Baron Who OWNED A SLAVE Use 7 times a Day – Historical Facts
In 1841, at the Boa Vista farm in Campos dos Goitacazes, in the interior of Rio de Janeiro, the powerful Baron of Guaribu, a widower for 10 years, impregnated the same slave seven times. He raised her from his Cosa Grande, a young woman of only 19 years old named Francisca Benguila, who, to the horror of the entire province, was his own illegitimate niece, the daughter of his deceased Maema, with a Mina African woman brought from Salvador.
But what led to this extreme act, and what was the ultimate fate of these people? What happened in the details of this case is what you’ll find out today. Campos dos Goitacazes Norte, Fluminense. The year was 1831. The sweet smell of burning sugarcane permeated the heavy air of January on the banks of the Paraíba do Sul River.
The Boa Vista farm stretched for leagues, with its large house of thick, white-painted walls, a wide veranda, and a small bell that announced mealtimes. There lived Antônio José Ribeiro de Andrada, the third Baron of Guaribu, a 42-year-old provincial deputy, commander of the Order of Christ, and one of the richest men in the region.
In 1829, when the baroness died of puerperal fever after her seventh childbirth, the baron never remarried. He told the priests that he was in eternal mourning for his wife, but in the slave quarters everyone knew that the Lord’s bed had never been empty. Among the dozens of domestic slaves, one stood out: Francisca, tall, dark-skinned, with large almond-shaped eyes.
The child was also brought from a farm in Iguaçu when the Baron bought off the debt of the former owner. What few knew was the truth that circulated in whispers among the elders of the slave quarters. Francisca was the daughter of an African woman named Rosa Benguila, like the late Captain José Ribeiro Maurerma, the Baron’s eldest son, who had been killed in a duel years before.
The unmarried captain had recognized the girl in the inventory, but since she was the daughter of a slave, she remained captive and, after the division of the inheritance, was inherited by her own uncle, the Baron of Guaribu. When Francisca turned 13, in 1835, she was taken from the slave quarters and brought to Casa Grande as a personal maid, named Sima, the Baron’s only daughter.
After her employer’s death, the girl was left without a clear role, but she never returned to the fields. He slept in a small room next to the Lord’s alcove. She would sew, serve coffee, and comb his gray hair every morning. In 1837, at the age of 15, Francisca became pregnant for the first time. The birth was kept secret.
The child, a light-skinned boy, was registered as the son of another deceased enslaved woman and immediately given to a wet nurse on another distant farm. The baron paid well for his silence. No one dared to comment. Two years later, another pregnancy. This time a fair-skinned girl was born, also named Maria Clara.
The priest of São Salvador, who baptized the child, was surprised by the resemblance to the Baron, but he received a generous donation and kept quiet. The girl stayed at Casagrande, raised as the Lord’s own daughter in 1840, his third child. Another boy. The pattern repeated itself. Francisca would disappear from work for months at a time, reappear thinner, and soon a new child with green eyes, just like the Baron’s, would appear among the young maids at Casagre.
By this point, the entire region was already whispering. Visitors were being received less frequently. The baron began to avoid balls in Macaé and sessions of the Provincial Assembly. If you’re shocked so far, subscribe to the channel and turn on notifications, because the worst is yet to come. In March 1841, Francisca, at the age of 19, gave birth to twins.
One died shortly after birth. The other one, a girl, survived. That was the last straw. The wife of the neighboring farm’s administrator, Dona Guilhermina, wrote an indignant letter to the vicar of Campos, reporting that the Baron maintained an incestuous relationship with his own enslaved niece and that there were already seven children, recognized only by their gaze.
The vicar, pressured by the local elite, sent a report to the bishop of Rio de Janeiro. The document arrived at the court in May 1841. Dom Pedro I, then 15 years old, was under regency. The case fell into the hands of the Minister of Justice, who was a personal friend of the Baron. Nothing was done officially, but the scandal was already spreading through the streets of Campos in the form of anonymous verses posted on church doors.
The cornered Baron made a drastic decision. He ordered the construction of a new small room at the back of Casagre, with an internal door that led directly to his office. Francisca was permanently installed there, no longer leaving even for mass. She received food through a barred window, becoming a prisoner within her own large house.
The year 1842 dawned with the smell of wet earth and gunpowder. The liberal revolution exploded in São Paulo and Minas Gerais. And the echoes reached the northern part of Rio de Janeiro state. Farmers feared uprisings, slaves whispered about freedom. Amidst this fear, the Baron of Guaribu reinforced the Boa Vista Guard with henchmen paid handsomely.
Francisca, as she was known to those close to her, had just turned 20. Her body already bore the marks of seven births in just seven years. Sagging breasts, a flat stomach, sunken eyes. She slept on a cot in the small, windowless room, hearing daily the clinking of her lover’s keys, who arrived at nightfall after dining with the white guests.
The eighth pregnancy came in September 1843. This time, the birth was difficult. The black midwife, named Tibúrcia, an 80-year-old woman brought from Recife, warned that the girl wouldn’t be able to bear another child anytime soon. The baron replied that “God would take care of it”. It was poisoned. Tibúrcia was found dead in the river three days later, with her hands tied.
The child was born in May 1844. A boy, the fairest of them all, was named Antônio. Like Father Avótio, the baptism was performed secretly in the early morning by the quadjutor priest, who received 100 ris in gold coins to forget what he had seen. In 1845, with the court increasingly pressured by English accusations against the slave trade, the baron decided to send two of his eldest sons to Rio de Janeiro.
Maria Clara, then 9 years old, and the older boy, 12, were sent aboard as servants of the household to serve in the residence of their godfather, Uves Comde de Arantes. In fact, they were supposed to be educated as white people and later freed, far from Campos’s watchful eye. But the Civil War of 1848 changed everything.
Loyalist troops passed through the region. A mining captain stayed at Boa Vista. That night, he heard muffled crying coming from the back of the Big House. The next day, he demanded to see the source. The baron tried to bribe him. The officer drew his saber and ordered them to open the inner door. There was Francisca, chained by the leg to the foot of the bed, with baby Antônio at her breast, both covered in dirt.
The captain ordered the judge to be summoned. For the first time in 17 years, someone with authority entered that room. The baron was caught red-handed for being a victim and illegally imprisoning a free person. Because Francisca, being the recognized daughter of a white man, could complain. Pardavre condition. The trial in Campos in 1849 was a circus.
Half of the jurors were indebted to the Baron. The other half feared losing the land they had mortgaged to him. Francisca was brought to court in chains, still breastfeeding. When asked if she had suffered violence, she looked at the baron and simply said: “He is my lord and my uncle. I have done what he commands since I was 13 years old.”
The Baron was acquitted due to a lack of evidence of visible physical violence. He returned to the farm the same day, greeted with fireworks. Francisca went back to the small room. The ninth pregnancy came soon after. As punishment, the boy was born in 1850 and died on the same day. Francisca, at 28 years old, already looked like she was 50. She bled for weeks.
The white doctor refused to treat her. The black healer who dared to enter was whipped until she fainted. In 1852, with the death of a legitimate nephew without heirs, the baron had to answer to the courts. To avoid sharing the property, he formally freed four of his living children with Francisca, but kept the captive for services rendered to the family.
She was registered as a dependent in the Big House, but continued sleeping in the same small room. The Baron died in 1857 of apoplexy, at the age of 68, still inside that room, with Francisca by his side. In his will, he left her a pension of 20 a month and her freedom. But the legitimate daughter contested: “The process lasted 10 years.”
Francisca Benguila died in 1866, at the age of 44. Alone in the same small room where she spent almost 30 years, she was buried as an indigent in a corner of the slave cemetery. None of her children appeared. Those who lived as whites on the river denied their mother. Those who remained in the fields had already been sold to pay debts from the estate.
The Boa Vista farm was auctioned off in 1870. The Big House burned down in 1888. On the eve of the Golden Law (Lei Áurea), they say the fire started exactly in that small back room. This case, suppressed for decades, shows how the Brazilian slave system protected the powerful, even when they committed the most heinous acts within their own families.
Incest, imprisonment, and continued sexual violence were not exceptions, they were the silent rule in the big houses of the Paraíba Valley. The hypocrisy of the imperial elite allowed men like the Baron of Guaribu to preach morality in the. They held court while keeping a blood hāren at home. Francisca was not just one among thousands of women whose names history has erased.
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