Marie-Joseph Angelique

Marie-Josèphe dite Angélique (died June 21, 1734) was the name given by her last owners to a Portuguese-born black slave in New France (later the province of Quebec in Canada). She was tried and convicted of setting fire to her owner's home, burning much of what is now referred to as Old Montreal. Until recently, it was generally accepted that Angélique was guilty of the crime of which she was accused. However, it has recently been argued that she was actually innocent of the crime and convicted more on the basis of her reputation as a rebellious runaway slave than on the basis of factual evidence. A competing theory is that she was guilty of the crime but was acting in rebellion against slavery. No consensus has been reached by historians regarding Angélique's actual guilt or innocence.

Angélique was born around 1700 in Madeira, then a colony and not an integral part of Portugal, which was an important player in the lucrative Atlantic slave trade. She was later sold to a Flemish man named Nichus Block or Nicolas Bleeker who brought her to the New World. She lived in New England before being sold in 1725 to an important French businessman from Montreal named François Poulin de Francheville, and after his death in 1733 belonged to his wife Thérèse de Couagne. Slavery in New England and New France was primarily a domestic affair, since unlike the southern part of what would become the United States, the economy was not based on large-scale plantation labour. Angélique therefore worked in the Francheville home in Montreal, and occasionally helped on the family's small farm on the island of Montreal, which was primarily used to produce supplies for Francheville's trading expeditions.

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