The first empress dies at Gonaives and the government stays away

In her last year Claire Heureuse was taken in by Madame Chancy, the widow of a grandson of Dessalines, who travelled from Gonaives to Saint-Marc to fetch her and share her bread and her house. She died in the night of 8 to 9 August 1858. The funeral was a fine one and the government took no part in it. The abbe Gerdolles, priest of Gonaives, sang the mass. The newspapers passed over the death in silence. Eleven days later a short notice appeared on the second page of the commercial paper announcing that the widow of Jean-Jacques Dessalines, empress in 1805, had died in the town, and recording that the French and English vice-consuls, Roux and McGuffie, had followed her coffin, which was carried to the grave on men’s shoulders. On the stone in the cemetery at Gonaives is the line telling the passer-by to consult the first pages of the country’s history.