Healing Hands for Haiti Guest House in Port-au-Prince Completed St. Vincent’s Prosthetics & Orthotics Center in Port-au-Prince, Haiti msaada/blog/page/3/ Port-au-Prince, Haiti en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Port-au-Prince While the first French presence in Hôpital, the region later to contain Port-au-Prince was that of the flibustiers; as the region became a real French colony, the colonial administration began to worry about the continual presence of these pirates. While useful in repelling Englishmen intent on encroaching upon French territory, they were relatively independent, unresponsive to orders from the colonial administration, and a potential threat to it. Therefore, in the winter of 1707, Choiseul-Beaupré, the governor of the region sought to get rid of what he saw as a threat. He insisted upon control of the hospital, but the flibustiers refused, considering that humiliating. They proceeded to close the hospital rather than cede control of it to the governor, and many of them became habitans (farmers) the first long-term European inhabitants in the region. Although the elimination of the flibustiers as a group from Hôpital reinforced the authority of the colonial administration, it also made the region a more attractive target for the English. In order to protect the area, in 1706, a captain named de Saint-André sailed into the bay just below the hospital, in a ship named Le Prince. It is said that M. de Saint-André named the area Port-au-Prince (meaning Port of the Le Prince), but the port and the surrounding region continued to be known as Hôpital, but the islets in the bay had already been known as les îlets du Prince as early as 1680. The English did not trouble the area, and various nobles sought land grants from the French crown in Hôpital; the first noble to control Hôpital was Sieur Joseph Randot. Upon his death in 1737, Sieur Pierre Morel gained control over part of the region, with Gatien Bretton des Chapelles acquiring another portion of it. By then, the colonial administration was convinced that a capital needed to be chosen, in order better to control the French portion of Santo-Domingo (Hispaniola). For a time, Petit-Goâve and Léogâne vied for this honor, but both were eventually ruled out for various reasons. First of all, neither was centrally located. Petit-Goâves climate caused too malarial, and Léoganes topography made it difficult to defend. Thus, in 1749, a new city was built, Port-au-Prince. French colonial commissioner Étienne Polverel named the city Port-Républicain on 23 September 1793 in order that the inhabitants be kept continually in mind of the obligations which the French revolution imposed on them. It was later renamed Port-au-Prince by Jacques I, emperor of Haïti.[7] When Haiti was divided between a kingdom in the north and a republic in the south, Port-au-Prince was the capital of the republic, under the leadership of Alexandre Pétion. James Theodore Holly en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Theodore_Holly Rev. Holly resigned his position in New Haven in 1861, in order to lead 110 African Americans and Canadians to Haiti. Two weeks after his arrival, on June 13, 1861, President Geoffrard signed a document declaring Holly a Haitian citizen.[6] However, yellow fever, typhoid, malaria and poor living conditions plagued the emigrants. Holly lost his mother, wife and two of his children, among the forty-three prospective settlers who died during the first year. Many of the emigrants returned to the United States, despite the American Civil War. Nonetheless, Bishop Holly remained in Haiti with his two sons and other dedicated American emigrants. By 1863, they established Holy Trinity Church and schools, and soon other churches as well as pastoral training and rural medicine programs.[7] The Board of Missions began financially supporting the mission in 1865. Rev. Holly also served as consul for Liberia at Port-au-Prince from 1864 until 1874. In that year Rev. Holly both received a D.D. from Howard University, Washington, D.C., and was consecrated as missionary bishop of Haiti by the American Church Missionary Society, an Evangelical Episcopal faction, in a ceremony at Grace Episcopal Church in New York. Holly became the denominations first African American ever consecrated, and only the second Black person to become a bishop in a major Protestant Christian denomination. In 1878 Bishop Holly traveled to England as a delegate to the Lambeth Conference, but spent most of the rest of his life within his diocese, on the island of Hispaniola. He received the honorary legal degree (LL.D.) from Liberia College, Monrovia, Liberia in 1882. Bishop Holly also contributed reviews to the Church, the Church Eclectic, and the African Methodist Church. In 1897, Holly both published FACTS ABOUT THE CHURCHS MISSION IN HAITI,[8] and was also named bishop of the Episcopal Church in the Dominican Republic (two years before the assassination of General Ulises Heureaux, who had brought relative peace to that portion of the island). Jack Holly died in his diocese, at Port-au-Prince, Haiti on March 13, 1911, several months before the assassinations of Anténor Firmin in Haiti, and strongman Ramón Cáceres in the Dominican Republic. These events plunged the island of Hispaniola into another round of civil war, and eventually led to the United States occupation of the Dominican Republic (1916–24). Building Mission in Haiti (1897) anglicanhistory.org/usa/jtholly/facts1897.html I WILL now make a practical conclusion, by recapitulating and summarizing the present wants of the Haitian Mission referred to in this statement, in commending the same to American Christian patriots for their generous contributions: 1. The construction of a rectory for the parish at Port-au-Prince. 2. Means to re-open and carry on the Primary Normal School. 3. A dispensary and hospital at Port-au-Prince. 4. A training school for candidates for holy orders.
Posted on: Sat, 08 Nov 2014 13:55:25 +0000