JCH Vol. 58 No. 1 Art. 3

DOI: 10.37234/JCH.2024.5801.A003

Very few records written by black Caribbean women in the 1800s exist in the archives. An exception to this are three letters written by Ann M. Beaudhuy, born on St Croix around 1812. She came from humble circumstances and worked for many years as a nanny for a white Danish family, the Rothes. The head of the family, Louis Rothe, held a high position in the colonial administration. However, when he fell fatally ill in 1870 the family moved back to Denmark. As a consequence, Beaudhuy lost her job, her home, and the access to valuable networks that her employment had provided. In the following year, she wrote a series of letters to one of the Rothe children, the now adult Clara Rothe, who had married a few years earlier and moved to Europe. Beaudhuy’s three letters are a rare testimony to her as a person and the time she lived in. The letters project her own voice and words, not filtered through the colonial administration as most Caribbean records of that time. It is Beaudhuy who wields the pen herself, and the letters give a rare insight to colonial life as she experienced it in the early 1870s.