Elisabeth Samson House | |
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![]() Elisabeth Samson House (2016) | |
General information | |
Town or city | Paramaribo |
Country | ![]() |
Coordinates | 5°49′44″N55°09′28″W / 5.82900°N 55.15786°W |
Completed | ca. 1742 [1] |
Client | Elisabeth Samson Museum |
The Elisabeth Samson House is a residential building which used to be owned by Elisabeth Samson, the first Afro-Surinamese millionaire. [1] It is located on Wagenwegstraat in the centre of Paramaribo, Suriname, and is a monument. [2] After Samson's death, it was bought by the State, and in the early 21st century, it was in a neglected state. Cynthia McLeod wanted the building restored. [3] On 19 January 2021, the building was bought by the Elisabeth Samson Foundation, and will be turned into a museum. [4]
Elisabeth Samson (1715-1771) was born as a child of two freed slaves. [5] She owned two coffee plantations, and started an affair with Carl Otto Creutz, a German [6] coffee plantation owner. [7] Around 1742, [1] Samson and Creutz built a house on Wagenwegstraat. They owned 40 house slaves. Slaves were usually living in dwellings in the yard of house. Samson's slaves were housed in buildings next door and across the street. The Elisabeth Samson House was lavishly furnished. At Samson's death in 1771, the inventory of the house was 31 folios long, [7] and her estate was valued at 1,138,000 guilders [8] (In 2016: € 9,415,447 [9] ).
Herman Zobre, her Caucasian husband, squandered the money, [10] and the building became property of the government. Up to 2012, the Ministry of Labour was headquartered in the Elisabeth Samson House. [1] Cynthia McLeod, a prominent Surinamese author, considered the dilapidated state of the building shameful, and established the Elisabeth Samson Foundation in order to restore the building to its original condition. [3]
In 2017, the Government of Suriname decided not to restore the building, and sell it to the highest bidder. [1] The building is located 150 metres outside the perimeter of the Unesco World Heritage Site. [3] Thanks to a donation of the Nationale Postcode Loterij, [11] the building was bought by the Elisabeth Samson Foundation on 19 January 2021. It will be restored to its original shape. After the restoration, the building will be used to house the Elisabeth Samson Museum. [4]
The building is located at the corner of Wagenwegstraat with Malebatrumstraat. The property extends all the way to Herenstraat. The building has a brick cellar [12] which at the time Samson lived there, contained a large wine cellar. [7] The house measures five stories, three of which are in the attic. There are dormers on the side of the house. The building has two entrances. The main entrance has two quarter round stairs, and there is an additional entrance on the eastern side. [12]
Suriname, officially the Republic of Suriname, is a country in northern South America, sometimes considered part of the Caribbean and the West Indies. Situated slightly north of the equator, over 90% of its territory is covered by rainforests, the highest proportion of forest cover in the world. Suriname is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the north, French Guiana to the east, Guyana to the west, and Brazil to the south. It is the smallest country in South America by both population and territory, with around 612,985 inhabitants in an area of approximately 163,820 square kilometers. The capital and largest city is Paramaribo, which is home to roughly half the population.
Cynthia Henri McLeod is a Surinamese novelist known for her historic novels and whose debut novel instantly made her one of the most prominent authors of Suriname.
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Elisabeth Samson 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.
Women in Suriname are women who were born in, live in, or are from Suriname. Surinamese women may be ethnically East Indian, Creole/Afro-Surinamese, Javanese, Amerindian, Mixed, or of other ancestry. Many women of Suriname work in the informal sector and in subsistence agriculture.
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Maria Vlier was a Dutch Surinamese teacher who wrote the first history textbook focused on the history of Suriname. Born into an intellectual family who descended from slaves, Vlier was educated in the Netherlands and returned to Suriname to teach. Recognizing that students were being taught European history and had no knowledge of the history of their own homeland, she wrote the first textbook on the colony. The book won a silver medal at the International Colonial and Export Exhibition of 1883 and was one of the three most-used textbooks in the Surinamese education system until 1945.
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