They lived at a plantation called La Guinaudée[2] (or Guinodée[3]) near Jérémie of the French colony of Saint-Domingue (now Haiti), until Antoine's departure in 1775.
"[13] The second document is a legal judgment signed before "the Counselors of King, Notary Publics in the Châtelet of Paris" on November 22, 1786, which settled property ownership issues between Thomas-Alexandre Dumas (then known as Thomas Rethoré) and his step-mother, Marie Françoise Elisabeth Retou (widow of his father, Alexandre-Antoine Davy de la Pailleterie).
Two documents signed by Alex Dumas—his contract and certificate of marriage to Marie-Louise Labouret—state that Marie-Cessette died in La Guinaudée, near Trou Jérémie, Saint-Domingue, in 1772.
[3] Based on this death date, Victor Emmanuel Roberto Wilson speculates that she may have died in the mass outbreak of dysentery following a devastating hurricane that struck principally the Grand'Anse region of Saint-Domingue that year.
The 1776 letter from Chauvinault to the Count de Maulde, cited above, states that Dumas's father Antoine sold Marie-Cessette in 1775 before returning to France.
[citation needed] According to the writer Claude Ribbe, Thomas-Alexandre Dumas may have deliberately entered a false death date on the marriage certificate.
He had urgent reason to claim she was dead at the moment of his marriage in Villers-Cotterêts, France, in 1792, since he would have been required to consult her opinion on the marital union if she were living.