Boisrond-Tonnerre, who wrote Haiti’s Act of Independence, is born at Torbeck

Louis Felix Mathurin Boisrond was born on 6 June 1776 at Torbeck, in the south. His father Mathurin was a carpenter. Lightning struck the baby’s cradle and left him unhurt, so the family added the name Tonnerre – thunder. He studied in Paris, came home in 1798, and became Jean-Jacques Dessalines’ secretary. On 1 January 1804 at Gonaives he wrote the Act of Independence, after telling Dessalines the declaration needed the skin of a white man for parchment and his blood for ink. When Dessalines was killed at Pont-Rouge on 17 October 1806, Boisrond-Tonnerre was arrested and bayoneted in his cell days later.