Alzire’s father, Pierre Servant, was a French “practitioner of physick and surgery” who became a West Indian cotton planter and slaveholder. While our histories and descendants have called him Cervantes, the records we have seen consistently show his surname as Servant. He had no known Spanish links and was born in Saintes, in the Charente-Maritime region of France, between 1734 and 1738. He came from a large family, with at least four sisters and two brothers surviving to adulthood.

It’s unclear when Servant emigrated to the West Indies. Despite family stories that he was in the French navy, we have not seen any evidence to support this. We first find him in archives from 1767, when he married Marie Luce Godreau, daughter of Jean Pierre and Marie Françoise Godreau (also Godreaux or Godrau), of the Caribbean island of St Vincent. This formerly French colony had been ceded to the British in 1763. He was recorded as practicing medicine in St Vincent in 1775, and certainly appears to have had access to funds: he owned land on the neighbouring island of Bequia for a period, and by 1776, had accumulated 122 acres (49 hectares) on St Vincent. These properties were all worked by enslaved people.

The Godreaus owned plantations on both St Vincent and Carriacou. Servant had a complex financial entanglement with them (and others), with multiple lines of credit established in both directions. Both Jean Pierre (who died in 1772) and Marie Françoise (who remarried in 1775, to Pierre Griffon) owed him money. Servant is recorded as making “diverse voyages” to conduct business on her behalf. There are several documents where the Servants and the Godreaus attempt to reconcile these debts “to maintain peace and unanimity” in the family. In September 1776, they agreed to exchange all of Servant’s properties on St Vincent for the more valuable Godreau cotton plantation on Carriacou. It is probably at this time that Pierre and Marie Luce moved to Carriacou.

This 166-acre Carriacou property was the original Bellevue plantation. Bellevue was above the median for the island in both acreage and slaves. There were 56 people enslaved there when Servant assumed ownership, and 14 fewer by 1778, when they were next documented. At that time, there were 16 women, 10 men, and 16 children. Slaves were categorised as adults from the age of 12 or 13 (J.A. Beatty, pers. comm.), so the 16 children counted here were young. We should be under no illusions about the brutal reality of their lives: punishments and abuses were common, and disease and death rates were high. Additionally, 26 adults were too few to farm a plantation of that size. In 1779, France recaptured Carriacou from the British, and Servant bought three more slaves from St Vincent: a woman called Julienne, and her sons, Jean Pierre and François, for £99. He also rented a further four “field negroes” from a neighbouring planter.

Bellevue was on a ridge in the middle of Carriacou, in the region of what is now the Princess Royal Hospital. The estate was productive, yielding over 20,000 pounds of cotton from the 120 acres under cultivation in 1776. At some time between 1778 and 1784, after further negotiations with the Godreaus, Servant subdivided the estate, reducing Bellevue to the 113 acres shown on Fenner’s 1784 map of Carriacou (see below) as the property of “Peter Servant Esq.”. The adjoining 57 acres (“Monsieur Godreau” on the same map) were given to Servant’s brother-in-law, Jean Jacques Laurent Godreau, to fulfil his inheritance. This smaller plantation became known as Mount Sinai, and it was this estate, not Bellevue proper, that was later willed to Servant’s daughter, Alzire, by Dr John Bell.

In September 1783, Carriacou was restored as a British colony by the Treaty of Versailles. In May 1784, Servant entered a three-year partnership with another brother-in-law (his sister Anne’s husband), James Tregent of Grenada. This agreement provides further insight into life on Bellevue. Fenner’s map shows the main house and three other permanent buildings. The partnership deed identifies two of these buildings: the cotton house, where cotton was stored and cleaned, and a separate kitchen. The third building might have been for the overseer. The agreement also refers to the production of additional crops such as corn, peas, and yams, as well as livestock, which included “goats, hogs, fowls”. These were separate from the “ground provisions” of the estate, which were grown by slaves for their own consumption. Servant and Tregent agreed to supplement the ground provisions with “four Barrels of Herrings”, additional food if required, and forty-two gallons of rum (shared between the slaves and overseer).

…in case of Death the loss will be to him to whom the slave Belongs

Pierre Servant & James Tregent

The partnership agreement also provides insights into their attitude towards the people they enslaved. While it states that Servant and Tregent will each “treat and cure his Negroes in case of sickness”, this is likely to represent investment in the slaves’ productivity – they will also be furnished with “the Implements necessary for the cultivation & use of said Estate”. The partners’ proprietorship is clear: they agree that either of them “may sell or dispose of any slaves to them belonging”, provided that they replace them, and that “in case of Death the loss will be to him to whom the slave Belongs”.

It seems that Servant was planning to travel, as it was agreed that Tregent would manage the estate and would take over the main house (of which Servant retained one room). Servant also appointed Tregent his legal attorney during his absences from the island. Shortly afterwards, “in or about the month of June” 1784, Servant died. We don’t know how, or exactly where he died, although we do know that it was “in the said colonies“. We know also that he was pre-deceased by his wife, Marie Luce, and Alzire was his only surviving child.

In his will, Servant bequeathed Alzire an annuity of £40 per year but left the remainder of his estate – including Bellevue – to Tregent. He also attached “sundry considerable pecuniary legacies” to the plantation, instructing his brother-in-law to pay £1,000 to each of Servant’s siblings (except Ann) from the future profits of the cotton crop. In his will, Servant also stated that because he has already paid Ann and James the same sum, they will not receive anything more – except for the plantation. These arrangements seem confusing at first. However, when he died, Servant was “very heavily indebted”, with obligations in Carriacou, Grenada, and St Vincent. Servant would have been aware of his debts, and by leaving the plantation to his brother-in-law  (even though Tregent had received his legacy in advance), he may have been protecting his remaining family members from these debts, while trying to ensure they would still receive funds in the future. This supports the estate being profitable – clearly, Servant expected it to generate large sums of money each year.

However, it was not enough. Servant’s debts, including one final claim on the estate by the youngest Godreau, Jean Baptiste, were too large to be repaid – even after the sale of all his slaves, his personal effects, and the cotton crop harvested after his death. Tregent raised funds by selling Bellevue itself, to Dr John Bell, a Scottish surgeon who had made his fortune on Carriacou. The sale price of almost £4000 was sufficient to repay Servant’s debts but was not enough to make his bequests in full. Thus, the legacies were reduced proportionately – a 1789 document indicates Louise Servant in receipt of 6,000 livres, much less than the 20,000 originally bequeathed. Servant’s family in France must have had some concerns about their inheritances – in February 1786, Servant’s sister Marie signed a power of attorney in Saintes to another brother, also called Pierre, despatching him to travel to Carriacou to search for all “movable and immovable” property due to her, and exercise her rights as declared in the will. Much later, it became apparent that Bell had borrowed half the purchase price of Bellevue from Tregent, and that the latter had retained a half-share in Bellevue.

Alzire’s income, however, was untouched. Servant had attached Alzire’s annuity to the Bellevue plantation as an annual rent, thereby preserving it from his creditors. An inheritance of £40 p.a. was a healthy income in Britain at that time (roughly equivalent to a salary of £60,000-£70,000 today). This appears to have been a more robust way of bequeathing money than the legacies to his siblings – it was not reduced by debt, and we believe Alzire continued to receive it for most of her life. Certainly, Servant goes to great lengths in his will to stress that any future owner of the property will be beholden to this annuity. He also makes plans for Alzire’s upbringing, indicating that she should be raised by his “good friend” Léger Couillandeau DuPlanty (another surgeon from Charente-Maritime, who lived in Martinique), and assigning two female slaves to her care.

An earlier version of this article appeared in the newsletter ‘A Bell Family Affair’, produced by Alan Bell, New Zealand, February 2021.