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There are some stories that Paris does not tell. I spend the summer in Paris with my family. As the Pandemic shutdowns ended, guests came to discover city highlights and get beyond the guides. When they asked me to share something about the city's history, I invited them to discover how France and the United States were bound together in the brutality of trans-Atlantic slavery.
I introduced my visitors to a woman I know only as "Abigiac". John Jay, one of America's founding fathers, brought her from the United States to Paris in order to try and win her freedom.
The city has markers of memory that tell the story of men like Jay, who were part of the new United States in 1783. The Treaty of Paris was signed in September of that year. It is easy to overlook the story of Abigail until today.
I have been looking for him for nearly 10 years. I was puzzled by her life and death as a newcomer to Paris, but I found the city's many tributes to American founders. I met up with a bronze likeness of Thomas Jefferson at the right bank after leaving the Musée d'Orsay.
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The Treaty of Paris was secured with the help of a plaque under Benjamin Franklin's statue.
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The New York Times has a credit given to Cedrine Scheidig.
I was hiking along the rue Benjamin-Franklin when I came across the tiny Square de Yorktown, which had a figure on top of a stone plinth. I made my way around the corner on rue Jacob after having watched people-watching from a sidewalk table at cafe Les Deux Magots. The site of the Htel d'York is marked by a pink marble plaque, where three men who shaped America's independence finalized the Treaty of Paris.
These places are whitewashed. There is no mention of the enslaved people who were bound to labor in the Parisian households. John Jay dealt with the unfreedom of others while he brokered the new nation's freedom.
Through the concerns of those who wanted to keep her bound to the Jay family, it is difficult to recover her voice, even though she had little hand in constructing the records. To give a full accounting of our nation's founding and the many early Americans who contributed to it, I have collected small shards of the past. I worry that I won't be able to learn enough about her, and I am sure that she and John Jay must be remembered.
The letters of John Jay, Benjamin Franklin, and their families were used to try to stop her from getting free. The villages of Passy and Chaillot are tiny enclaves bordering Paris. Jay attended to his health and family business in London.
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The Treaty of Paris was signed in 1783 by John Jay, Benjamin Franklin and John Adams.
The Declaration of Independence didn't change her status, she had been bound to the Jay family since at least 1776. John Jay held at least 17 people over his lifetime, and his father and grandfather invested in the slave trade to New York, according to the New York Slavery Records Index. When the Jay household left for Europe in 1779, they brought with them a journey that took them along old slave-trading routes.
Jay purchased a boy named Benoit, who was with him at Jay's diplomatic station in Madrid, the once capital of Spain's slaveholding empire. The empire in which the slave trade and a ruthless plantation regime flourished was the hub of an empire that the Jays were on their way to Paris in 1782. The Americas and Europe were knit together by slavery in the 18th century.
When Jay moved to London in October 1783, his wife, Sarah, and nephew, Peter Jay Munro, were in charge of the family's affairs. Mrs. Jay had three children who were far from home. Sarah Jay wrote a letter to her mother, thanking her for the attention and proof of fidelity she has given to them.
In Paris, isolation made a difference. She was the only enslaved person to accompany the Jays from America, and she wanted her own loved ones back across the Atlantic. James Hemings was held by Thomas Jefferson in Paris. Sally followed James in 1787 and never had the chance to meet up with the American slaves who lived in Paris.
Mrs. Jay wrote to her sister Kitty in the spring of 1783, telling her that Abbe was well and that she would be glad to know if she was still an mistress of a husband. She worried that her ties with her husband might have been strained during their years apart.
We are left to imagine her, because nothing in the surviving records describes her. Was she tall, short, round, dark or light? Was she sure of her intentions, or was she cautious? We don't know her age. We can say how she felt. By the summer of 1783, he was unwell. Mrs. Jay reported that she had a sore tooth and rheumatism. Her troubles were not limited to the body. She was not sure in her mind. Maybe it was too long away from friends and family. Mrs. Jay suggested that she might have become jealous of a French member of the household staff or that she might have been influenced by an English washerwoman who offered her work in exchange for wages. In Paris, the bonds of slavery loosened just enough to allow her to rethink her future.
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The last wall and stones of La Petite Force, the prison in the Marais district, are still standing.
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The New York Times has a credit given to Cedrine Scheidig.
It was late October when she decided to go onto the streets of Paris not intending to return. William Franklin, companion to Benjamin Franklin, asked the Lieutenant of Police in Paris to help him with a lettre de cachet, a request sometimes used to discipline household members deemed out of step. The police took Abigail to the Htel de la Force, a city jail with women's quarters that were called La Petite Force, after finding her in the company of a washerwoman who had promised to pay her wages. Mrs. Jay was worried about the health of her husband. If the Jays agreed to pay a modest amount for the meals, she could be held indefinitely. Peter Jay told his aunt that she wouldn't return to the family's house unless she was promised a return to America.
John Jay encouraged Munro to be coerced into postponing her visit to the Hotel de la Force. Jay said little minds cannot bear attentions to persons of that class, and that they should rather be granted. Jay advised the family to follow Benjamin Franklin's advice and allow Abigail to stay in jail for a longer period of time. It was a form of discipline that was meant to change the will of the person.
While she was confined, her health took a turn for the worse. The young woman was sent to the infirmary because of her disposition. Peter Jay Munro reported that she asked to go back to France. Mrs. Jay made a note that he had fronted 60 livres to get her back. Back at the Jay residence, she almost immediately took to her bed. Sarah Jay wrote to her husband that she hoped she would recover. Within two weeks, he was dead. Neither the Jay nor the Franklin family wrote anything about what happened.
I was hoping that signs of his time in Paris had not been lost. Is there a monument to her? Passy and Chaillot are where she lived. She might have been buried there. The area is now fashionable with streets lined with high-end boutiques. The front window of Anne Lamort Livres Anciens, on the rue Benjamin-Franklin, displayed a copy of Jean-Pierre Marat's "Les Chanes de L'Esclavage". The Palais de Chaillot, built in 1937 to anchor the city's exposition internationale, is a short walk from the Trocadero. The view of the Eiffel Tower from the openings between the buildings was postcard perfect.
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Light and shadow play on a wall where the Passy cemetery used to be. The author wondered if he was buried there.
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The New York Times has a credit given to Cedrine Scheidig.
Maybe he was buried nearby. The site of Passy's 18th-century cemetery is located along the narrow rue de l'Annonciation, where a few of the one- and two-story elite homes of the time still stand. The street is busy with people on their way to and fro. When I turned onto rue Lekain, things calmed down. There is no sign of that cemetery anymore. The bones of people who were buried there in the 18th century were stored in the city's catacombs.
The archives of the Préfecture de Police may have clues about the weeks of imprisonment of Abigail. I searched through ancient lettres de cachet a few summers ago, which were kept in rooms in a police precinct. It is an imposing place, constructed from late 20th-century steel and iron, with small windows that heighten the penal feel. Many unfortunates caught in contests over their conduct, including husbands versus wives, parents against children and masters versus servants, ended up in the cells of the Htel de la Force. I spent a day turning pages from the 1780s and found no document bearing the name of the man. That might have been a monument to her experience.
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The author was shown an archival image of La Petite Force, the prison where he was held. The library is on the other side of the old prison.
The site where she was held, La Petite Force, proved to be more promising. The rue Pavée and rue Malher meet in the Marais neighborhood and one wall of the jail still stands. I dodged the outdoor cafes that have taken over the sidewalks during the Pandemic. I saw the outline of the wall that marked the northernmost boundary of the jail. The Duke de la Force was the home of Henri-Jacques Nompar de Caumont. The city built a model for penal reform with windows, separate quarters for women, and an infirmary when it took over.
The Htel de Lamoignon still stands on the other side of the wall. I went there to look at the courtyard but ended up meeting a reference librarian who was happy to help me find images of La Petite Force. There was a gated archway and three stories of stone and iron on her screen. I sat in the reception area of the library and imagined that Abigail would arrive there, insist upon staying and then die.
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The slave trade is acknowledged by Le Cri, l'crit.
The Jardin du Luxembourg has a bronze sculpture that acknowledges France's role in the slave trade.
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The sculpture is written with the word "libre", which is related to the pursuit of liberty.
There is no monument in Paris to the American slave who died there at the beginning of American freedom. She had a short and precarious life. I knew I had to stop at the Jardin du Luxembourg, where the roses were in bloom, because it was a long walk.
The 2001 Law for the Recognition of the Slave Trade and Slavery, known as the "crime against humanity" law, was passed by France and commemorates the enslaved people of France who lived and died in bondage. France pays tribute to the enslaved on May 10. The French republic's ideals of liberty, equality and Fraternity are credited to enslaved people by the words etched in a granite monument. Here, the people who were enslaved are honored.
It feels like a long time ago that a similar tribute was paid to those who were bound by American founders during their mission for freedom. This tour of Paris will suffice for now.
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