-ny on June 29, 1915. 



The grandfather of Alcide d'Orbigny was one of three brothers, 

 established as colonists and planters in San Domingo, Franc^ois d'Orbigny 

 Dessalines, d'Orbigny de Bourg-blanc, and d'Orbigny de Coerts, it 

 being the habit of French colonists (as indeed it has ever been of the 

 landed gentry of France) to add to their own the names of their estates. 

 Francois d'Orbigny was the owner of a large force of negro slaves, one 

 of whom, by name Jacques, became, after the Revolution of the slaves 

 in San Domingo, first Governor-General, and then the " Emj^eror " 

 Jacques I. of Haiti. This creature instigated the massacre of the entire 

 d'Orbigny family with the exception of two sons who were at the time 

 completiug their education in France. Francois d'Orbigny, his wife 

 {^nee Madeleine de Beaudemont), and their sixteen other children having 

 perished, and the plantation being razed by fire, the slave Jacques 

 assumed the name "Dessalines," which gave rise to a legend which 

 I found extant in La Rochelle in 1914, to the effect that d'Orbigny 

 was in some way a direct descendant of this insurgent black. ^ 



^ This is the account furnished me by IMme. Henri d'Orbigny from the 

 archives of the d'Orbigny family. It must be confessed that the pviblished 

 biographies of the " Emperor " Jacques Dessalines vary greatly from the above. 

 The writer of his life in Larousse says he was the slave of a black potter [potier) 

 called Dessalines, whose name he adopted, that this negro Dessalines was alive in 

 1805 in San Domingo (at Cap Francais, now Cap Haiti), and had recorded that 

 Jacques was " an obstinate dog but a good workman." We are told that Jacques 

 always remained fond of his old master, and on his accession to power made him 

 his chief wine-steward, because he was a good judge of wine and a drunkard. The 

 history of Jacques I. of Haiti is bloody but picturesque, and is inseparably bound 

 up with the successive revolutions of the slaves in San Domingo, beginning with 

 that of Oge, of whom a lurid account is given by Lamartine in his "Histoire 

 des Girondins " (Paris, 1847, ii., pp. 88, et seq.). According to Larousse, Jacques 

 became Governor-General (as " Dessalines '') in 1804, when he ordered a massacre 

 of the white French population which lasted six months. He became Emperor 

 as Jacques I. in 1805 (June 16). According to d'Orbigny in the "Voyage dans 

 les deux Ameriques, augments de renseignements exacts jusqu'en 1853, Nouvelle 

 edition publiee sous la direction de M. Alcide d'Orbigny," (Paris, 1853), this date 

 should be October 8, 1804. The first edition of this book, "Voyage pittoresque 

 dans lies deux Ameriques," was published in 1841 — I have not been able to 

 see this edition in England — and consists of a condensation of his " Am^rique 

 Meridiouale," augmented by notes of later travellers. Another edition forms part 

 of Dumont d'Urville's "Histoire G6n6rale des Voyages," 4 vol., Paris (1859), iii. 



