Date of Award
5-2025
Degree Type
Thesis
Degree Name
M.A.
Degree Program
History
Department
History
Major Professor
Andrea Mosterman
Second Advisor
Kathryn Dungy
Third Advisor
Mary Niall Mitchel
Abstract
This microhistory follows Eugenie Peneault (1774-1853) by means of a journal she kept during the Haitian Revolution and her subsequent relocation to New Orleans. Born the daughter of a baker, Peneault advanced through personal connections within the Creole elite to marry a member of the island-born planter class with ties to the minor nobility. With her fellow emigres, she recreated the patriarchal slave society of Saint Domingue in Cuba, then adapted its values to an urban setting in New Orleans, where she and her husband connected with local elites. This woman’s journal sheds light on experiences of pregnancy and childcare central to Peenault’s existence. After her husband’s death, Peneault cultivated respectability to preserve her husband’s status for the sake of her son, a strategy that made her utterly dependent on the labor of people she enslaved but also allowed her to pave her son’s way into an emerging political class.
Recommended Citation
LeGardeur, Lillian M. and LeGardeur, Lillian M., "A Woman Of Saint-Domingue: Intimacy, Endurance and the Perpetuation of Saint-Domingue’s Class-Based Social Order in Nineteenth-Century New Orleans" (2025). University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations. 3302.
https://scholarworks.uno.edu/td/3302
Rights
The University of New Orleans and its agents retain the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible this dissertation or thesis in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. The author retains all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis or dissertation.