Life for Reward: The Long Road to Freedom

Starting in the twelfth century of our era, the O'Pierceys, who belonged to the royal court, were compelled to migrate to the European mainland when religious persecutions broke out in their native Ireland.



In their country of adoption, they sought refuge among the Huguenots in South Eastern France at the time of relative religious peace brought about by the Edict of Nantes (1598-1685). In the wake of the revocation of this agreement, members of the family were arrested and incarcerated at the detention facilities of Aigues Mortes. Most suffered martyrdom at the hands of the Dragons of king Louis XIV, but a branch of the family started back on the road of freedom, reaching insular Saint-Malo (Brittany) where, for the sake of survival, they abjured Protestantism and embraced Catholicism.



As the early warning signs of the French Revolution became all too tangible, and when they heard about the uneven struggle being waged by African slaves against the agents of French domination on Hispaniola, a young pioneering member of the family took his bride on a journey that would bring them to the town of Bellance freshly built at the tip of the Island's South-Western Peninsula. They join in that desperate fight, which culminated in the 1804 founding of the nation of Haiti.



Their nation-building dream came crashing in the late 1950s and early 1960s when Papa Doc installed his dictatorship over the nation. Part of the family was brutally destroyed, and aunt was telepathically warned to "leave your country and your relatives and you will have life as a reward." One by one, the surviving eight generations of the family frayed a difficult way to freedom in the United States, and Canada, as well back to the Old Continent.

Survival was not always easy, but with determination and grit, the O'Pierceys succeeded in adjusting to their new habitat, wondering whether the future holds the surprise of repatriation to Ireland or Haiti.