Caption title: Mémoire responsif, pour Jean Siber, ancien Conseiller au Conseil Supérieur du petit Goave, séant au Port-au-Prince, Isle Saint-Domingue. Contre le Sieur Mathurin Prévot de

Item #3065 [Caption title:] Mémoire responsif, pour Jean Siber, ancien Conseiller au Conseil Supérieur du petit Goave, séant au Port-au-Prince, Isle Saint-Domingue. Contre le Sieur Mathurin Prévot de Saint-Vincent, […]. Jean Siber, Sibert, de.

Siber [Sibert], Jean [de]

[Caption title:] Mémoire responsif, pour Jean Siber, ancien Conseiller au Conseil Supérieur du petit Goave, séant au Port-au-Prince, Isle Saint-Domingue. Contre le Sieur Mathurin Prévot de Saint-Vincent, […].

A Bordeaux: Chez Michel Racle, Imprimeur de l’intendance, & de l’Hôtel-de-Ville, rue Saint-James, 1771. First edition. Unbound as published. 137 [3] p. First and last leaves chipped, and tanned. Corners bumped. All over in very good condition.

Unrecorded publication of a legal case of inheritance of a planter family in pre-revolutionary Saint-Domingue.

This unrecorded legal brief contains the summary of an interesting and seemingly forgotten inheritance case that offers a glimpse into the life of the planter aristocracy of the pre-revolutionary Saint-Domingue.

The case concerns the estate of the Casaux family in Léogâne. After the death of Joseph Casaux, a French planter from Agen, who arrived in Saint-Domingue around 1697, his son (Simon-)Louis (1703–1728) and a minor daughter from a different mother (Charlotte-)Julienne (1719–?) inherited his estate in 1726, which included two properties Varreux and Petit Paradis, and the related assets of personalties, cattle, and slaves. The inheritance was officially divided between the successors, and Louis became the owner of the more considerable property Varreux which was in poor condition at the time. Within the next year, he repaired the estate however got sick, and for better care, he repatriated to France and sold the Varreux-property and the related assets to Desbarres. Louis died a few months after his arrival in Bordeaux in April 1728, and Julienne, through the intervention and after the death of paternal heirs in Agen, inherited Louis' assets as well. In the meantime, Desbarres sold first a portion and soon the entire property to the petitioner of the present legal case (living in France), who in the next decades turned the exploited and less profitable indigo plantation into a valuable sugar refinery. This wealthy asset grabbed the attention of the husband of Julienne Casaux, Prévot de Saint-Vincent, and 24 years after Louis sold his property, he filed a case against the succession of Varreux and the old sale contracts between Louis and the petitioner. The endless quarrels and exchange of legal briefs between Saint-Vincent and the petitioner started at some point in the 1750s and apparently still weren’t concluded in the 1770s. The brief was addressed to Jean Siber (Jean de Sibert) Advisor to the Superior Council of Léogane (Conseiller au Conseil supérieur de Léogane) the legal representative of Saint-Vincent, and signed by lawyers of Bordeaux.