During Haitian rule, from 1822 to 1844, a different policy prevailed.
President Boyer was desirous of seeing every part of the island
populated by blacks and accordingly settled Haitian negroes in various
parts of Santo Domingo and encouraged negro immigration from the
United States by premiums to ship captains bringing such immigrants.
The American negroes were distributed in Haiti and in Santo Domingo,
particularly near Puerto Plata and in the Samana peninsula. The Puerto
Plata settlers have mingled with the rest of the population, but
around the town of Samana, where the largest settlement, consisting of
some sixty families, was made, the descendants of the American
immigrants still form a distinct class. Large portions of the
peninsula are taken up by their well kept farms, and one of the
sections or districts into which the commune of Samana is divided, is
officially named "Seccion de los Americanos." The people still
preserve the English language and proudly proclaim that they are "of
American abstraction."
They have kept considerably aloof and only in recent years have there
been marriages between them and their Spanish-speaking neighbors.
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