Elisabeth Samson (17151771) was an Afro-Surinamese coffee plantation owner. She was born in 1715 in Paramaribo to a freed slave, known as Mariana. All of her other siblings had been born as slaves and were emancipated by her half-brother Charlo Jansz. Raised in the home of her half-sister Maria Jansz, Samson was taught to read and write by her brothers-in law who also trained her in business. She began acquiring property at the age of 19, but was banished from the colony in 1736 after being convicted of slander. Her appeal, heard by the Dutch Parliament, was successful and she returned to Suriname in 1739.
After acquiring slaves and two small coffee plantations, Samson entered a relationship with Carl Otto Creutz. Creutz was a soldier who was deeded property in 1749 by the governor for his service in making peace with local maroons. Focused on his military career and colonial politics, he turned his plantation, Clevia, over to Samson's management. She brought her own slaves to work on his plantation and within two years, the couple drew up a document confirming their joint ownership of Clevia, as well as of a cattle ranch and two townhomes in the city of Paramaribo. When he died in 1762, his half-ownership and other properties passed jointly to Samson and his brothers but she bought out their interests within two years. Samson continued to acquire properties with various family members, including her sister Nanette, with whom she established a successful export business, which traded using her own ship.
In 1767, she married Hermanus Daniel Zobre (17371784), and became the first black woman in Suriname to marry a white man. She was a major coffee plantation owner and coffee export trader until her death in 1771. Her success as a business person, black slave owner, and her marriage to a white partner, challenged both the gender and racial norms of the times. While her personal history provides insight into the ways black and mixed-race women contributed to the economy and challenged social norms, it also expands knowledge of 18th-century social organization in Suriname. Her life and the controversies surrounding her choices have been examined by modern scholarship and in literary studies.
Early life
Elisabeth Samson was born in 1715 in Paramaribo, Suriname, as the youngest child of a freedwoman, who had taken the name Mariana upon her emancipation from slavery, and an unknown black father. Mariana had originally been known as Nanoe and was brought to Suriname around 1700 from Saint Kitts by her owner Jan van Susteren. Susteren fathered two older siblings with Nanoe, Charlo and Maria Jansz, before his death in 1712. His will instructed that Nanoe and their two children were to be freed, though Nanoe's six other children by black men were to remain in slavery to his wife. These three family members attained their freedom in 1713, with the result that when she was born, Elisabeth was a free "negress". Samson's half-brother Charlo, purchased the rest of his siblings from Susteren's widow and before his death in 1732 had managed to obtain manumission for each of them.
Samson was raised in the household of her half-sister Maria and her husband Pierre Mivela, a Swiss merchant and owner of the Salzhallen Plantation. When Mivela died, Maria remarried a planter, Frederick Coenraad Bossche, who continued to provide a home for Samson. In the homes of both her brothers-in-law, Samson was taught to read and write and also learned to count. She was baptized when she was ten years old and the certificate noted her knowledge of the bible. From an early age, she worked with Bossche in his importing business and by 19 had begun to acquire her own property. In 1736, Samson was convicted of slander for having spread rumors about an alleged dispute between Governor and a local coppersmith, Mr. Peltser (Pelzer) and his wife. Convicted and banished from the colony in 1737, she went to the Netherlands to appeal the verdict. A lawyer, hired by Bossche filed the case with the States General in The Hague, where Samson was residing in exile, and worked on the case for nearly two years from Suriname. In 1739, she was exonerated and allowed to return home.