Jean Longpré Haitian independence documents, 1799, 1804

The Rubenstein Library holds two documents from the papers of Jean Baptiste Pierre Aime Colheux de Longpré, a French colonizer of Saint-Domingue (Haiti). The first is a very rare manuscript copy of the Haitian Declaration of Independence (1804). This declaration by the army of black Haitians established the first black republic in the world. The second is an excerpted copy of a will for Monsieur de la Martinier (1799) which mentions those with family members who became key Haitian revolutionaries.