The Pitner family poses in front of the White House. L-R: Rachel Pitner, Asenath Holmes Pitner, Barrett Holmes Pitner
During our dynamic discussion, my mother, my brother, and I refer to aspects of our family history in Charleston, so I would like to share some more information on my Labitue family and the history of slavery and Blacks in Charleston, South Carolina during the late 1700s into the mid 1800s.
All of this started with rice. Rice is the cash crop that created “kings” and “empires” because it was consumed around the world, but it could only be grown in a few places. In addition to that, only a few people knew how to grow it. Rice became the answer to the question of how to turn marshland into profits, and it forged a clear and direct link between Charleston and Sierra Leone, Africa, which contained people who already knew how to cultivate rice. In fact the language, culture, and cuisine of Sierra Leone is still present in Charlestonians today through the Gullah and Geechee people. Charleston was, and still is, a marshy coastal city surrounded by coastal islands that was perfect for the production of this cash crop. Thus, the plantation owners were incentivized to forcibly transport the enslaved West Africans of Sierra Leone to the marshy South Carolina coast through the Triangular Slave Trade to implement their knowledge and skills of rice cultivation to build the vast empires of wealth that characterized this period in history.
The need for this particular skill and rare knowledge caused the slave owners to realize that it was more economically beneficial to keep families and tribes together than tear them apart because in this instance the destruction of family and culture would undermine the production of the crop. An unanticipated result of this economic incentive to keep families together was that the Black people of Charleston were more capable of uniting to either flee, buy friends and family members out of slavery, launch rebellions, and build communities for free people. Due to this, Charleston became known across the South for its large community of Free Persons of Color (FPC). This reputation was so profound that it inspired our ancestor John Hill, who was a mulatto from South Carolina, to move to Charleston because it was the only place he could live as a free Black man in the state. Additionally, Charleston’s large community of Free Persons of Color increased the possibility of interracial couples existing outside of the master and slave dynamic. The Blacks in Charleston were afforded more opportunities than other Blacks in the Americas by virtue of the unique combination of geography, industry, and the constant struggle for freedom and equality of Black Charlestonians rather than by any benevolence or generosity bestowed upon them by slave owners.
During this time period, the Blacks of Saint-Domingue did not have the same dynamics as the Blacks in Charleston, and after years of enduring slavery under first the Spanish empire then the French, the slaves launched a rebellion that spanned years. The first part of this rebellion caused my Labatut family to flee Saint-Domingue and seek refuge in Charleston, and when there seemed to be peace between the French government and the rebellion my ancestor Pierre Isidore Labatut’s father, mother, and brothers returned to Saint-Domingue to reclaim their wealth and plantations, like many other plantation owners did. This giant return of slave owners to the island generated a reprisal of the rebellion and concluded with a battle that counted over 30,000 French soldiers and plantation owners dead, and the official declaration of Saint-Domingue as an independent nation that would become known as Haiti.
Most of Isidore’s family died on the island as a result of the uprising, and his father died shortly after he escaped Saint-Domingue for Rhode Island. So, Isidore found himself an orphan without siblings in Charleston with a wife and young children to support. Despite the fact that Isidore’s father, General Raymond Labatut, was a plantation owner who was so rich in Saint-Domingue that he was considered the owner of the island off of its coast, Tortuga, Isidore was not a rich man when he lived in Charleston. He had to work several jobs to earn a living and take care of his family, which included teaching art, music, and French in addition to performing music, writing poetry, and producing and selling art. For the most part, he did not own any slaves while he lived in Charleston, and those that he did own were his children from his second family that he purchased so that he could acquire their freedom.
The commencement of Isidore’s second family began years after he immigrated to Charleston when he had to stay with friends because he had lost his hearing, which is a traumatic thing for anyone, especially for a musician and teacher. Through his friends he met Mary-Louise, who was a bi-racial slave who also came from Saint-Domingue. His friends charged Mary-Louise with being Isidore’s caretaker due to his extreme deafness, and she remained his companion for over thirty years. I do not know the nature of their relationship. I do not know how much or if he loved her, or how much or if she loved him. I do not know if she chose to stay with him because he was the safest option in an unfriendly world. But, I do know that Isidore was able to free four of their eight children, and he was halted at that point by how South Carolina changed a law that declared only upon the agreement of both the State House and State Senate could a slave be freed. He was able to hurry and free two of his oldest children before the law took place, but he had to submit an application to free Mary-Louise and their other children. In this application, Isidore declared Mary-Louise a woman of great virtues and kindness who had been his caretaker for twelve years and who had risked her life twice to save him from fire. He asked these men of the law to allow him to be a man of his word and free Mary-Louise and her children like he had promised her. Unfortunately, the House and Senate rejected his application. However, later Isidore was able to free two more of their children.
Before Isidore could even reach this point where he had the possibility of freeing Mary-Louise and their children from slavery, he had to purchase them from his friends because despite the fact that Mary-Louise worked for him and bore his children, she was still technically owned by Isidore’s friends. Thus, their children were owned by his friends as well. Isidore received this painful reminder when he had to witness the sale of Mary-Louise and their children from one of his friends to another friend. This situation made it even more important for him to secure the freedom of his family.
Eventually, Isidore freed or enabled all of his children and Mary-Louise to live as Free People of Color, and he educated them so that they could have careers and become business owners. Whereas, many white men in this kind of situation would have sold their children just like they would have any other slave. Meanwhile, Isidore’s French wife and their children moved back to France early on in his relationship with Mary-Louise, and they never returned to Charleston. Isidore and Mary-Louise eventually split, and he found another companion while Mary-Louise lived with her grandson as Free Persons of Color. And, the last name of Labatut became divided between its white descendants who remained Labatut and the Black descendants who became Labitue. The Labitue name has been in our family for centuries, and I hope that you enjoyed this brief look into our history.
Rachel Pitner, “A Closer Look at History”
The discussion Rachel references is linked below. Rachel, her family, and members of our community speak on the history of racism, how to combat racism, and how racism has impacted the Swing Dance & Blues communities.
