Jonathas Granville

Short Biography

Pierre Joseph Marie Granville, known as Jonathas Granville (1785-1839) was a Haitian educator, legal expert, soldier and a diplomat. He was born a free mulatto in Saint-Domingue. He was a musician and poet, skilled swordsman, an experienced diplomat, and civil servant. From about 1809 to 1815, Granville served under Napoleon as a junior officer during the emperor's campaigns in Germany, France, and Austria. After the Bourbon Restauration, he returned to Haiti with his mother and sisters where he quickly entered in the service of Alexandre Pétion's government. In 1824 he visited the United States, to promote the emigration of free Blacks to Haiti. At his return, in 1825, he established a private school, which will become known as the Granville Institute, before being asked to lead the National Lycee in Port-au-Prince. He is considered to be the intellectual father of the 1843 Revolution that finally dislodged Jean-Pierre Boyer's authoritarian regime. Granville was regarded as well-educated and refined, a man of knowledge and virtue. He made popular in the U.S. the Persian saying, "I write insults on sand and favours on marble."