| Notes |
- BIRTH:
- Full date given as 24 February 1781 in baptismal record for Fabien Sellier in the records of Anse-Bertrand, Guadeloupe, 1781, image 2, right side, second full entry. Parents named as Honore Sellier and Marie Margueritte Desbonnes. Record available at http://anom.archivesnationales.culture.gouv.fr/caomec2/osd.php?territoire=GUADELOUPE&commune=ANSE-BERTRAND&annee=1781.
- "F. Terville Sellier" is identified as the son of "Margrite Desbonne Ve. Honor? Sellier" [Fr. abbreviation "Ve." for "veuve"] in her return for the 1819 Register of Personal Slaves. This means that he would be the son of Honor? Sellier and Marie Margueritte Desbonnes. This document is at The National Archives of the UK (TNA), T 71/509, folios 1599-1600, "The Triennial Return of Margrite Desbonne Ve. Honor? Sellier by her Son F. Tirville Sellier of the Parish of St Juan of Personal Slaves," image available in "Former British Colonial Dependencies, Slave Registers, 1813-1834," Trinidad, "1819, Personal Slaves," images 510-511, on Ancestry at https://www.ancestry.com/imageviewer/collections/1129/images/CSUK1812_133750-00509.
- The lone enslaved person in the 1819 Register of Personal Slaves return for Magrite Desbonne is Sedoine Clascian, a carpenter, and a "creole of Guadeloupe." The same person was enumerated as a personal enslaved servant of Fabien Terville Sellier in his 1813 Triennial Register of Personal Slaves return. The fact that the same person went from his slave register to hers reinforces the case that Fabien Terville Sellier is the same person as F. Terville Sellier.
- A birth in 1781 is consistent with him being listed as having been commissioned a Lieutenant in the local Trinidad Militia on 19 July 1814 (see below). The minimum age for this would have been 15 years at this point in time (the age at which free Trinidadian men were required to enlist in the Trinidad Militia in 1814, and officer commissions were bought from the Governor or his Secretary, so could theoretically go to a person at any age), so he would have been born before 19 July 1799. (Source for information on the Trinidad Militia: Randolph T. Jones, "The Trinidad Militia, 1801-38," Journal of the Society for Army Historical Research 82, no. 330 (2004): 132-54. Accessed December 13, 2020. http://www.jstor.org/stable/44231056).
- His role and relation to the St. Margarett estate in the 1813 Slave Register return is not clear, as he would have been old enough to have inherited at least a share of the estate from his father.
CHRISTENING:
Full date given as 22 March 1781 in baptismal record for Fabien Sellier in the records of Anse-Bertrand, Guadeloupe, 1781, image 2, right side, second full entry. Witnesses were Philippe Honor? Sellier (described as his brother) and Marierine Flecher. Record available at http://anom.archivesnationales.culture.gouv.fr/caomec2/osd.php?territoire=GUADELOUPE&commune=ANSE-BERTRAND&annee=1781.
MARRIAGE:
- A wife of Terville Sellier is referred to (but not named) in connection with his September 1824 purchase of a portion of Champs Fleurs Estate.
- Josephine Terville Sellier is referred to as a widow [Fr. abbreviation "Ve." for "veuve"] in an 1831 Triennial Slave Register, living in Port of Spain. Given the unusual nature of the name "Terville," and the fact that she owns two of the enslaved servants listed in Fabien Terville's 1825 Slave Register return, she appears to have been his wife.
MILITARY:
- Lieutenant in St. Joseph's Company, Second Division, Trinidad Militia, with a commissioning date of 19 July 1814 (Source: Trinidad Almanac for the Year of Our Lord 1827 (Port of Spain, Trinidad: J. Holman & Co., 1827), page 37.
LAND HOLDINGS:
- Listed as the co-owner of the Champ-Fleurs Estate in the 1819 along with Fran?ois Honor? Faucour Sellier.
- Appears to have bought out the share of Fran?ois Honor? Faucour Sellier prior sometime in 1819-1821, as he is listed as the sole owner of the estate in the January 1822 Triennial Plantation Slaves Register return.
- Purchased a quarter-share of the Champs-Fleurs estate in the Quarter of Aricagua on the same date [25 September 1824] that the entire estate was sold by the "heirs of the late Faucour."
- The precipitous decline in his fortunes after 1824 suggests that he went bankrupt. The Trinidadian historian Anthony de Verteuil, in his book Begorrat-Brunton: A History of Diego Martin - 1784-1884 (Port of Spain, Paria Publishing, 1987), pages 104-107, discusses the situation in Trinidad in 1824-1825. It was economically perilous for estate owners, as uncertainty over the future of slavery was on the minds of those who had invested in backing various estates. Sugar plantations, with their high labor requirements, were most vulnerable to these stresses. I believe that Fabien Terville Sellier bought his portion of Champ Fleurs with a heavy dose of borrowing and got his mortgage called and lost the land. That would be consistent with him selling so many of his enslaved workers in advance of the 1825 Plantation Slaves Register.
- Owned a house in Port of Spain at No. 16 Cumberland Street, which he sold to Simon Paul Vessiny in about 1824. The house was not in good repair, and in February 1829, Vessiny's son was ordered by a court in Port of Spain to repair and reroof the house. [See account (which mistakenly renders his name as "Jerville") in Anthony de Verteuil, The Years Before (Port of Spain: Inprint Caribbean Ltd., 1981), page 84.]
- The history of Champs Fleurs estate in Aricagua in the years immediately after 1825 is murky. It is not listed by any owner in the 1825 Plantation Slaves Register. The larger part of the estate (63 and 1/6 quar?es) went from Abb? Gobert to Joseph Burke back to Abb? Gobert. On 23 June 1832, this portion of the estate was sold to Joseph Anthony Giuseppi, in what appears to be a land exchange involving his Marseilles estate. Giuseppi filed the next Plantation Slaves Register return for Champ Fleurs estate in 1834 (TNA, T 71/519, Folio 2269), which was no longer a sugar plantation but a "provisions" (i.e., food) plantation. None of the enslaved workers previously associated with the estate appear in this register return. Perhaps the estate lay fallow for a number of years from 1825-1832, which was not uncommon in Trinidad in the early 1800s.
DEATH:
- Alive to submit his January 1828 Personal Slaves Register return.
- Given that Josephine Terville Sellier, a widow in 1831, was his wife, Fabien Terville Sellier would have died before the 22 January 1831 date of her Slave Register return.
- This suggests that he died between January 1828 and January 1831.
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Our Family History
1781 - Bef 1831 (49 years)
Siblings