Tracing Eglantine Lautin

Ever since I discovered the document for Julienne Malvina Lautin and her mother Eglantine Lautin (as well as Pauline Lautin) in Rivière Salée, Martinique I can’t stop thinking about this family! I was super lucky to find Julienne’s and Pauline’s birth records in Trois Bourgs despite them being slaves and I also discovered that Eglantine was originally from Africa.

A couple of days ago, after finishing “Texaco” I began to read “Women and Slavery in the French Antilles, 1635-1848” by Bernard Moitt. Despite the fact that this was actually the last book in the sequence of books I purchased, I decided to bump this one up the list because I wanted to learn more about Eglantine’s life as a woman on Martinique with the job of a cultivatrice or farmer. The book has been very informative with both statistical information and descriptive information of what their lives would have been like. For example, many field slaves began their work at 5AM and didn’t finish until 11PM depending on the cycle of the crops they were tending to. I could never imagine working those hours, especially with very minimal rest in between and the constant stress on my body from lifting, digging, etc. The book is definitely putting a new perspective to what women went through in the French Antilles during slavery and also providing a nice factual background to “Texaco” as well.

The reason I named this post “Tracing Eglantine Lautin” is because I want to do just that; I’ll explain:

With the recent advances of DNA tests, we can see where a person’s ancestral line originated from through Y-DNA (males only) and mtDNA (both females and males) exams. Since Eglantine was a woman she passed down her Mitochondrial DNA to her female and males descendants, yet since many of her male descendants are deceased by now it is only the females who continue to pass down that line of mtDNA. For example my 3rd great grandmother, María Paulina Gustavo Lotten, would have had Eglantine’s mtDNA seeing as how that’s her grandmother. Julio Correa Rivera, my great grandfather also had Eglantine’s mtDNA; yet because Julio married Amalia and had children with her, they in turn inherited Amalia’s mtDNA rather than Eglantine’s. So by tracing Eglantine’s female descendants I would be able to find what maternal haplogroup Eglantine belonged to. Why is that important you ask? Well, because we know that Eglantine was from Africa, by having the mtDNA tested we would be able to see which haplogroup she belonged to from Africa and potentially even be able to pinpoint a certain part or even ethnic group which she would have belonged to.

Since I trace colateral lines when I do genealogy, it was easy to just check my tree and find who was a female descendant of Eglantine Lautin. I’ll post them here so hopefully through the graces and cosmic wonders of genealogy I’ll be able to find one of them still alive or even their daughters who would be willing to help me out!

By way of María Luisa Alvarado Correa (daughter of my 2nd great grand-aunt, Senovia Correa Gustavo) and her husband Marcelino Santana:

• Carmen Francisca Santana Alvarado
• Born: 8 March 1929, Rio Jueyes, Salinas Puerto Rico
• Ana F. Santana Alvarado
• Born abt 1930, Salinas, Puerto Rico
• Raquel Santana Alvarado 
• Born abt 1935, Salinas, Puerto Rico