{"id":14993,"date":"2025-10-16T08:35:43","date_gmt":"2025-10-16T04:35:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.portail-esclavage-reunion.fr\/?p=14993"},"modified":"2025-10-20T09:05:39","modified_gmt":"2025-10-20T05:05:39","slug":"in-the-spotlightleocadie-woman-slave-and-ombline-free-woman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.portail-esclavage-reunion.fr\/en\/in-the-spotlightleocadie-woman-slave-and-ombline-free-woman\/","title":{"rendered":"In the Spotlight<\/em>L\u00e9ocadie, woman slave, and Ombline, free woman"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

An article written by Christian Galas, genealogist and descendant of L\u00e9ocadie, and Gilles G\u00e9rard, anthropologist and historian.<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Analysing slavery through the lens of gender and status leads us to ask questions concerning relations between enslaved and free women.
This article, a homage to L\u00e9ocadie, wetnurse for M\u00e9lanie, Ombline Desbassayns\u2019 daughter, draws parallels between the family history and destiny of two women over half a century.
The first, from a dynasty of slaves essentially of Indian and Africans descent going back to 1690, worked as a servant for the second, a true symbol of slave-owning power.
The life histories were marked by their childhood, then, on becoming adults, by their role as wife, mother, and grandmother. The specific characteristics of the link between these two women resides in the question of breastfeeding and the relationship between black nurses and white children, involving L\u00e9ocadie\u2019s family and most of Ombline\u2019s children.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\"\"\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t<\/svg>\n\t\t<\/button>
Mammy “Wet-nursing” infant. 1861. Source: Slave Nursing White Baby, Envelope 2,\u201d 1861-1865.

John A. McCaUister Collection: Civil War Envelopes (Library Company of Philadelphia, Philadelphia, Pa.)<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

While the close links between the babies and wet-nurses appear obvious here, the same cannot be said for links between white and black women.
\u201cI have given L\u00e9ocadie to M\u00e9lanie\u201d; this declaration, recorded in 1807 in Ombline\u2019s first will, reflects the relations between these two women. L\u00e9ocadie has been \u2018given\u2019 to M\u00e9lanie to be her servant during a long voyage to a village in the region of Toulouse, a true exile. Here, she \u2018died of exhaustion\u2019 in 1809, without being able to see for the last time her children, her husband, and her native island.
While the function of wet-nurse implies a certain promiscuity between these two women, as well as L\u00e9ocadie being constantly available, complicity of gender at no time prevails over the difference of status.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Read the article<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An article written by Christian Galas, genealogist and descendant of L\u00e9ocadie, and Gilles G\u00e9rard, anthropologist and historian. Analysing slavery through the lens of gender and status leads us to ask questions concerning relations between enslaved and free women.This article, a homage to L\u00e9ocadie, wetnurse for M\u00e9lanie, Ombline Desbassayns\u2019 daughter, draws parallels between the family history … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “In the Spotlight<\/em>
L\u00e9ocadie, woman slave, and Ombline, free woman”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":11123,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14993","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portail-esclavage-reunion.fr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14993","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portail-esclavage-reunion.fr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portail-esclavage-reunion.fr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portail-esclavage-reunion.fr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portail-esclavage-reunion.fr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14993"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.portail-esclavage-reunion.fr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14993\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15342,"href":"https:\/\/www.portail-esclavage-reunion.fr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14993\/revisions\/15342"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portail-esclavage-reunion.fr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11123"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portail-esclavage-reunion.fr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14993"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portail-esclavage-reunion.fr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14993"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portail-esclavage-reunion.fr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14993"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}