Early Life
Many accounts of Laurens de Graaf are highly romanticized. Some historians speculate that he may have been a mulatto (El Griffe was a common nickname for those of mixed African and European ancestry). He was reportedly enslaved by Spanish slave traders when captured in what is now the Netherlands and transported to the Canary Islands to work on a plantation, prior to 1674.
During the early 1670s, de Graaf either escaped or was freed, and French historian Vassiere recorded that he married his first wife (Francois) Petronilla de Guzmán in 1674 in the Canary Islands before moving on to the Caribbean. The Spanish governor of St. Augustine, Florida attested to his marriage in a letter written to the King of Spain in 1682, by referring to de Graaf as a "stranger who was married in the Canaries".
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