Drouillac Hunting

Our current theory assumes this Françoise Drouillac, who passed away in 1761 in Leogane, was the mother of Marie Françoise Paponet, who married Joseph Gory in 1771.

As part of our quest to trace the origins of the forebears of Anne Marie Joseph Gory in our tentative family tree, we decided to attempt to tackle the issue of the Drouillac. According to our theory, Anne Marie Joseph's father was the grandson of a Paponet who married Joseph Gory. Her mother, a Drouillac of Leogane, appears to have died in 1761 and was presumably born in the early 1720s or late 1710s. Paponet had a son from a previous relationship who married Agathe Gory. The product of that union, a Joseph baptized in 1776, seems like the best candidate for Anne Marie Joseph's father. Even if we are wrong, at least we are further establishing the familial network of the Bainet Gory in 18th century Saint-Domingue.

The 1771 marriage entry for Joseph Gory and Paponet appears to indicate that Françoise Drouillac was deceased, which supports the idea she was the Drouillac who died in 1761. 

So, who were the Drouillac? Another round of searching Leogane entries of baptisms, marriages and deaths via ANOM's site helped to partly address the question. We found a few individuals who were likely siblings of Françoise, including a Pierre, Ignace, and François. Although I am not sure all had the same mother, they appear to share a Gilles Drouillac as their father. Assuming they were all born in the 1710s and 1720s, we assume Gilles Drouillac was probably born in the late 17th century and was a "mulatto" scion of a Drouillac and a black woman we could not locate. 

Ignace Douillac, who died in 1744, was the son of a Gilles and a woman named Marie Therese. We assume Ignace was a sibling of our Françoise.

What helped make things easier is the number of children Pierre and François had. The baptismal entry for the daughter of the latter, Rose Victoire, actually named Gilles Dujacq (Gilles Drouillac) as the godfather. Interestingly, François was named as a free black, perhaps because he was a dark-skinned grif son of a "mulatto" and a "black" woman? Elsewhere we have noticed the shifting color or racial terms used to describe the population of Saint-Domingue, so we assume the parish priests just recorded what they thought as more accurate "racial" category for nonwhites (or, in some cases, chose to omit any mention of their racial origin). 

We also have established by 1752, Gilles Drouillac resided in Grand-Goave. Assuming Marie Therese was the mother of all (or most) of his children, including Françoise Drouillac, we can probably infer that she was a "griffe" born sometime in the early 1720s or late 1710s. She actually appeared as the godmother to the child of Pierre  in 1743. So we know at least a few things about her origins and her parentage. The Drouillac were still around in the late colonial era in Grand-Goave, too. A Marcel Drouillac, son of a later Gilles Drouillac married in 1794. We assume his father was the Gilles baptized in 1756, a son of Pierre Drouillac. 

A daughter of Pierre Douillac (Drouillac) and Marie Rose was baptized in 1743. Her godmother was Françoise and the child actually bore the same name as Françoise's daughter.

The harder, more time-consuming task that remains is to search for Gilles and Marie Therese early on in Leogane. Who knows, perhaps that could contain a reference to an African-born person or lead to a revelation about other possible Drouillac-Gory connections. We just wish Drouillac had a consistent spelling so we don't have to search for Douillac, Douliac, Dujac, Dujacq, and Drouillac. Alas, we still have to identify the Paponet father of Marie Françoise and the father of her son. That would require a trip to Grand Anse and a more thorough search of the voluminous Leogane parish register.