The Jean Rousselin Collection is made up of three letters, one letterbook and correspondence record, five documents, and one imprint largely pertinent to Rousselin's time as a commercial agent in St. Domingue, Cuba, and Louisiana around the final period of the Haitian Revolution, 1802-1805. Additional materials date from 1791-1794, 1809-1810, and 1814.
The letterbook and correspondence record volume contains copies of 20 outgoing letters from Jean Rousselin to merchants and investors in Le Havre, Paris, Port au Prince, and New York between September 6, 1802, and September 22, 1805. The volume also contains a record of an additional 18 letters from Rousselin to the same recipients, but without copies of the letters themselves.
The letterbook revolves around Jean Rousselin's oversight of goods at St. Domingue that were owned by his employer Marliani and Co. of Paris (at Rue Neuve-du-Luxembourg). Sometime in 1803 Rousselin was forced to evacuate from the island, managing to get a quantity of cloth and other product aboard a ship to Cuba. In his new location in or near Santiago de Cuba, Rousselin corresponded with Marliani at Paris; M. Gosselin at Le Havre; American factors/merchants, especially George Meade at Port au Prince and merchants Ralph B. Forbes and his brother James G. Forbes at New York. Rousselin spent around two years trying to arrange the sale of goods remaining at St. Domingue via George Meade (who died there in 1804), follow Meade's payments to Forbes, and secure funds through Forbes to pay Marliani. At the same time, Rousselin invested some of Marliani's capital to become co-owner of a coffee plantation near Santiago de Cuba. The coffee plantation investment underwent challenges and floundered for inadequate resources.
One letter (not part of the letterbook) dated October 20, 1804, contains Rousselin's vivid and detailed description of the landscape, people, culture, trade, leisure, and everyday life in Cuba, as shared with Dubuc at Le Havre. Other items in the collection include a 1794 statement of Rousselin's military service, his 1802 passport, and additional business letters and documents, particularly after Rousselin's arrival in New Orleans.
The Jean Rousselin collection also includes the imprint: Loi relative aux sieurs Bosque, Greslier, Guy, Leborgne & autres ; & au sieur Edmont Saint-Léger, commandant de la garde nationale de Tabago. A Paris: De l'Imprimerie Royale, 1791.
Please see the box and folder listing below for details about each item in the collection.
Jean Rousselin, released from his French military service, sailed from Le Havre to the French colony of Saint-Domingue in 1802, as the Leclerc expedition sought to crush the power of Toussaint Louverture and other Black leaders, and bring the colony under the control of Napoléon Bonaparte. Rousselin represented various business interests, working particularly for a M. Marliani. Rousselin initially remained in the colony even after the evacuation of the French expeditionary force from Port-au-Prince. Some time afterward, however, he departed to Santiago, Cuba, possibly via Jamaica, and arrived in late 1803 or in 1804. There he found a job on a coffee farm, and eventually purchased a coffee farm of his own. In 1809 the Spanish government, responding to Napoléon’s invasion of Spain, ordered the Saint-Domingue refugees to depart from Cuba. Rousselin sold his farm at a loss and signed a collective petition to President James Madison asking for land and asylum in the United States, as well as exemption from enforcement of the ban on the transportation of persons from outside the United States to be held or sold as slaves. By 1810, Rousselin was recorded by the census-taker as residing in Pointe Coupée, Louisiana, some 100 miles north of New Orleans, where he was trying to track down a man who owed him money. He apparently left Louisiana in 1814. He later filed for an indemnity from the French Government for property lost in Saint-Domingue.
