The early life of Elizabeth Stubbs

 

 

Elizabeth Stubbs died in 1824, in the hamlet of Le Perchet, some 11 km to the south-east of Angoulême. She was described a native of London, and sixty years old.

On this reckoning, Elizabeth was twelve when her father bought the plantation called Coubaimarou (Cubaymarou) in Saint Vincent from Aretas Akers. It was known, soon, as the “Stubbs Estate;” the Coubaimarou River became the Stubbs River, and Coubaimarou Bay was known, as it is today, as Stubbs Bay. The estate was in the borderland between the part of the island controlled by the colonists and the part controlled by the “black Caribs,” in the aftermath of the first Carib War; the old “line of demarcation” had been the “Stubbs or Couboumarou River.” In 1777, the island was in turmoil, amidst conflict beteen the colonists, the Caribs and the “runaway Negroes.” There were twenty military posts on the island, including “a temporary station on Mr Stubb’s estate.” In 1778, Saint Vincent became a front in the American war of independence.  In the latter part of 1778, Elizabeth’s father died. She was fourteen.

In 1779 Saint Vincent was captured by the French. Elizabeth was living with her mother and brother on the Stubbs estate; this was the period, according to Akers, in which “many of the Negroes died from want of care and attention.” The estate was under the management of her brother, “who devoted himself more to his pleasures than to his work,” and the family’s creditors were “importunate.” “Mrs Stubbs, her son and daughter, finding themselves distress’d,” asked for help from Akers, who was “put into possession” of the estate. The family left the plantation, and settled in a house in Kingstown, the capital of the island, with the eight slaves as their servants.

The Great Hurricane of 1780 – the deadliest in world history – reached Saint Vincent on October 10. The disaster was terrible. The French administration reported that “of the 600 houses that compose Kingstown, only 14 are left. The others have been destroyed. The countryside has been entirely devastated, and all the inhabitants are exposed to the most atrocious misery. There is unfortunately very little food on the island.” (Letter of Claude François de Bouillé and Louis de Peynier, October 29, 1780, COL C8 A 79 Fo 10.) Elizabeth was sixteen.

In 1781, Elizabeth’s mother and brother died. She was seventeen. It was at that point that she “proposed” to give up all her rights in the Stubbs Estate to Akers, and shortly thereafter was married to Abraham-François Robin. “Soon after” the marriage, Robin petitioned the restless governor of the island to return to the estate. This was “a few days before” the governor’s own departure, in Akers’ account; Duplessis was given permission to return to France in November 1781. (Letter of Bouillé, November 12, 1781, COL C8 A80 Fo 141.)
Robin was the manager of the estate at the time of the harvest of 1782, which was “particularly considerable,” according to Akers. Elizabeth and Abraham-François’s daughter, Françoise Angélique Aimée, was born in Saint Vincent on November 23, 1782. Elizabeth was eighteen.

 

Valentine Morris, A Narrative of the Official Conduct of Valentine Morris, Esq. (1787).
Michael Craton, Testing the Chains: Resistance to Slavery In the British West Indies (2009).