Thomas-Alexandre Dumas is born at Jeremie to an enslaved mother

On 25 March 1762 a boy was born at Jeremie in Saint-Domingue to Marie-Cessette Dumas, a Black woman held in bondage, and the Marquis Antoine Davy de la Pailleterie. The father took the boy to France and pawned him along the way. When the son enlisted as a private in 1786 he refused the marquis’s name and took his mother’s: Dumas. By 1793 he was a divisional general commanding French armies, the first man of African descent to reach that rank in Europe. He died on 26 February 1806. His son wrote The Three Musketeers.