Commewijne · sugar, cacao
Zorg en Hoop: where Janey Tetary was shot dead
Zorg en Hoop on the lower Commewijne, laid out in 1747, is the plantation where Hindustani indentured labourers rose on 24 September 1884 and where the twenty-four-year-old Janey Tetary was shot in the back of the head at close range on 26 September.
Check this This page is compiled from published sources and has not yet been verified on the ground. If you know a name, a date or an ownership detail better than we do, tell us and we will correct it with the source named.
Start with the name. Suriname had at least four plantations called Zorg en Hoop: a sugar estate on the lower Commewijne, a cotton estate on the Matapica creek, an indigo estate by the Poelepantje canal in what is now Paramaribo, and a timber ground on the upper Saramacca. The Paramaribo neighbourhood and airfield called Zorg en Hoop take their name from that indigo estate, not from this one. This page is about the Commewijne plantation.
Zorg en Hoop was granted in 1747 to Samuel Paulus Pichot and passed after his death in 1763 to the Fonds J.S. van de Poll. It grew sugarcane; in 1884 John C. Pearson and James Grearson bought it together with the neighbouring Picardië estate and switched to cacao. Before emancipation, 235 enslaved people worked there.
In September 1884, in the middle of the world sugar crisis, wages were cut and the workload increased. On 24 September the Hindustani indentured labourers rose under the leadership of Challoo Ramjanee and the white overseer Arthur Robert Knott was attacked. The military moved in. Seven workers were killed.
On 26 September it escalated again. Ramjanee asked Janey Tetary, twenty-four years old and a mother, to organise the women against an armed military assault led by first lieutenant W.H. van Pesch. She was shot in the back of the head at close range and died on the spot. Three weeks earlier a comparable revolt had been put down at the Zoelen estate.
Of the plantation itself, which existed until about 1900, nothing identifiable survives on the ground, and we have not been able to establish its exact position; the coordinates above are a reading of the stretch of the lower Commewijne where it lay. Tetary does have a statue, on the corner of the Grote Combéweg in Paramaribo.
Frequently asked questions
Who was Janey Tetary?
Janey Tetary (1856-1884) was a Hindustani indentured labourer at the Zorg en Hoop estate in Commewijne. She organised the women during the uprising of September 1884 and was shot in the back of the head at close range on 26 September. Her statue stands on the corner of the Grote Combéweg in Paramaribo.
What happened at Zorg en Hoop in 1884?
On 24 September 1884 the Hindustani indentured labourers rose under Challoo Ramjanee against wage cuts and the overseer Arthur Robert Knott was attacked. The military put the revolt down and seven workers were killed, among them Janey Tetary on 26 September.
Is this the same Zorg en Hoop as the Paramaribo district?
No. Suriname had at least four plantations called Zorg en Hoop. The Paramaribo district and its airfield, in use since October 1952, are named after an indigo estate by the Poelepantje canal. This page is about the sugar plantation on the lower Commewijne.