Louis Déjoie was given the nickname “Bab Déjoie.” He married Suzanne Boucard, a woman from Jacmel. Together they had three children: Maryse, Louis Junior, and Jessie.
Déjoie’s Ancestry
During the presidential campaign, Déjoie took great pleasure in discussing his ancestry at the public meetings he held with the masses.
First, he said that he could trace his ancestry to a prominent Frenchman known as the Duc d’Ennery, whom France had sent to govern Saint-Domingue when it was still a colony.
Second, he traced his ancestry to Nicolas Geffrard, one of the great generals from the period when Haiti’s ancestors fought for the country’s independence. Nicolas Geffrard was among the generals who signed Haiti’s Declaration of Independence in Gonaïves on January 1, 1804.
Third, Déjoie said that he could trace his ancestry to Fabre Nicolas Geffrard, who served as president of Haiti from January 1859 until March 1867.
Education and Early Career
After completing his studies at the Petit Séminaire Collège Saint-Martial in Port-au-Prince, Déjoie’s parents sent him to Europe to study agronomy in the Belgian university town of Gembloux. In 1920, after graduating in Belgium as an agricultural engineer, Louis Déjoie returned to Haiti.
In 1924, agronomist Louis Déjoie became director of the School of Agriculture, which was then located in Thor, Port-au-Prince. He later worked as a chemistry professor at Lycée Pétion and as a chemist at the HASCO sugar factory.
In 1945, Louis Déjoie became president of the Port-au-Prince Chamber of Commerce. He was elected senator for the Department of the South for the first time in 1946. In the election of 1950, following the overthrow of President Dumarsais Estimé, Déjoie was elected senator for the South a second time.
Établissements Agricoles et Industriels Louis Déjoie
Louis Déjoie became a major industrialist and established two corporations. The first was Établissements Agricoles et Industriels Louis Déjoie.
Déjoie based this first company in the South, where he maintained coffee and cacao plantations in the Plaine des Cayes, a vetiver plantation in Maniche, and a citronella plantation in Torbeck. He used the citronella and vetiver harvests to produce two kinds of essential oil.
The initial decortication took place in the South. After that processing, the primary products were transported by large trucks to an extensive facility Déjoie owned at Pòtay Leyogàn. The company’s central office was located there. The products were also distilled and refined at that facility to turn them into essential oils.
The oils were then poured into 55-gallon drums and shipped to the United States. They were sold to companies that used such essential oils to manufacture perfumes, lotions, and various other scented products.
The Partnership with Norda
Déjoie’s business prospects changed completely in 1948, when he came into contact with an American named Dr. Kohl. Dr. Kohl was president of the Norda Essential Oil and Chemical Company of New York, then the largest essential-oil company in the United States.
Because Déjoie’s essential oils were considered superior to oils arriving on the American market from other countries, Dr. Kohl did not hesitate to advance him a large sum of money.
With that financing, Déjoie established a second corporation in Débauché, a rural section of Saint-Michel-de-l’Attalaye in the Department of Artibonite. He named it the Anacoana Aromatics Company.
Across 7,000 carreaux of land, approximately 22,300 acres, Déjoie developed an extensive citronella plantation. Citronella is a type of grass related to lemongrass, but it has a more pleasant and delicate scent than ordinary lemongrass.
At Débauché, Déjoie opened a modern enterprise that was entirely mechanized. He also constructed a residential community for its employees and even opened an airfield.
The Election of 1950
During the election of 1950, Louis Déjoie wanted to declare himself a candidate for president. Dr. Kohl was prepared to provide substantial financial backing for the presidential candidacy of agronomist Louis Déjoie.
Déjoie quickly had to abandon that ambition. He recognized that only four years earlier, in 1946, a group of Black intellectuals in Port-au-Prince had launched the movement known as the Revolution of 1946. Colonel Paul Magloire had also declared his candidacy for president. Because of the Black political movement that had emerged in 1946, combined with Magloire’s candidacy, Déjoie concluded that he had no chance of becoming president of Haiti in that election.
Nevertheless, as an industrialist, Louis Déjoie deserves recognition. He was the first native-born Haitian to establish those two major corporations in the South and Artibonite.