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Exceptionally Early Notarial Act from Saint-Domingue, 1703

De Sable, François; Dalineau, Louis; Lefebvre d’Albon, Paul

[Cession of an 800-Livre Debt Between a Settler, Merchant, and Royal Official.]

Bourg du Cul-de-Sac, Saint-Domingue, January 11, 1703. Four-page manuscript notarial act, bifolio (approx. 35 × 23 cm), written in brown ink on laid paper, signed by the notary Perigny and the royal counselor Vernoy. With contemporary marginal notes, including a concise summary of the transaction. Light toning at edges; upper and outer margins with tears and a few small losses affecting portions of text on pp. 1 and 3, though still fully legible. Old horizontal fold from storage. Text entirely legible, signatures clear and intact. Overall very good condition.

A rare 1703 notarial act from the earliest years of Saint-Domingue, when the colony was just beginning its rise to become France’s most powerful Caribbean possession.

This rare document was created at a time when Saint-Domingue was still in its earliest stage of development. Only six years earlier, the Treaty of Ryswick (1697) had formally recognized France’s claim to the western third of Hispaniola, ending decades of informal settlement by buccaneers, displaced islanders, and early planters. In 1703, French royal authority was just beginning to replace these loose and often lawless communities. The Superior Council of Léogane had recently been established to impose order and to lay the legal and administrative foundations of what would soon become France’s richest and most important colony.

The act records the transfer of a debt totaling 800 livres. François De Sable, a planter and landholder in the Petite Plaine district, ceded to Louis Dalineau, a merchant based in Petit Gonave, his legal right to collect this sum from Paul Lefebvre d’Albon, a naval commissioner stationed at Rochefort. The debt had originated in a 1702 contract recorded by Maitre Chaumet, royal notary at Leogane. The document was witnessed by Nicolas Berthelot, a merchant and storekeeper, and Michel Richard, a ship captain. It was drawn up and signed by Perigny, royal notary at the Bourg du Cul-de-Sac, and certified by Vernoy (likely an abbreviated form of Duvernoy or Duvernay), a royal counselor at the Superior Council of Léogane, whose signature conferred full legal authority on the act throughout the colony.

The three principal figures in the act represent the different forces shaping the colony at this time. François De Sable belonged to the first generation of settlers who established the Cul-de-Sac plain as a center of plantation agriculture. His wife, Marie Jollin, was born on Saint Christopher (St. Kitts) and came from the French community expelled by the English in 1690. Many of these displaced families were resettled by France in Saint-Domingue to strengthen its claim to the territory. A 1671 census of St. Kitts lists Marie’s parents among the island’s French inhabitants. Later parish records show Marie’s burial at Notre Dame du Cul-de-Sac on November 3, 1728, recorded as the widow of François De Sable (GHC, 2006). While François’s own origins are not documented, the evidence strongly suggests that he was part of this same wave of resettlement. By 1703, he was established enough to engage in formal legal and financial matters, reflecting the transition from scattered, informal settlements to a society regulated by royal law.

Louis Dalineau was active as a merchant in Petit Gonâve when this document was created, linking nearby settlements such as Cul-de-Sac and Léogane to wider trade networks. This act captures him at an early stage of his career, before he rose to become one of the leading merchants of La Rochelle, a major Atlantic port. By the 1730s, his warehouses were filled with goods arriving from the Caribbean, forming part of the city’s rapidly expanding colonial commerce (Martinetti, 2019). His activities extended beyond private trade to royal provisioning contracts, including large-scale shipments for French troops in the Americas (FranceArchives, n.d.). He was also involved in financial transactions with the Banque Royale, such as petitions for certificates of deposit linked to colonial trade and Canadian companies (Nouvelle-France.org, n.d.). Dalineau thus represents the merchant class that tied Saint-Domingue to global trade and turned local production into wealth on a worldwide scale.

The debtor, Paul Lefebvre d’Albon (1666–1746), was then a naval commissioner at Rochefort, one of France’s principal naval and colonial centers. Only three years later, in 1706, he was sent to Cayenne, French Guiana, where he spent forty years as the colony’s chief administrator. Over time, he rose from commissaire de la Marine to commissaire ordonnateur, and finally to commissaire général de la Marine ordonnateur, overseeing royal revenues, naval supplies, and civil administration, and at times serving as acting governor. His long tenure marked the consolidation of royal power in South America during the first half of the eighteenth century. His final years and inheritance are documented in the 1746 testament of his widow, Marie Anne Mathé, recently discovered and transcribed (GHC, 2025).

This 1703 act brings together three key forces at a pivotal moment in the colony’s history: the first generation of settlers who established the foundations of plantation society in Saint-Domingue, the merchants who linked these remote communities to the wider Atlantic world, and the agents of royal and naval administration who extended the reach of the French crown overseas. It also preserves the names of other participants, reflecting the network of officials and witnesses whose roles were central to the colony’s early legal system. As one of the earliest surviving legal documents from the colony, it is a tangible testament to how these forces and individuals came together to shape what would soon become France’s most valuable colony.

References: FranceArchives. (n.d.). Fonds du notaire Jacques Bréard, Rochefort, 3 E 33/22, fol. 122–123v.;[GHC] Généalogie et Histoire de la Caraïbe. (2006). Bulletin 206, p. 5288.; [GHC] Généalogie et Histoire de la Caraïbe. (2025). Document 515.; Martinetti, C. (2019). Négoce atlantique et évolution des constructions urbaines à La Rochelle au XVIIIe siècle. In G. Saupin (Ed.), Les villes atlantiques européennes (pp. 291–309). Presses universitaires de Rennes.; Nouvelle-France.org. (n.d.). Sommation par Louis Dalineau…, Minutes des notaires René Rivière, Pierre Soullard et François Soullard, liasse 1711–1731, 1721, 3 E art. 1803,

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Price: €12,000.00