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\VUbL

YORK

-ir..O-

lei

A5 TO

R. ■

J907

Published September, 1907

Printed by J. B. lAppincoU Oompany
The WatMngUm Square PresSf Philadelphia^ U. S. A.

Contents

CHAPTER PAGB

I. Earlt Fbench Settlements in the

United States IS

II. Fbench Colonies in Loxhsiana 35

III. The Huguenot Settlers 62

IV. Fbench Soldiers in the United States . . 64
V. Early French Travellers in the United

States 78

VI. French Exiles in the United States 86

VII. French Settlers and Exiles in South

Carolina 91

VIII. French Settlements in the West and in

Canada 97

lix. Brillat Savarin in the United States . . 103
X. French Land Companies in the United 5

States 106

XI. French Plan op Education in the United

States 121

XII. French Colonies in the United States:

Gallipolis, Ohio; Asylum, Penna 125

Xm. French Settlement in Iowa 151

XIV. Bonap artist Exiles 159

XV. Royalist Exiles 176

XVI. Balzac's Story op a French Exile 183

XVII. French Members of the American Philo-
sophical Society 186

Appendix A 211

Appendix B 220

Index 225

Introduction

The French settlers in the United States
have not received the attention due to them.
Parkman and Bancroft and Roosevelt have
ciwelt upon the early history of the French in
this country, and Fortier has given us an ad-
mirable work on the history of Louisiana.
Many French authors and travellers have writ-
ten about the United States, but little attention
has been paid to the colonies settled with more
or less success in the closing years of the Eigh-
teenth and the beginning of the Nineteenth
Centuries. Some accounts are found in local
publications, those of state historical societies
or in the pamphlets written by local authors,
but these are not easily accessible. M. Anatole
Le Braz, well known for his books on Brittany,
suggested that a collected story be given of
the efforts to establish French colonies in the
United States. To do this I have made notes
from the recognized historians, and from such
7

INTRODUCTION

local publications as could best serve to supply
information on the subject. There are some
references in the writings of travellers, and
especially of those of the numerous French
exiles who at the time of the French Revolu-
tion, and after the fall of Napoleon, visited
this country. These I have noted, too, as help-
ing to give an account of the French colonies
in the United States, as they saw them.

Philadelphia, as the poUtical and social
capital, attracted these exiles, and many of
them made it their home. Some of them were
men of letters and of science, and were elected
members of the American Philosophical
Society, which thus had a close connection with
the most noted of the French settlers and col-
onists, while many distinguished French trav-
ellers were welcomed at its meetings, elected
members, and interested in its work. A brief
summary from its records will show how long
this connection lasted. Nearly all the early,
and many of the later French diplomatic rep-
resentatives in this country were elected mem-
bers, and the present distinguished French
Ambassador, M. Jusserand, well known by his

INTRODUCTION

scholarly writings on English Literature
and its history, has received this acknowledg-
ment, as well as due honors from many Amer-
ican universities.

The Huguenot settlers in the United States
have received exhaustive treatment in Baird's
History of the Huguenots, but even his indus-
try did not follow them in all their settlements,
in Pennsylvania and elsewhere. Many later
French settlers have been absorbed into their
older neighbors ; even names have been changed,
so as to make it difficult to recognize the orig-
inal French patronymics. Of the compara-
tively recent French Socialist colonies in the
West little is known. It is hardly feasible to
say why the French colonies have never suc-
ceeded, while other settlers, Welsh, German,
Scotch, Irish, and in later times, Scandinavianfi,
Dutch and Italians, have persevered and be-
come noteworthy factors in that great amal-
gam, the American people. Of the individual
French settlers many have achieved success,
and their names are known through the work
of their descendants, in art and science, in lit-
erature, in learned professions, — ^indeed, in
9

INTRODUCTION

every walk of Kfe our citizens of French birth
and descent have proved a valuable addition.
Of those less fortunate early French colonists,
it is plain that their failure was largely due
to American greed in land schemes.

Senator Lodge's Century (September, 1891)
article on " The Distribution of Ability in the
United States," reprinted in his " Historical
and Political Essays" (Boston, 1892), gives
a very high standard to the French, including
the Huguenot Protestant French who came here
during the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Cen-
turies, either direct from France, or by way of
England and Holland, and the French descend-
ants of the original settlers in Louisiana, Mis-
souri, and Illinois, of soldiers who came with
Rochambeau, or refugees who fled here from
France and from St. -Domingo in 1792.
He gives in his Division of Races, based
on Appleton's Encyclopedia of American
Biography, Huguenot 689, French 85, among
statesmen, soldiers, clergy, lawyers, physi-
cians, literary men, artists, scientists, edu-
cators, sailors, business men, philanthropists,
pioneers and explorers, inventors, engineers,
10

INTRODUCTION

architects, musicians, actors. He says: "If
we add the French and the French Hugue-
nots together, we find that the people of
French blood exceed absolutely, in the abil-
ity produced, all the other races represented in
Appleton's Encyclopedia of American Biog-
raphy, except the English and Scotch-Irish,
and show a percentage in proportion to their
total original immigration much higher than
that of any other race." This is very high
authority, and may well be accepted as a rea-
son for a somewhat fuller recital of the con-
temporaneous history of the early, as well as
of the later French colonies in the United
States. Many names illu^strious in French
history will be found among those of the
exiles who found refuge in the United States
in the successive changes in France from the
outbreak of the French Revolution, through
the Napoleonic Period, the Bourbon restora-
tion, the reign of Louis Philippe, the Second
Republic, the Third Empire, and the Third
Republic.

Pierre Leroy Beaulieu, in his exhaustive ac-
count of the United States in the Twentieth
11

INTRODUCTION

Century (Paris, 1905), gives the number of
French emigrants who came to the United
States from 1821 to 1903, as 414,197. This
number, though small as compared to the ac-
cessions of other nationalities, must be increased
by the earlier settlements, those in Louisiana
and up the valley of the Mississippi, and in
Virginia and Pennsylvania; by those in Penn-
sylvania and Ohio after the French Revolution,
and by the later refugees after the fall of
Napoleon — ^a large number in all.

French Colonists and Exiles
in the United States

Eably Fbench Settlements in the
United States

The oldest permanent European settlement
in the valley of the Mississippi is the village of
Kaskaskia ; the seat of a Jesuit mission in 1684f9
it gradually became a central point of French
civilization.^ In Illinois La Salle opened the
way, in 1681, and was followed by Tonti in

1700, with twenty Canadian settlers. In June,

1701, Cadillac was sent with one hundred

French to settle Detroit, the oldest permanent

settlement in Michigan. D'lberville in 1698

opened direct intercourse between France and

the Mississippi with two hundred settlers, and

in 1699 his brother, Bienville, began the settle-

1 Bancroft: Hist. U. S., voL iii, p. 195.
13

FRENCH COLONISTS AND EXILES

ments near Mobile. Coxe, the proprietor of
Carolana, on the Gulf of Mexico, obtained
from King William permission to send six hun-
dred French refugees and Vaudois to settle
there. In 1698 Coxe sold 500,000 acres of
his grant on the Gulf, to Sir William Waller,
the Marquis de la Muce, and the Sieur de
Sailly, on condition that at least two hundred
Protestant colonists should be planted there
within two years.

William III advanced £3,000 to defray the
expenses of sending to Virginia at least five
himdred French Protestants under the care of
Coxe, and successive vessels brought them with
their clergymen, to Manakintown, on the
James, but the emigrants were soon in a deplor-
able state, and the enterprise was shortly
abandoned. Coxe's son published in London,
in 1722,^ his Description of Carolana. Their
title continued until 1769, when the family
surrendered the charter of Carolana and re-
ceived in exchange 100,000 acres of land in
New York, and the township of Carolana and
other patents were located in New York under

' Scull's Coxe: Pa. Mag. of History, vol. vii, p. 317.
14

IN THE UNITED STATES

this grant. Vincennes was settled at least as
early as 1786, and thus began the common-
wealth of Indiana.

In 1717, eight hundred emigrants for
Louisiana began what was hoped to be a colony
of at least six thousand whites', but in 1727 of
Law's great colony only thirty needy French-
men were found, abandoned by their employer.
In 1736 Alabama was opened to settlers at a
heavy sacrifice of life.

It was on the banks of the Mississippi, in
1768, that uncontrolled impulses first unfurled
the flag of a republic* The treaty of Paris
left two European powers sole sovereigns of
the continent of North America. Spain, ac-
cepting Louisiana with some hesitation, lost
France as the bulwark of her possessions, and
assumed new expenses and new dangers, with
only the negative advantage of keeping the
territory from England. Its inhabitants were
of French origin, and loved the land of their
ancestry; by every law of nature and human
freedom, they had the right to protest against
the transfer of their allegiance. No sooner

•Bancroft: Hist. U. S., voL vi, p. 217.
15

;

FRENCH COLONISTS AND EXILES

did they hear of the cession of their country
to the Catholic king, than in the spirit of
independence an assembly sprang into being,
representing every parish in the colony, and
they resolved unanimously to entreat the King
of France to be touched with their affliction
and their loyalty, and not to sever them from
his dominions. At Paris their envoy, with
Bienville, the time-honored founder of New
Orleans, a venerable octogenarian, appealed in
vain to Choiseul. In March, 1766, Ulloa
landed in New Orleans. The French garrison
of three hundred refused to enter the Spanish
service ; the people, to give up their nationality.
This state of things lasted for two years,
agitating the colony from one end to the
other. It was proposed to make of New
Orleans a republic, with a legislative body of
forty men and a single executive. The people
in the country parishes met together, crowded
in a mass into the city, joined those of New
Orleans, and formed a numerous assembly.
They adopted an address, rehearsing their
griefs, and in their Petition of Rights they

IN THE UNITED STATES

claimed freedom of commerce with the ports
of France and America; the inhabitants of
Louisiana took up the idea of a republic, as
the alternative to their renewed connection with
France. Their hope was to be a colony of
France or a free commonwealth. " A good
example for the English colonies," wrote du
Chatelet to Choiseul, " may they set about fol-
lowing it."

At this time Kaskaskia had six hundred
whites, Cahokia, three hundred; Illinois about
one thousand in all; Vincennes in Indiana
about three hundred; Detroit about six hun-
dred; New Orleans, eighteen hundred. The
arrival of the Spanish squadron of twenty-four
vessels with three thousand troops ended in the
severe punishment of those who had led in the
movement against Spain. The estates of twelve
of the richest and most considerable men in
the Province were confiscated, five were con-
demned to be hung, six to imprisonment.

Parkman in his great works, and since then

countless writers, have described the great

achievements of the early French explorers. La

Salle, Champlain, Marquette, Joliet. La Salle's

2 IT

FRENCH COLONISTS AND EXILES

Belle Rivifere of 1670 was the Allegheny and
Ohio, and Celeron de Bienville, sent by Galis-
soniere, commandant of forces in New France
and Louisiana, in 1749, was the first European
to sail on the waters of the Ohio.

La Salle in 168S buried at the mouth of the
Mississippi, a metal plate with the arms of
Prance, as an emblem of sovereignty by right
of discovery. In 1749 Celeron did the same
thing at the confluence of the Ohio and Cono-
wango, near what is now Warren, Pennsyl-
vania, and near the mouths of French Creek
in what is now Pennsylvania, and of Wheeling
Creek and the Great Kanawha, in the West
Virginia of to-day, and of the Muskingum and
Great Miami Rivers in Ohio. The English in
turn granted 600,000 acres on the Allegheny
and Ohio Rivers to the Virginia Company in
1767.

It was in surveying this land that Washing-
ton first made his mark. The grave of Jumon-
ville, killed in a skirmish by Washington's
force, is still marked near Uniontown, Pennsyl-
vania. That skirmish, between thirty-four men

imder Washington and thirty-one Frenchmen,
18

IN THE UNITED STATES

was the opening of the Old French War, which
finally cost France both Canada and the Ohio
basin.

Roosevelt's "Winning of the West" tells
the story of the men who finally settled that
great region and made it part of the United
States. As late as 1778 the French in Vin-
cennes, learning that France was the ally of
the United States in the war with Great Britain,
helped George Rogers Clark in his gallant and
successful invasion of the great West, which
he helped to wrest from the mother country
for the infant republic. But of the lesser
French settlements and of the individual
Frenchmen who came to this country, in some
instances as travellers and visitors, often as
exiles, there is little record.

The next colony located within the present
State of Ohio was that of Gallipolis, settled
directly from France.* This colony of about
four hundred persons, had been made up in
Paris, where the principal persons had pur-

* History of the Discovery and Settlement of the
Valley of the Mississippi, by John W. Monette (New
York, 1846, 2 vols.)) vol. ii, p. 96S, etc.
19

FRENCH COLONISTS AND EXILES

chased a large body of lands from Joel Bar-
low, agent of the Scioto Company. They had
paid for their lands at the rate of a French
crown per acre, while in France, to enable the
Company to consummate their contract with the
government. The agent of the Company had
accompanied them to the Ohio River, and had
selected for them a beautiful site on the west
bank, two miles below the Great Kanawha
River, and within the limits, as was subse-
quently ascertained, of the Ohio Company's
purchase. The location having been selected,
the immigrants remained upon the Ohio River,
whither they had arrived from Philadelphia
during the winter, ready to commence their
new settlement.

Early in March, 1791, the colony was all
action and enterprise, clearing land and erecting
houses and inclosures for their future security
from Indian hostility. Peace and joy seemed
to smile upon them, and the arduous toil of
the day was beguiled by mirth and festivity at
night, cheered by the melody of the violin and
the gay dance. But soon they found them-
selves deceived in a strange land, beset by
20

IN THE UNITED STATES

savage foes, and in fact without a home and
without money. The Scioto Company could
not give titles to the land and was not respon-
sible for the one hundred thousand francs they
had received from the credulous Frenchmen.
These were without a remedy. Many of them
left the country ; others received from Congress
a grant of ^4,000 acres near the Scioto, known
as the French Grant; others migrated to the
Wabash, to join their countrymen at Vin-
cennes ; some returned to Philadelphia and then
to France.^

" Historic Illinois : The Romance of the
Earlier Days," by Randall Parrish, Chicago,
1906, is a compilation of information on the
early settlements in Illinois. By 171S the
French population had increased to consider-
able proportions, most largely concentrated at
Kaskaskia. By 1763 the Jesuits there had a
church, a chapel, a house, all built of stone, a
plantation of two hundred and forty arpents of
land, well stocked with cattle, and a brewery.
All was seized under the edict of their expulsion

* American Pioneer, vol. 1, pp. 94, etc.; vol. ii, ppi
183, etc.; Atwater's Ohio, p. 159.
91

fUench colonists and exiles

from France, and but Kttle left of the results
of their hundred years of devotion to the task
undertaken by them.

The old trails led from Kaskaskia to the '
Peorias, at the mouth of the Des Moines River,
and to Detroit, part of the latter still a legal
highway in continual use. Later Clark laid
out one to Fort Massac on the Ohio River,
thus avoiding the old French trail.

The establishment, in 1682, by La Salle, of
Fort St. Louis attracted adventurous French-
men, coureiu* de bois, voyageurs, soldiers, fur
traders, and priests, but with the abandonment
of the post in 1702 they soon scattered. The
oldest permanent settlement, not only in Illi-
nois, but in the entire Mississippi valley, wcus
that of Kaskaskia, "Notre Dame de Cascas-
quias," — first an Indian village, then a mis-
sionary station, then slowly gathered a vagrant
white population. By 1766 there wer^ about
one hundred families, French and English,
many of the original French inhabitants having
gone to St. Louis. Most of the settlers of
Kaskaskia came from New Orleans, those of

Cahokia from Canada ; Prairie du Rocher, f our-

IN THE UNITED STATES

teen miles from Kaskaskia, grew up about Fort
Charti^s. The names of some of the earliest
colonists of Illinois are preserved in the records
at Quebec.

The early histories of Illinois describe their
homes, — ^they were largely descendants from
emigrants from Picardy and Normandy. In
1720 Major Pierre Dugue Boisbriant, some of
whose descendants yet reside at Prairie du
Rocher, accompanied by one hundred men,
came up from New Orleans, and sixteen miles
from Kaskaskia built Fort Chartres. In 1721
Renault brought two hundred miners and five
hundred slaves to work the mines he expected
to discover. In 1745 the Illinois country sent
400,000 pounds of grain to New Orleans, the
surplus product of a population of about nine
hundred all told.

At Kaskaskia, Cahokia, Prairie du Rocher,
Prairie du Pont, and St. Philippe, the peasantry
in their picturesque costumes, conspicuous with
coloring, mingled with gentlemen who, even in
that wilderness, clung to the Parisian garb,
with the French soldiers in their blue uniforms
and white facings, the black-robed Jesuits, and
93

FRENCH COLONISTS AND EXILES

the stolid Indian warriors. After 1721 black
slaves were numerous throughout the settle-
ments. These were originally St. Domingo
negroes brought by Renault to labor in his
mines, but twenty years later sold to the
colonists. In 1750 there were five French vil-
lages with eleven hundred whites, three hundred
blacks, and sixty savages. At Le P6, now
Peoria; at Chicago, possibly at Rock Island
and Quincy, there were small stockaded forts
with a few French settlers. A trading-post
was established on the Missouri side of the river
at New Madrid as early as 1740. The region
was notable for bears, and the principal trade
was the sale of bear's grease, hence the name,
L'Anse de la Graisse. The fortified trading-
post of Vincennes was established in 1722, but
did not become a French settlement until twelve
years later. These isolated communities fur-
nished many French volunteer soldiers.

Thus flourished for nearly a hundred years
these commimities of French pioneers. They
accomplished little of permanent value. Their
forts have crumbled into dust ; their towns have

disappeared beneath the encroaching waters

IN THE UNITED STATES

or have decayed and passed away ; only a few
remnants have escaped the inflowing tide of
American population, and they also are fast
losing the peculiarities of their fathers. In
1791 by special act of Congress four hundred
acres of land were granted to each head of a
family who had made improvements in Illinois
prior to 1788. A list of names of those en-
titled shows two hundred and forty-four, of
whom eighty were Americans, the others
French. Allowing five to a family, this would
make eight hundred and twenty. In 1791
under the militia law there were two hundred
and twenty-five Frenchmen capable of bearing
arms.

Renault, St. Philippe, Prairie du Rocher,
Fort Chartres, Massac, Easkaskia, Cahokia,
Fort St. Louis, Fort CrfeveccEur, are names that
still reveal the sites of early French settlements
in Illinois, while Father Allouez, Aubry, Bar-
beau, Barbier, Baugy, Beausoleil, Bellefon-
taine, Bienville, Noel Blanc, Boilvin, Boisron-
det, Bossu, Bourdon, Bouthillier, Brossard,
Chevet, De Montbrun, Du Page, Galland, Ger-
main, Guyon, La Forest, La Grange, Le
95

FRENCH COLONISTS AND EXILES

Comtey Meillet, Membr6, Menard, Moreau,
Pachoty Saussier, are a few of the French names
of individuals who reveal the French element in
Illinois.

Roosevelt's " Winning pf the West '* [New
York, 1894] has many suggestive references
to early and later French settlements.*

Mobile in 1781 was described by an early
French traveller (Le Gal, Paris, 1802) as a
little terrestrial paradise, with about forty
proprietary families.

In 1784 there were four hundred French
families in the Illinois country, a like number
at Vincennes, and four hundred and forty at
Kaskaskia and Cahokia. In 1778 the British
Grovernor, Hamilton, reported the number of
settlers at Vincennes as six hundred and twenty-
one.

Roosevelt describes the life of the French
Creoles, and quotes CoUot's account of them
and of the great fur trade built up by one of
them, Gratiot. The French settlers of the
Illinois and Wabash country quarrelled with

•Roosevelt: "Winning of the West," vol. i, pp. 31,
35; YoL, ii, pp. 39, 78.

IN THE UNITED STATES

the new American comers^ whose energy dis-
turbed their easy-going Kfe. In 1786 Vin-
cennes had upwards of three hundred houses,
and sixty American families took refuge there
from the hostile Indians. The old French
families complained of the abuses inflicted on
them in poor return for the hospitality ex-
tended to the refugees, and Qeneral Clark es-
tablished a garrison of one hundred and fifty
men of his command to keep order. To punish
marauding Indians an attack was made on a
settlement of French Indian traders in Cum-
berland County, Kentucky, in which the latter
suffered for the help they had given the
Indians. French and Americans alike suffered
at the hands of the Spanish in their efforts to
stop trade with New Orleans; some of the
French moved to the west (Spanish) side of
the Mississippi, to enjoy the benefit of their
protection.

In 1787 there were five hundred and twenty
French at Vincennes, one hundred and ninety-
one at Kaskaskia, two hundred and thirty-nine
at Cahokia, eleven at St. Philippe, seventy-
eight at Prairie du' Rocher, ten hundred and
97

FRENCH COLONISTS AND EXILES

thirty-nine in all, or as another account put it,
one thousand and forty French at the six vil-
lages on the Wabash and the Illinois, as against
two hundred and forty Americans, of which
one hundred and three were at Vincennes and
one hundred and thirty-seven in the Illinois
country^ Roosevelt quotes from a memorial
of the French settlers to Congress for a con-
firmation of the titles to their lands ; their agent
Tardiveau, a French mercantile adventurer,
had relations with the Spanish agents and the
Kentucky separatists. Greneral Harmar, in
taking possession of Vincennes and the French
towns, spoke well of the " Creoles," but said
they could best be governed in the manner to
which they were accustomed, by a commandant
with a few troops. Spnmg as they were from
French soldiers, naturally they preferred a
strong military rule. The American settlers
were almost all soldiers of the Revolutionary
armies, — ^hard-working, orderly men of trained
courage and keen intellect, courteous, indus-
trious and law-abiding. A fortnight after the

* Roosevelt: " Winning of the West," voL iii, pp. 335,
037, 239, S63, 366, 979.

IN THE UNITED STATES

passage of the ordinance of 1787 for the gov-
ernment of the Northwest Territory, the Ohio
Company bought a million and a half acres
north of the Ohio, and three and a half mil-
lions more were authorized to be sold to the
Scioto Company, nominally at seventy cents an
acre, but as payment was made in depreciated
public securities, the real price was only eight
or nine cents an acre. Manasseh Cutler was the
leader in these ventures, and on his first trip up
the Ohio was cared for by a well-to-do Creole
trader from the Illinois, Francis Vigo, who had
welcomed Clark when he took Kaskaskia.

At a dinner given to the officers of Fort
Harmar on July 4, 1787, one of the toasts
was to the King of France. Even in the
Indian wars, the Creoles suffered little at the
hands of the savages. Clark had given the
name of Louisville in honor of that king of
France whose alliance, he hoped, would render
easier the task of winning over the inhabitants
of the Illinois, just as later on Marietta was so
called in honor of Marie Antoinette and to
allure the royalist exiles to Ohio. Earlier al-
ready Patrick Henry, Grovemor of Virginia,

FRENCH COLONISTS AND EXILES

had advised Clark to secure the friendship of
the French, and they stood him in good stead
in rescuing the West from the British. This,
too, made the French towns outposts for the
protection of the settlers. Between the increas-
ing flow from the old States and the attacks
of the British with their French-Canadian and
Indian allies, the old French settlements were
in hard plight. Frenchmen were appointed to
most of the civilian offices, while the military
posts were under Americans. While French^
men, layman and priest, helped the Americans
with money and goods, the French resorted to
punishment of their negroes of such severity as
to shock even the frontiersmen.

Genet's plans to organize an armed expedi-
tion on the Ohio River in 1793-4 to conquer
Louisiana, as Spain was then an ally of Eng-
land and at war with France, found support in
the discontented adventurers of the West, led
by General Clark.® Genet commissioned him
as a major-general in the service of the French
Republic, and sent out various Frenchmen, —

* Roosevelt: "Winning of the West," vol. iv, pp. 176,
18B, 943, 968.

IN THE UNITED STATES

Michaux (nominally on a scientific tour of ex-
ploration), La Chaise, CoUot, and others, with
civil and military titles, — ^to cooperate with
Clark, but the movement collapsed with Genet's
recall. Clark tried to get reimbursement from
the French government for the " expenses of
expedition ordered by Citizen Genet," but of
course without result.

In 1791 the most pitiable group of emi-
grants that reached the West at this time was
formed by the French who came to the town of
Gallipolis, on the Ohio. They were mostly
refugees from the Revolution, who had been
taken in by a swindling land company. They
were utterly unsuited to life in the wilderness,
being gentlemen, small tradesmen, lawyers, and
the like. Unable to grapple with the wild life
into which they found themselves plunged, they
sank into shiftless poverty, not one in fifty
showing industry and capacity to succe^.
Congress took pity on them and granted them
S4,000 acres in Scioto County, the tract being
known as the French Grant; but no gift of
wild land was able to insure their prosperity.

By degrees they were absorbed into the neigh-
31

FRENCH COLONISTS AND EXILES

boring communities, a few succeeding, most
ending their lives in abject failure.

In 1800 Napoleon was planning for France
the reestablishment in America of that colonial
empire which a generation before had been
wrested from her by England. His great am-
bition halted at the tremendous sacrifice of
French troops in the failure of the West-Indian
military expedition, and the great demands of
Bemadotte and Victor as the conditions on
which they would undertake to establish a
French imperial colony in Louisiana, Texas,
and Mexico. ^

In " Mount Desert, a History," by Geo. E.
Street, Boston, 1905, there is a brief sketch of
the efforts towards French colonization by
Roberval and La Roche, with reference to
Winsor's " Cartier to Frontenac," and an ac-
count of the organized French colony on the St.
Croix. The French plans of colonization were
made under Henry IV, who in 1699
commissioned Pierre Chauvin to colonize
America, and later gave a like commission to
Du Guast, Sieur de Monts, set forth in Baird's
" Huguenot Emigration to America," vol. i,

IN THE UNITED STATES

pp. 341-7, and in Fiske's " New France and
New England." The colony on Mount Desert
was brought there in 1618, but it was of short
duration. The only trace of it is in the names
given by the French. In 1688 Mount Desert
was granted to Cadillac by Louis XIV ; he made
a short stay there, going later to Mackinac and
then to Detroit and finally to Louisiana as
Governor, 1712-17, and leaving his name con-
nected with points in eight of the present States
of the Union. Parkman's *^ Frontenac " and
Margry's " Relations et Memoirs Inedits *'
give particulars of his fiwjtive career. The Baron
de St. Castine settled on the site of the present
town of Castine, Maine, and left a family of
half-breed children, who were driven off by the
English, and all trace of them is lost after
their retmm to France. In 1786 the Gregoires
as descendants, on the wife's side, of Cadillac,
obtained from Massachusetts a grant of land
on the west side of Mt. Desert Island, settled
at what is now called Hull's Cove, built a house
and mill and began to farm. The husband
died in 1810, the wife in 1811, and the children
returned to France and were lost sight of. The
3 33

FRENCH COLONISTS AND EXILES

French colonies on Mt. Desert were short
lived but are recalled there by the recently
erected cross as a memorial of their landing at
St. Sauveur. Their early explorations of the
coast of New England have of late years been
republished and their maps have an historical
interest and are remarkably accurate.

French Colonies in Louisiana

Fobtieb's History of Louisiana is written
by one whose family settled in New Orleans
shortly after its foundation in 1718. He
naturally takes pride in delating the history of
the events on the soil of Louisiana for the last
two hundred years, for in nearly all of them
men of his name or blood took part. La Salle
gave the name of Louisiana in 1679, in honor
of Louis XIV, and in 1682 took formal posses-
sion in the king's name, planting a cross and
burying a leaden plate with a record of the
fact. He established Fort St. Louis among
the Illinois, and after an interview with the
King, brought out, in 1684, soldiers, me-
chanics, laborers, volunteers, several families,
and a number of girls, his brother who was a
Sulpician priest, with others of that order,
and three Recollet friars. On his way from

what is now Texas, where he landed by mistake
35

FRENCH COLONISTS AND EXILES

at Matagorda Bay, which he took for one of
the mouths of the Mississippi, to Canada, to
get help for his colony, he was killed by his
companions in 1687, thus wrecking his plans,
and leaving it for Iberville and Bienville to
found Louisiana. They landed in 1699, built
a fort, manned it, and named the two lakes
Maurepas and Pontchartrain, in honor of the
Ministers under whose auspices he had made
his expedition. A geologist, Lesueur, went
out in search of minerals. Iberville, on his
third and last voyage, found only one hundred
and fifty persons in the colony. More than
sixty had died. He sent his brother Bienville
to found another colony on Mobile River. In
1704 he reported one hundred and eighty men
bearing arms, twenty-seven French families,
some slaves, four ecclesiastics, eighty wooden
houses, nine oxen, fourteen cows, four bulls,
five calves, one hundred hogs, three goats, four
hundred chickens. A census of 1706 gives the
names of the settlers with the number of their
families, making eighty-two in all, and a list of
the cattle, forty-six head in all. In 1708 a
report gave the population as composed of a
36

IN THE UNITED STATES

garrison of one hundred and twenty-two per-
sons, including priests, workmen and boys, one
hundred and fifty-seven inhabitants, men,
women, and children, besides sixty wandering
Canadians and eighty Indian slaves, and four-
teen himdred hogs, two thousand chickens, and
about one hundred head of cattle.

In 1712 Louisiana was granted to Crozat
for fifteen years, and Cadillac, the founder of
Detroit, was made governor, but was soon re-
moved. In 1717 the colony contained seven
hundred, of all ages, sexes, and colors. In
1710 Mobile was founded, and in 1717 three
companies of infantry and fifty settlers came.
In that year Crozat surrendered his charter
and the colony was given to John Law, who
made it part of his Company of the Indies. In
1718 Bienville as governor, founded New
Orleans. In 1721 the colony numbered about
six thousand, including six hundred negroes.
In 1722 New Orleans was made the capital, and
Charlevoix said it had about one hundred huts,
a large store, and a few other buildings, yet he
predicted a brilliant future. Le Page du

Pratz in his History of Louisiana (Paris,
37

FRENCH COLONISTS AND EXILES

1768), gives his own personal experience dur-
ing his stay in the colony from 1718 to 1734«.
Dumont, who was twenty-two years in Louisi-
ana, gave an account of the colony in his book,
and the archives of the Colonial Office in Paris
contain frequent census returns, showing the
condition of the colony in 1721, 1728, 1726,
1727, and its increase in numbers and pros-
perity, in spite of Indian wars, mismanage-
ment by the home government, and troubles of
the local authorities. Then came the cession to
Spain, in 1764, and in 1766 the French left
Fort Chartres, in the territory ceded to Great
Britain, crossed the Mississippi, and foimded
St. Louis, the first settlement of what is now
Missouri. Then came the Acadians, refugees
from British oppression, who in time became
a source of wealth to Louisiana by their indus-
try. L'Abbe Casgrain estimates their descend-
ants as numbering one hundred thousand. With
the cession to Spain, the colony lost its pros-
perity, and after fruitless appeals to France
there was a short-lived revolution, for the
population of less than twelve thousand, of
whom half were slaves, could not resist the

IN THE UNITED STATES

power of Spain. It gave Louisiana the glory
of haying thought of establishing a republican
form of government in America in 1768, eight
years before the Declaration of Independence.
It ended in punishment of the leaders by death,
imprisonment, exile, and confiscation, that left
Spain unpopular.

Although under Spanish rule, Louisiana,
through the successful campaign of Galvez
against the English and his capture of Pensa-
cola with the surrender of English and Waldeck
troops, can proudly boast of having aided the
Americans in the war for Independence of the
United States. In 1785 a number of Aca-
dians came to Louisiana at the expense of the
King of France and were settled through the
country. It was Bor^, bom at Kaskaskia, in
the Illinois district, in 1741, of an old Norman
family, educated in France at a military school,
and settling in Louisiana in 1768, who success-
fully introduced the sugar industry there.

In 1798 Louis Philippe and his brothers

visited New Orleans and were received with

great cordiality, one of the richest men of the

colony, Poydras, loaning them money. In
39

FRENCH COLONISTS AND EXILES

1800 Berthier, who had served under Rocham-
beau, made on behalf of Napoleon the treaty
of St. Ildef onso, confirmed by a later treaty at
Madrid signed by Lucien Bonaparte, by which
Louisiana became again a French colony.
Later, in 1803, Rochambeau (the son) sur-
rendered St. Domingo to the blacks, and many
exiles went to Louisiana, to join their friends
who had already taken refuge there. Bema-
dotte was appointed captain-general of Louisi-
ana, but as he demanded three thousand soldiers
and as many agriculturists, Bonaparte declared
he would not do as much for one of his brothers,
appointed Bernadotte Minister to the United
States, an office he declined, and General Victor
was made captain-general and Laussat colonial
prefect, — the former with a salary of 70,000
francs, the latter 50,000, — ^but the expedition
to Louisiana was abandoned, Victor never
sailed, and all he did was to draw his salary
and issue a bombastic proclamation.

Pontalba, who left a memoir on Louisiana,
was born in New Orleans in 1754, educated in
France, served under Noailles and D'Estaing
at the siege of Savannah in 1779, resigned and

IN THE UNITED STATES

returned to New Orleans in 1784. Pontalba
submitted to Napoleon a memoir on Louisiana,
in which he said: "In the hands of France,
the colony must be called to the most brilliant
destiny, and be a source of riches for the
metropolis. Almost >a11 the Louisianians are
bom French or are of French origin. They
would again become French with enthusiasm.
The deficit of $337,000 will be covered in a
few years merely by the progress of the sugar
plantations. People it, it will become an inex-
haustible source of wealth for France." This
memoir, dated Paris, 29 Fructidor, year IX
(September 15, 1801), was presented to
General Bonaparte by Decrfes, after the treaty
of 1800 conveyed Louisiana back to France.
Laussat reached New Orleans in March,
1803, and issued a proclamation that said:
** Your separation from France marks one of
the most shameful epochs of her annals, under
a government already weak and corrupt, after
an ignominious war, and as the result of a
shameful peace," and received a simple and
dignified address in reply, signed by the prin-
cipal inhabitants, followed by one from the

FRENCH COLONISTS AND EXILES

planters, full of gratitude for the return to
France. Yet on. April 80, 1803, the treaty
ceding Louisiana to the United States was
signed in Paris. Laussat had denounced the
report as an impudent and incredible falsehood
to assist the partisans of Jefferson !

The transfer was made on November 80,
1808, with solemn ceremonies, — ^Laussat and
the Spanish general exchanged civilities, and
the former finally handed Louisiana over to the
United States Commissioners on December SO,
1803. Napoleon was largely guided by Decrfes,
who had served in the French army in the
American War of Independence, and Barb^
Marbois, who had been the French diplomatic
representative in this country, and had an
American wife (Miss Moore of Chester County,
Pennsylvania). He wrote a History of Louis-
iana and tells the story of Napoleon's decision,
to enable him to wage war in Europe against
England with American money.

Laussat left " Memoirs," printed at Paris

in 1831, from which Professor Fortier has

drawn much interesting material. The French

flag was escorted by a company of fifty French
42

IN THE UNITED STATES

citizens, who had served in the French army,
from the beginning of the Revolution, and tears
were shed when the French flag disappeared
from the shores of Louisiana. There were some
signs of hostility between French and Ameri-
cans, but these soon ceased. Robin, who was
also present, wrote a book in which he makes a
record of his own observations of the cession,
and his voyage to Louisiana is of interest and
value from the period of his visit.

Professor Fortier gives the dates of the
French settlements in the Illinois country and
upper Louisiana : old Kaskaskia in the " terres-
trial paradise " at the end of the Seventeenth
Century ; Fort Chartres in 1720, nearby Caho-
kia, Prairie du Rocher, etc., Kaskaskia with a
college and monastery of the Jesuits in 1721,
chartered in 1726; Vincennes in 1785; St.
Louis in 1764«, by Chouteau, with thirty men,
increased in 1765 by families leaving the coun-
try ceded to the British. It remained prac-
tically French even after the cession to
Spain.

Among the noteworthy Frenchmen who took

FRENCH COLONISTS AND EXILES

part in the battle of New Orleans was General
Humbert, who was a brigadier in the French
army, served in Vendue, was in 1798 com-
mander-in-chief of the French expedition to
Ireland, later took part in the unfortunate
expedition to St. Domingo, lost the favor of
Napoleon, came to New Orleans, where he
taught school; in 1816 went to Mexico to fight
for its independence, but was unsuccessful, and
returned to New Orleans, where he died in 18S3.
Latour, of the French Polytechnic School, was
one of the principal engineers of Jackson's
army. Lefebvre, a soldier of the Republic
under Bonaparte, served the mortars. Gren-
eral Moreau had suggested the points of de-
fence. Lakanal, the conventionnel, was princi-
* pal of the College of Orleans ; he came to the
city of New Orleans after the restoration of
the Bourbons, proscribed as a regicide. Con-
gress made him a grant of land, and he lived
on a farm on Mobile Bay, until he returned to
France, in 1887, where he died in 1845, hon-
ored for his work in science.

The Hunter Dunbar expedition up the
Washita in 1804 found two large land grants ;

IN THE UNITED STATES

located on the Washita, that of the Marquis de
Maison Rouge and twelve leagues square above
it, that of the Baron de Bastrop.

In 1804 Robin, a French traveller (he pub-
lished his account in Paris in 1807), said the
American government was doing nothing to
advance American settlement. The forest
Americans (backwoodsmen) were not com-
parable to the robust French as emigrants.^
All the early American expeditions were ma-
terially helped by French settlers, trappers,
etc. In 1806 two Frenchmen from Illinois,
Lalande and Durocher, and later, in 1806,
three more joined Pike's expedition and gave
him much useful information.^

The Chouteau family enjoyed for twenty
years the exclusive privilege (from the Spanish
and French government) of trading up the
Osage River, before Pike came to the Osage
country in 1806. It was through French
traders that he learned of the safe return of
Lewis and Clark to St. Louis from their epoch-

* Robin's Travels, vol. iii, p. 141.
*Cox: The Early Exploration of Louisiana, pp. 13,
etc. University of Cincinnati Press, 1906.
45

FRENCH COLONISTS AND EXILES

making expedition. Perrin du Lac in his
Travels says: In 1801 he found in Elizabeth-
town, New Jersey, a number of French refugees
from St. Domingo and Guadeloupe. Near
Harrisburg he met a Frenchman who had been
by turn, soldier, merchant, government em-
ployee, musician, and was earning his living as
a dancing master.

At Gallipolis he found a hundred and sixty
people, all that were left of six hundred families
emigrated from France in 1790-91, only to find
that the Scioto Company had sold them land
to which it had no title. After four years of
misery Congress gave them land sixty miles
from Gallipolis, but most of the owners sold
it for nominal prices, while a few remained in
poverty at Gallipolis.

Perin says that it is due to the Baron de
Carondelet, the Spanish governor of Louisiana,
that acknowledgment be made him for his suc-
cessful opposition to the establishment of the
Inquisition, urgently solicited by the Bishop.
In "Louisiana: A Record of Expansion,'*
by Albert Phelps (American Commonwealths,
New York, 1906), there are references to the
46

IN THE UNITED STATES

" First French Settlements in Louisiana," and
the foundation of Mobile in 1701 by Bienville
under Iberville's orders, from Hamilton's
" Colonial Mobile," and Margry's collections.
It was under Law's vast grant and powers
that the full tide began to reach Louisiana.
The emigrants, hurried out to fill seignorial
grants, began to arrive in swarms. The
first three shiploads arrived in 1718. The
colony responded to the European enthu-
siasm. In June three hundred colonists for the
Mississippi arrived ; one hundred and fifty-one
of these were sent to the Natchez; eighty-two
to the Yazoos, and sixty-eight to New Orleans.
Ship after ship came in • loaded with set-
tlers ; in August, 1718, there had arrived eight
hundred in three ships, and among them Le
Page du Pratz, the first historian of Louisiana.
One hundred were sent to the Illinois, others
to the Mississippi, to Bay St. Louis, Biloxi,
and Mobile.

Later on, under Spanish rule, the governor,
Carondelet, encouraged the immigration of
French royalists fleeing from the horrors of the
Revolution, welcoming them as an offset to the

FRENCH COLONISTS AND EXILES

Republicans, who, encouraged by " Citizen *'
Grenet and his emissaries, from Philadelphia,
had set on foot plans for the recapture of
Louisiana for France. On the Washita
(Ouachita) River he granted twelve square
leagues to the Baron de Bastrop ; thirty thou-
sand acres to the Marquis de Maison Rouge,
and ten thousand square arpents to De Lassus
and St. Vrain. These concessions were not
settled by the proprietors, but they were
destined to play a part in the famous scheme
of Aaron Burr some years later. In 1797
Carondelet was made uneasy by the presence
of the French General Collot, who had been
making maps and plans and inspecting the
miniature forts near New Orleans. He ar-
rested Collot and sent him to Philadelphia on
the rumor that France was eager to regain
Louisiana and that Collot had been sent to
reconnoitre the ground.

Gayarr6 in " A Louisiana Sugar Plantation
of the Old Regime " (Harper^s Magazme,
March, 1887), gives a complete picture of a
typical Louisiana plantation in the old days

before American control. It was the planta-

IN THE UNITED STATES

tlon of Etienne de Bor6, the patron saint of
Louisiana sugar planters. The table was
free to every white traveller, even the humblest
wayfarer. T^ie Bore plantation was typical of
all the large plantations of sugar, cotton,
indigo, and tobacco.

The incident of the single attempt to estab-
lish the Holy Inquisition in Louisiana is typical
of the kindly tolerance of the French Creoles.
In 1789 the Spanish Capuchin Antonio de
Sedella, under the new policy of the bigoted
Carlos rV, was appointed emissary of the In-
quisition to Louisiana. His portrait is in the
Cathedral — a tall, gaunt figure. He had his
agents and his implements of torture, and
made his investigations with secrecy and cau-
tion. Apparently when his first victims had
been chosen, he applied to Governor Mir6 for
a file of soldiers that he might need. Mir6
sent the soldiers, not, however, to assist
the Holy Office, but to arrest the representative
of the Inquisition and pack him oiF to Spain,
with a bold justification of his act, " lest the
mere name of the Inquisition uttered in New

Orleans would check immigration, which is
4 49

FRENCH COLONISTS AND EXILES

successfully progressing, and would drive away

those who have recently come." Father Sedella

returned to Louisiana, and remained for many

years the most beloved of priests ; when he died,

in 1829, the whole city mourned for him —

hermit, saint, friend of the people.

In the War of 1812 Great Britain counted

on the help of the great number of refugees

from Jamaica, St. Domingo, Guadeloupe, and

other West Indian islands. It was hoped

they might be induced to assist the British

invasion, and that the contraband traders and

smugglers might be employed as ejf ective

auxiliaries. The latter, known by the general

name of Baratarians, were daring men,

refugees from the French West Indies, who

under letters of marque from France and from

the young republic of Carthagena, preyed

upon British commerce as privateers. Some

time about the year 1809 there had come to

New Orleans from Bayonne or Bordeaux the

brothers Pierre and Jean Lafitte. They were

soon known as the chief agents of the Bara-

tarian smugglers. Jean Lafitte acquired such

an ascendency over them that his orders re-
50

IN THE UNITED STATES

ceived instant obedience, while he maintained
his place among the quiet citizens of New
Orleans. Gayarre's Historical Sketch of Pierre
and Jean Lafitte gives an exhaustive account
of their strange career. Latour in his His-
torical Memoir confirms their services to Gren-
eral Jackson in his defence of New Orleans.
He found the Baratarians men after his own
heart, accepted Jean Lafitte's offer of trained
gunners, and promised to obtain pardon for
them from the President. They manned the
forts, and the two chief batteries were given
to Dominique Yon and Beluche, with their fel-
low pirates and some veteran gunners of the
French army. General Humbert was one of
Jackson's active aids. The victory of the 8th
of January was thus largely due to French-
men and to the French Creoles, descendants
of the early settlers, who thus attested their
fidelity to the government of the United States.

Ill

The Huguenot Settlers

Bai&d tells the sad story of the early attempt
to settle a French colony in Florida, in the
Seventeenth Century. Ribaut was chosen by
Coligny to lead the first expedition. He landed
near Beaufort, South Carolina; returning to
France and entering the Huguenot ranks, he
led, at the suggestion of Coligny, the third
expedition, which ended in his murder by the
Spaniards. Laudonniere led the second expe-
dition, but was superseded by Ribaut.

Baird gives in great detail the names of the
Huguenot refugees who sought and found
shelter in the American colonies, from Maine
to South Carolina. Many of the descendants
are still foun^ in the United States, often
with names dhanged, yet easily recognizable.
Among them were clergymen, men of educa-
tion and attainments, some who had held im-
portant positions in France; others were

FRENCH COLONISTS AND EXILES

mariners, merchants and tradesmen, and arti-
sans, and their new home profited by their
virtues.

Francis Marion, the brave soldier in the
American War of Independence, was the
worthy descendant of a Huguenot exile. Paul
Revere is another Huguenot name famous in
American heroic history. Faneuil Hall in
Boston perpetuates another. Of others, the
history of America has examples in famous
soldiers and great sailors, in statesmen, in
bishops and noted clergymen, — ^indeed, in every
walk of life the descendants of Huguenots
exiled to America have strengthened the his-
toric ties between France and the United States.

The Le Contes have rendered notable services

to natural science in successive generations.

Rhode Island welcomed some of the Huguenot

exiles, and Penn invited others to his province.

All of the American colonies were anxious to

secure the Huguenots as settlers, and they

came both as individuals and in quite large

bodies. In New Rochelle they secured a tract

of land and built a church and endowed it

with a glebe, and to this day the French lan-
63

FRENCH COLONISTS AND EXILES

guage is used in the Huguenot Church in
Charleston, South Carolina, in pious rev-
erence.

Many hundreds, aided by generous grants
from the crown, came to Virginia and suflFered
no little hardship from the unscrupulous land-
owners and speculators. Those who came to
New England fared better, and more than re-
turned by their prosperity the help extended
to them. They were successful merchants and
sturdy fighters and patriotic citizens, and
names such as Bowdoin, Faneuil, and Revere,
are typical of the addition to New England
of the French Huguenots as an element of good
in its growth and development.

A monument erected in 1884 perpetuates the
memory of the Huguenot settlers in Oxford,
then a frontier town in Massachusetts, and the
story of their hardships is preserved in many
records. It was not until 1721 that the set-
tlement was finally broken up and its tract of
twenty-five hundred acres sold. Of the settlers
the Sigoumeys, the Bowdoins, the Dupuys and
others joined the families living elsewhere, and
Hartford and New York and Newport and

IN THE UNITED STATES

New Rochelle welcomed this addition to their
number.

The early settlers in East Greenwich, Rhode
Island, in a locality still known as Frenchtown,
were soon scattered by quarrels of the claid^ants
for the land and by unfair treatment, Baird
prints a " Mapp of the [lands of the] French
Refugee Gentlemen who are all turned out by
the Road Islanders,*' reproduced from the orig-
inal prepared by Ayrault in a petition for
redress, still in the British State Paper Office.
Ayrault's name is perpetuated in a street in
Newport, where his son removed. Others
joined their fellow Huguenots in more flourish-
ing colonies, but Providence and Bristol and
Newport still bear in pious memory the good
done by those who remained in Rhode Island.
The story of the Huguenots in America, as
told by Baird and in many local and family
histories, is a very interesting and important
chapter in the varied history of the French
settlers in the United States. It shows how
valuable an element was thus infused into the
varied streams that have gathered together in

the people of the great republic.
55

FRENCH COLONISTS AND EXILES

A French Protestant church was established
in New York in the Seventeenth Century.
French Huguenot refugees took up a tract of
six thousand acres near that city, at New
Rochelle, a name suggesting their old home in
France. One hundred acres were set apart for
the endowment of a church, and of the ninety
members many of the names are still familiar in
New York, while these again are often perpetu-
ated in the streets of the city. In 1724 a
quarrel in the Huguenot Church in New York
became matter of record in its Documentary
History, nearly a hundred men and women
members of the congregation signing for one
side, with only eight on the other, but these
including the pasteur, FAnsien [*«cr], and six
of the consistory. In 1761-62 the members
of the French Church at New Rochelle are on
record as petitioners to Governor Colden, recit-
ing that in 1681 their land was granted to
them.^

^Registers of the Births, Marriages and Deaths of
the Frendi Church in New York from 1688 to 1804. —
Collections of the Huguenot Society of New York,
▼ol. i. New York, 1886.

IN THE UNITED STATES

The first French service was held in New
York in 1628. In 1623 thirty famiKes of
Walloon or French came to the Delaware, to
Connecticut, and up the Hudson. Additions
came in 1625 and 1626, and between 1628 and
1688, and between 1648 and 1658. Many of
the descendants became leading citizens and
some of them important men in the history of
the United States.

Stapleton's " Memorials of the Huguenots
in America, with special reference to their
Emigration to Pennsylvania,'* Carlisle, Penn-
sylvania, 1901, is supplementary to Baird's
"Huguenot Eknigration to America," and
mentions the contributions 4:o a knowledge of
their settlements in Pennsylvania, Virginia,
New England, and South Carolina. In Charles-
ton, South Carolina, their memory is kept alive
by the French service in the Huguenot Church.
In New York and in New England the names
of the Huguenot settlers are still familiar in
Bowdoin, Revere, and many others well known.
In Pennsylvania there were many settlers of
French Huguenot faith. The first distinct
settlement was that led by Mme. Ferree

FRENCH COLONISTS AND EXILES

to a large tract of land bought by her in Lan-
caster County in 1709. Her son and her son-
in-law, Isaac Lefever, settled in Pequea, and
their names and descendants are now widely
scattered. In 171S Isaac de Turk settled near
Oley in Berks County, and he and his fellow
French settlers through their numerous de-
scendants maintained their native language
down to quite recent times. The lists of emi-
grants given in the Pennsylvania Archives con-
tain many names of French families coming
to Pennsylvania in 17S6 and on for a number
of years, from Alsace and Lorraine. Their
sons won distinction as soldiers in the War of
Independence, and in important civil posts.
In Delaware and in Maryland there were nu-
merous French settlers, notably the Bayards.
Of the Du Ponts the earliest was a settler on
the Santee in South Carolina in 1694. His
grand-nephew, Pierre Samuel Du Pont de
Nemours, an active Girondist in France, and
well known by his writings as an economist
and by his activity in public life, followed his
sons, who had established industries on the
Brandywine that have made them famous.

IN THE UNITED STATES

From this family sprung Admiral Du Pont and
General Du Pont and other useful citizens.
Among Penn's early settlers were some French,
and very good citizens they were. The Doz,
De la Val, Du Cfiistle, Reboteau, of the Isle du
Rhe, Imbert of Nisme, Le Chevalier of Nor-
mandy, Boudinots, Duch^s of La Rochelle,
Benezet of Montpellier, all are well known.
The Cressons were from Picardy, the Gar-
rigues from Montpellier, and the Cassers from
Languedoc. The records of Christ Church
and of the Lutheran churches of Philadelphia
are full of the names of these early French
Huguenot settlers and their families. In Grer-
mantown were the Le Bruns, De la Plaines, an/1
later the Duvals, Clapiers, and many others,
and Duval Street and Clapier Street still per-
petuate their old homes. In the Perkiomen and
Lower Schuylkill valleys were Boyers, De
Frains or De Fresnes, Pechins, Purviances,
Tregos, Dubois, La Barres, Le Quais, De la
Cours, Bigonets, Loreaux, who became Lorah;
Le Char, Leshers ; Retteaus, Rettew ; Perdeaus,
Barto; while in the rich Oley Valley of Berks
County were De Turks, Bertolets, De Bonne-
59

FRENCH COLONISTS AND EXILES

villesy De Vaus, De la Planch, now Planks;
while nearer Reading settled Dubrees, Boiliens,
Tonnelliers, who became Eieffers, and in this
as in many other cases the French origin was
almost lost. In the upper Delaware and Le-
high country are found De Normandie,
Bessonet, Le Valleau, De Pue, now De Pew;
Michelet, later Mickle; Jourdan, Santee, from
Burgundy; Boileau, Balliet, from Languedoc;
while in Lancaster County among the eeurly set-
tlers were French traders, Bezillion, Chartiers,
Leborty Perrines, Mathiots, Le Roys, De Bos,
as well as many later comers.

The records of the churches of all the many
sects settled in Pennsylvania are full of names
showing the French origin of many of the
mefmbers. The Le Beaus are now Lebos, the
B6sores are Bashore and Baysore, according to
the county they lived in, Berks or Franklin.
In Lebanon the Jacques became Jacobs; in
Dauphin, De Saussier became Sausser ; Monier
from Lorraine, Money; Grosjean, Groshong;
and Souplis, Suplee. Across the Susquehanna
in York were Perots, who became Berrot ; Dou-

tel, Dutill; Votturin of Lorraine, Woodring;
60

IN THE UNITED STATES

Moreau, Morrow ; St. Oris, Sangree ; La Mothe,
Lamott; and the Cessnas and Piatts are among
the descendants of French Huguenot settlers.
In Western Pennsylvania axe Cassatts (orig-
inally Cassart), Bonnetts, Marchands, Leis-
ures, Mestrezats, relatives of Albert Gallatin;
Brunot; Dreyvault, now Dravo; Fortineaux,
now Fortny; Boucquet became Buckey; Mot-
tier, Motter; and from Peftinsylvania through
Maryland into Virginia these families are
found. Even of the poor Acadian exiles some
were left in Pennsylvania, and often their
names were changed out of all resemblance to
the French originals, just as the Custom House
officers wrote the names of immigrants on the
lists printed in the Pennsylvania Archives, in
a way that makes it very puzzling to identify
now. More to be proud of than noble ancestry,
are the names of such men as Audubon, Bay-
ard, Benezet, Dupont, Duponceau, Gallaudet,
Gallatin, and others of French birth or descent,
who have served their country with honor.

An early French settlement on the upper
Delaware in Pennsylvania was that of Nicholas

Dupuy, in 1725, and a deed for three thousand
61

FRENCH COLONIS'rS AND EXILES

acres from the Indians in 17S7 was confirmed
by a patent from the Proprietors, the Penns,
and their grantee, William Allen. Another
early French settlement in that neighborhood
was that of the La Barre, Le Barre, or La Bar
family, in 1780. This name is still honorably
preserved and distinguished by descendants.

In 1794 Fran9ois Vannier of St. Domingo
bought land in Monroe County, Pennsylvania.
In 1816 Constantine Pinchot of Bretielle,
France, settled with his son Cyrille on a tract of
four hundred acres near Milford, Pike County,
Pennsylvania, still known locally as the French
lot. His descendants still own the land, and
have shown a capital example of the success of
French thrift and intelligence. One of the de-
scendants is the head of the Forestry Bureau
of the United States, and has by word and deed
done an infinite service by his skill and intelli-
gence in the cause of preserving and restoring
the wealth of American timber.

Fauchere, Le Clerck, Boumique, Loreaux,
are among the names of later French settlers
on the upper Delaware, and some of the de-
scendants still live and prosper there. In the

IN THE UNITED STATES

western part of Pennsylvania, once a French
territory, there cure still traces of the early
French settlements, both in place names, such
as Fort Du Quesne in Pittsburg, and in the
names of descendants of those whose nation-
ality was transferred from France to Great
Britain and then to the United States.

^s^rs 9^^ ^s^(S ^s^is "s^^

e^^9 e^M e^^9 e^^9 e^o^s

French Soldiers in the United States

Many of the French soldiers who served in
the American Revolution returned to France
and left more or less interesting memoirs. The
Swedish Count Fersen tried to save Marie
Antoinette, and in his old age lost his life in
an outbreak in Stockholm. The Marquis
Armand de la Rouariei who as Colonel Armand,
led a cavalry regiment under Washington, be-
came a noted chief of the loyalists in Brittany,
and his romantic story is told with great fulness
of detail in recent books. Others became very
noted French generals and statesmen. Many
of the French officers who served with Rocham-
beau have left notes of the impression made on
them by Washington. " He has," says Fersen,
^^ the air of a hero, his figure fine and majestic,
his manner gentle and kindly, his smile agree-
able, his welcome simple and dignified.'' Segur

says : ^^ He inspired, rather than commanded,
64

FRENCH COLONISTS AND EXILES

respect;" Lauzun has only praise for his mod*
eration, and Lafajette entrusted his son to him
as to a * second father. The Rochambeaus,
father and son, handed down as heirlooms the
portrait of Washington that he had presented,
and the guns taken at Yorktown which he gave
them as trophies, and the sword he had ex-
changed with the older soldier. Of the French
officers who served in America, Lauzun, Due de
Grontaut Biron, served France in its wars only
to end his life on the scaffold. Berthier became
Prince of Wagram, Dumas a general under
Napoleon.

ChasteUux not only served with distinction
under Rochambeau, but his " Travels in 1780-
82 '• furnish the first really trustworthy record
of life in the United States, as jotted down by
a cultivated European, who had helped them to
gain their independence, and thus he rendered
a twofold service.

Even " Tom " Paine brought with him to
this country his Paris host, Bonneville, and his
family, and one of the sons became an officer
of distinction in the United States army.
Washington Irving wrote an account of Bonne-
5 65

FRENCH COLONISTS AND EXILES

ville's Western explorations. In doing this he
paid tribute to John Jacob Astor, whose purse
contributed very largely to the expense of this
and other early Western explorations, and even
if he did it with a view to later commercisd
dealings, both gift and motive did him credit.
Colonel Bonneville was not the first of the name
to do good service in America. An earlier De
Bonneville served as an engineer in the old
French War in 1768, and published in 1771 a
book on America. The younger Bonneville,
bom in France in 1796, was appointed to West
Point, graduated in 1816, and in 1881-3 was
engaged in explorations in the Rocky Moun-
tains and California. His journal, edited and
amplified by Washington Irving, was published
in 1887. He was brevetted for gallantry in
the Mexican War, and later for long and faith-
ful services through the Civil War ; he was the
oldest officer on the retired list at the time of
his death. Washington Irving met him at Mr.
Astor's, through whose generous help both
profited, and Irving edited his manuscript
notes, and published his Travels to the Rocky
Mountains, in Philadelphia, through Carey,
66

IN THE UNITED STATES

Lea and Blanchard, in 1837, as in some sort a
supplement to his Astoria, in which he gave
an account of Astor's unsuccessful efforts to
establish trade with Oregon and the then un-
known West.

The Comte de Paris and the Prince de
Joinville not only showed their earnest sym-
pathy for the Union by brief service in arms
for it, but the former made a real contribution
to military history by that of the Civil Wfiur,
and the latter contributed a short account of
the Army of the Potomac from actual personal
observation. On both sides in the great
struggle there were French soldiers, in some
cases whole regiments from New York and
companies from New Orleans and Louisiana,
and all gave a good proof that the old Gallic
spirit had endured even in their new homes and
in spite of years of peace and harmony.

The Society of the Cincinnati in both the
United States and in France keeps alive the
memories of the alliance between France and
the United States, and the successful issue of
the long struggle for independence. But apart
from these historic events, there were many
67

FRENCH COLONISTS AND EXILES

Frenchmen to whom the United States is in-
debted. L'Enf ant laid out the city of Wash-
ington in a way that commands to-day the
admiration of American architects, and it is
by restoring his plans that the National Capi-
tal is to take its place among the great cities
of the world.

Balch's " The French in America '* gives as
among the French officers who returned to this
country to settle, De la Gardette, of the regi-
ment Soissonais; De Beaulieu, of the Armand
Legion, settled at Asylum; Colombe returned
to Philadelphia after being imprisoned with
Lafayette at Olmiitz; Dupetit Thoua^s, in
1796-96 at Asylum, fell at the Battle of the
Nile; Duponceau became a leader of the
Philadelphia Bar; Duportail came to the
United States in 1794, and died at sea while
returning to France in 1804; L'Enfant,
architect, who laid out Washington, died in
Maryland in 1825.

Vicomte de Noailles [Louis Marie] was bom
in Paris in 1756, second son of the Marshal
de Noailles, married his cousin Louise, daugh-
ter of the Due de Noailles, and granddaughter

IN THE UNITED STATES

of D'Aguessau. He was yoiing, handsome, am-
bitious of glory, a patriot. Returning to the
United States, he was active in forwarding,
with Dupetit Thouars, the colony of Asylum
in Pennsylvania. Returning to active service,
he was wounded in a successful naval engage-
ment, and died in Havana January S, 1804.
His grandson was one of the French descend-
ants of the French who served in the American
Revolution, to visit this country on the Cen-
tenary of Yorktown.

Major L'Enfant, author of the plan of the
City of Washington, D. C, has been properly
described as a neglected genius. Fortimately
the wheel of fortune has recently turned in his
favor, and the great architects of our own day
have paid tribute to his memory by adopting
his plans as the basis for the improvements now
under way, to make Washington a metropolis
worthy of the nation and suitable for its
capital. Bom in Paris in 1754r, he came to
America in 1777, with Du Coudray, the French
engineer, served as a volunteer, was commis-
sioned a captain of engineers in the United
States army, was attached to the light infantry

FRENCH COLONISTS AND EXILES

in the Army of the South, led the advance in
the assault on Savannah under Lincoln, and
was wounded at the head of his force; was
made prisoner at the siege of Charleston, South
Carolina, and later was exchanged for Captain
V. Heyden of the Anspach Yagers, and served
as engineer luider Washington. He received
a pension from the King of France and a brevet
as major from Congress. He remodelled the
City Hall in New York for the use of Congress,
and in acknowledgment received the thanks of
the corporation, the freedom of the city, and a
grant of ten acres of city land, which he de-
clined. In 1789 he wrote to Washington of
the importance of a plan for the city of Wash-
ington worthy of the nation, and of the protec-
tion of the seacoast as a matter of nations^ im-
portance. He was appointed to prepare the
plans for the city of Washington, and although
for many years their execution was postponed
and marred by the interference of less compe-
tent hands, they have recently been revived
and are now being used, with due recognition,
as the basis for a great and beautiful metro-
politan capital. He died in 18S5 in Prince
70

IN THE UNITED STATES

George's County, Maryland, just beyond the
line of the District of Columbia. To his archi-
tectural genius and engineering skill the United
States owe the plan submitted by L'Enfant in
1791, and adopted by Congress and approved
by Washington, and with its execution now his
fame will be perpetuated In the city of Wash-
ington.

In October, 1778, D'Estaing issued in the
name of Louis XVI a proclamation to all the
"old French" in North America, inviting
them to escape the tyranny of Great Britain
and join the French forces in their help to
secure liberty for aXL Americans.

The French officers by turns paid their re-
spect to Washington. Chastellux, Noailles,
Damas, and others were presented by Lafay-
ette with Laval, Custine, the Deux Fonts broth-
ers, Charlus, Saint Maime, La Corbi^re, and
Washington received them with great hearti-
ness, and spoke to and of them in high praise —
called Duplessis his old acquaintance.

The Vicomte de Noailles in his " Marins et

Soldats Fran9ais en Amerique pendant la

Guerre de PIndependance desEtatsUnis,l778-
71

FRENCH COLONISTS AND EXILES

178S " (Paris, 1908), emphasizes the hearty
welcome given to the French army in Phila-
delphia on its way to Yorktown, and later the
unity between the French engineers in that
force and those in the American army, in their
operations that helped so greatly to the sur-
render of ComwaUis. Du Portail, Du Grouvion,
and Rochefontaine were engineers in the army
under Washington.

He also gives a letter written about Luzerne,
the French Minister to the United States, by
Rochambeau, saying that it was lucky Luzerne
had joined him, for his house in Philadelphia
was struck by lightning, his bed, etc., de-
stroyed by it, and an artillery officer left there
on account of illness, killed, — ^** a great argu-
ment in favor of Mr. Franklin's Conductors, the
owner of the house occupied by Luzerne never
permitting one to be put up, as he was opposed
to Franklin's plan."

D'Autichamp, who was made a brigadier for
his services at Yorktown, was no doubt the
one who later joined in the French colony at
Asylum, Pennsylvania. Noailles mentions

among the French officers of the American war,

IN THE UNITED STATES

De Lau^y, who served as colonel of engineers
in the American army, was in Martinique as
second in command in 1789-91, and came to
Philadelphia as an exile, remaining there until
180S ; returned to France and was put on the
retired list in 1811, and died in Paris in
18S2.

Many of the French officers procured
employment in the United States. Toussard
and Bernard in the army, L'Enfant as archi-
tect and engineer, and others in civil life. One
of the most ambitious efforts was that made
by Quesnay de Beaurepaire, to found an
international Academy of Sciences and Let-
ters, in Richmond, Virginia. It is fully de-
scribed by Professor Herbert B. Adams as fol-
lows: *

^^ The United States Academy, at Rich-
mond, a survival of French influence, was a
very remarkable attempt made in the latter
part of the Eighteenth Century to establish
the higher education in this country upon a

^ Herbert B. Adams: ThomaA Jefferson and the Uni-
versity of Virginia (United States Bureau of Educar
tion. Circular of Information No. 1, 1888).
7S

FRENCH COLONISTS AND EXILES

grand scale. It was an attempt, growing out
of the French alliance with the United States,
to plant in Richmond, the new capital of Vir-
ginia, a kind of French Academy of the Arts
and Sciences, with branch academies in Balti-
more, Philadelphia, and New York, The in-
stitution was to be at once national and inter-
national. It was to be affiliated with the royal
societies of London, Paris, and Brussels, and
with other learned bodies in Europe. It was
to be composed of a president, vice-president,
six counsellors, a treasurer-general, a secretary,
a recorder, an agent for taking European sub-
scriptions, French professors, masters, artists
in chief attached to the academy, twenty-five
resident and one hundred and seventy-five non-
resident associates, selected from the best talent
of the Old World and the New. The Academy
proposed to publish yearly from its own press
in Paris an annual report, to communicate to
France and other countries in Europe a knowl-
edge of the natural products of North America,
and to send specimens of its flora and fauna
abroad. Experts from Pari3 were to be the
teachers. The projector was the Chevalier
74

IN THE UNITED STATES

Quesnay de Beaurepaire, grandson of the great
economist, Quesnay. He came to this coimtry
to aid in the Revolution, and served as captain
in Virginia in 1777-78; he raised sixty thou-
sand francs and had one hundred subscribers.
Their names were printed in a pamphlet issued
in Paris in 1788, showing that he liad support
in Baltimore, Philadelphia, Trenton, Elizabeth,
Newark, and New York, and from Steuben and
other worthies. Franklin's daughter, Mrs.
Bache, wrote to him asking his support to this
scheme ^ for the education of young men after
they have graduated from college.' The cor-
nerstone was laid in Richmond June 24, 1786,
in the presence of local authorities and of a
number of French supporters — Raguet,
Audrin, La Case, Omphery, Noel, Dossi^re,
Bartholomy, Cureau, and Duv^il. He returned
to Paris, secured a favorable report of a com-
mission of the Academy of Science consisting
of La Lande, Thouin, and Lavoisier, certi-
fied by Condorcet, and of the Academy of
Painting, signed by Vemet and others. He
enlisted the interei^ of Beaumarchais, La Fay-
ette, Houdon, Malesherbes, Lavoisier, Luzerne,

FRENCH COLONISTS AND EXILES

Montalembert, and Rochefoucauld in Paris,
and in London of Bancroft, Paine, Dr. Richard
Price, Jonathan Trumbull, Rutledge, Benja-
min West, and Jefferson. Quesnay's plan in-
cluded schools for foreign languages, mathe-
matics, design, ardiitecture, painting, sculpt-
ure, engraving, physics, astronomy, geog-
raphy, chemistry, mineralogy, botany, anat-
omy and natural history. The building was
completed, and later became a theatre, and was
used for the meeting of the Virginia Conven-
tion which, in 1788, ratified the Constitution of
the United States. One professor was ap-
pointed. Dr. John Rouelle, to be mineralogist-
in-chief and Professor of Natural History,
Chemistry, and Botany, but it is doubtful if he
ever came to this country. The French Revo-
lution put a stop to the plan, and all that is
known of it is from the rare copies of Quesnay's
Memoir."

" A French Volunteer in the War of Inde^
pendence'* is the story of the Chevalier de
Pontgibaud (translated by R. B. Douglass,
published by Carrington, Paris, 1897). He

was one of the many French soldiers who had
76

IN THE UNITED STATES

served under Rochambeau, and in his three
visits to this country had abundant opportunity
to contrast the people and the country. He
speaks of the colony at Asylum in Pennsyl-
vania, founded mainly by De NoaiUes, for both
in France and in the United States it attracted
much attention, and the story of the emigrant
settlers, and their hardships, was the subject
of a great deal of discussion. He says that in
1798 six hundred French refugees from St.
Domingo arrived in Philadelphia at the time
of a severe outbreak of yellow fever. The
French ^Patriotic Society contributed eight
hundred dollars and a fund of eleven thousand
dollars was raised for their relief. He men-
tions, too, the a^val in 1798 of a large num-
ber of French refugees with many negroes
from Port au Prince in Philadelphia, and the
effort of General Toussard, then in command
of Fort Mifflin, near the city, to relieve their
distress. Later on he reports that eight vessels
brought two hundred and twenty-seven French
refugees.

Early French Travellers in the
United States

Chateaubeiand came to the United States
in 1791 with a letter to Washington from
the Marquis de la Rouarie, who as Colonel
Armand had borne a creditable part in the
American War of Independence. At that time
there was an increasing emigration from
France to escape the growing violence of the
French Revolution. On the shores of the Ohio
an asylum was opened in the land of liberty to
those who fled from its excesses. Landing in
Baltimore, he went to Philadelphia^ where he
found many exiles from France and St.
Domingo. Chateaubriand, in republication of
his works in his old age, notes the French place
names, dwelt on the county of Bourbon with
its county-seat Paris, in Kentucky, and the town
of Versailles in that State, and the county of

Marengo in Alabama. He quotes P^re du

FRENCH COLONISTS AND EXILES

Creux, a Jesuit "writer, as authority for the
fact that a French colony was estabUshed in
Onondaga, New York, in 1656, and Charle-
voix as mentioning that the missionaries sent
there in 1664 established a French colony in
1668, which was abandoned in 1668, — ^but
these are both doubtful.

Chateaubriand spent only a few months in
the United States, but he drew from earlier
writers, such as the Abbe Raynal, and from
earlier travellers, Bartram and others, much of
the material for his novels, poems, historical
essays, etc. His stay in Baltimore, Philadel-
phia, New York, and Albany, seems to have
left little trace among their usually hospitable
citizens. In Baltimore the Sulpicians have a
tradition from one of their order who was his
fellow passenger from France, that Chateau-
briand tried to convert some of his young men
to the liberalism then fashionable. In Phila-
delphia he presented his letter from Colonel
Armand, of the American Army, but later
known as Marquis de la Rouarie, leader of the
Bretons in their counter-revolution for the
Royalists, and after some delay, owing to
79

FRENCH COLONISTS AND EXILES

Washington's absence in the South, was re-
ceived. He says that Washington was very
incredulous as to the discovery of a northwest
passage, the ostensible object of his visit to
America, but Chateaubriand said : ^^ It is an
easier task than to create a nation, and that
you have done.'' Wfiishington invited him to
dinner and he accepted. He compares Wash-
ington and Bonaparte, much to the advantage
of the great American, who left the United
States as the trophy won by him in battle, while
Bonaparte deprived his country of liberty and
betrayed it, and dying left a name without
blessing. ** Washington," he writes, " was the
representative of the needs, the ideas, the in-
telligence, the opinions of his time; he advanced
the mov^nent of its best intellects ; he sacrificed
everything for his country; his glory is the
common patrimony of growing civilization, his
fame a sanctuary whence flow endless blessings
for the world."

Chateaubriand had seen both Washington

and Bonaparte, and as he suffered at the hands

of the latter for his opposition, was naturally

inclined to find in Washington a much purer,

IN THE UNITED STATES

better and higher type of heroism. Much of
his recollection of his short journey in the
United States is in his Historical Essays. He
made a pilgrimage to Lexington, the first bat-
tle-ground of the American Revolution, and
he descril||l his visit to Niagara with more
poetry than fact. On his way from Albany
through the solitary forests, he found a French-
man, once cook for Rochambeau, teaching the
savage Indians to dance — ^they half naked, with
rings in their noses, feathers in their hair; he
powdered, in full dress, fiddle in hand, and tak-
ing his pay in poultry and bear meat. What
he saw of Niagara is described in his novel,
Atala, but his Travels to the South are largely
drawn from Bartram's and other books. Re-
turned to Philadelphia, he heard of the execu-
tion of the king, and at once returned to France
and then to England, where he began the long
series of books on American subjects that gave
him fame.

More of a poet and a romancer than a

serious statesman or a man of letters, he has

said little that shows how he was impressed

by his short stay in America. He was in

6 81

FRENCH COLONISTS AND EXILES

Baltimore and Philadelphia at a time when
many of his countrymen found refuge there,
but he seems to have been but little with them.
His companions on his travels were Hollanders,
representatives of the large land-owners of that
country. While the PhilosophicaliQjjIociety and
the Binghams in Philadelphia were opening
their doors to the French exiles of all political
opinions — Noailles, Omer Talon, Talleyrand,
Volney, Brissot de Warville, Moreau, and many
others are of record in one way or another —
there is no mention of Chateaubriand, whose
fame was to exceed that of all our other French
visitors.

" A Sketch of the United States from 1800
to 1810," by Chevalier Felix de Beau jour, at
one time consul general of France in the United
States, was not allowed to be published in
France, on the score of its favorable tone
towards Great Britain, but in 1814 a transla-
tion was published in London, with notes, etc,
by William Walton. The editor said the
author's aim was to take from Great Britain
its trade with the United States, and the notes
are intended to correct his hostility to the

IN THir UNITED STATES

English system of trade, so soon to lead to war
with the United States.

General Victor Collot had served with
Rochambeau in the American War of Inde-
pendence, later became governor of Guade-
loupe, until its capture by the English, then
came to Philadelphia, and with his adjutant,
Warin, by authority of Adet, the French Min-
ister to the United States, under an order dated
" Phila. 24th ventose, 4th Year of the Repub-
lic One and Indivisible,'' made a long tour
through North America, of which the account
was not published until 1826, long after the
death of the travellers.

Collot speaks of the few memorials of Jesuits
or other missionaries, written " more than sixty
years since " (his own journey began in 1796),
as the only moniunents which France can pro-
duce of its labors and researches in North
America. His journey took him through
Pennsylvania to the Monongahela and Ohio.
Pittsburg he found a town of one hundred and
fifty houses. Thence he started in his own
boat, purchased at McKeesport, with two
Canadians and three Americans, for New
83

FRENCH COLONISTS AND EXILES

Orleans, and he gives a minute record of his
daily observations. In Marietta he found a
few French families, unfortunate victims of
American land speculation on the part of the
Scioto Company. He blames the French for
their folly in trying to establish a colony with-
out using the least precaution to safeguard
their ownership, but he condemns unqualifiedly
the managers who abandoned the poor settlers.
At Gallipolis there was a population reckoned
at ninety to ninety-five men, and forty to forty-
five women, the wreck of the Scioto community.
Congress granted seven acres to each family,
not sufiicient for their maintenance, and there-
fore they were extremely miserable; the site
unhealthy, the land bad, the houses small log
huts, flanked by three block-houses, the whole
palisaded with great picquets, the place dirty
and the abode of wretchedness. Congress, in
1796, voted each family two hundred and fifty
acres of land near the Little Scioto, as indem-
nity for the suffering, robbery, and murder of
which they had been the victims, through the
carelessness, perfidy, and knavery of the agents
of the Land Company which had brought them

here.

IN THE UNITED STATES

At Louisville he f oiind a suburb laid out by
a French settler; at St. Vincent's, a small
village of one hundred families, the greater
part French, ruined by General Clark during
the last war, as were also the settlements in Illi-
nois. Another small French establishment was
Onia or Oniatenon, a trading point for furs.
On the Mississippi there were French settle-
ments on both banks of the river. At St. Louis
the two hundred French were excellent patri-
ots, all devoted to France, laborers in easy cir-
cumstances, and prosperous merchants, and in
other places near at hand were considerable
settlements of French.

French Exiles in the United States

The records of the Roman Catholic Church
form an important share in the historical col-
lections of that body.

The American Catholic Historical Society
has printed in its Proceedings, the registers
of the churches in Philadelphia, St. Mary's
and St. Joseph's ; in them are the births, mar-
riages, and deaths of many French families,
refugees from St. Domingo and other West
Indian French colonies at their sanguinary
revolutions. Father Cibot, who made some of
these entries, was himself one of the exiles from
St. Domingo. Among the names on these
registers are those of De Serres, Drouillard,
Langlade, Gobert, Balestrier, St. Didier, Petit,
Bauduy, Roseau, Des Cloches, Chaudron, De la
Lande-Ormund (in this case the husband came
from Brittany, the wife from Pondicherry).
This colony of French exiles was long one of
86

FRENCH COLONISTS AND EXILES

the characteristic features of Philadelphia.
Gathered together on Front Street and out
Spruce and Pine as far as Eighth Street, there
were the homes of merchants, doctors, lawyers,
and men of letters.

For years the schools kept by Frenchmen
and women, — ^Picots, Guillous, Segoignes, Bol-
mars, Grellots — ^were the best in the country.
In 1793 the French Benevolent Society was
organized, and on its list of members were the
names of De PIsle, Duval, Clapier, Laval,
Bujac, De la Roche, Gardette, Droz, Brugiere,-
Monges, Garesch^, Dabadie, Maillard, Pintard,
Crousillat, Rodrigues, Dutilh, Deschapelles,
Mazurie, Breuil, Prevost, Besson, Belin, Trou-
bat, Rousseau, Mathieu, Salignac, Laussatt,
and later on such names as Duponceau, Girard,
Thouron, Turreau, Rozet, Vauclain, Laval,
Vanuxem. From that day to this the list at-
tests the presence in Philadelphia of French
families proud of the history of this useful
organization and still continuing its useful and
modest career of benevolence. A sad record
of these exiles is found in the monuments in
St. Mary's Roman Catholic graveyard, to the
87

FRENCH COLONISTS AND EXILES

Melizets, the Laussats, the Lejambres, the
Bouviers, the Bories, the Eeatings, the Tes-
si^res, and others.

In ^^ Reminiscences of Wihnington, Dela-
ware" by E. Montgomery, (Philadelphia,
1851), there is mention of many French exiles
settled there; M. Martel, the tutor of Aaron
Burr's daughter, and Dr. Bayard and Dr.
Capelle, who had served under Lafayette in the
Revolution; I. Isambrie, a soldier under Na-
poleon until his return from Egypt, with his
wife, a native of St. Domingo, — ^he took Mar-
shal Grouchy and Greneral Moreau out on shoot-
ing excursions; Ferdin and Baudry; la Mar-
quise de Sourci; Dr. Didie, the Garesch^
family, Peter Provenchere, a tutor of the Due
de Berri, and his relative the wife of John
Keating of Philadelphia; Mrs. Capron, who
kept a successful school; M. Bergerac, a
teacher, later a professor in St. Mary's College,
Baltimore; M. Sarsney; and with these exiles,
came many colored people, who were respected
for good qualities. Thus in Wilmington, Dela-
ware, too, the later French exiles found shelter,

and many of them employment with the Du-
88

IN THE UNITED STATES

ponts and Garesch^ and Lammots in their
large and important industries. Among the
French settlers in Philadelphia was John
Bouvier, who came in 1808, at fifteen years of
age, with his family, from the south of France.
Quakers, they were warmly welcomed; the
father died of yellow fever, the son became a
printer and later a lawyer, and is well known
by his "Institutes," his Law Dictionary and
other works.

As early as 1808 a colony of French Trap-
pists arrived in Baltimore, and soon made a
home in Adams County, Pennsylvania; thence
going to near Louisville, and making settle-
ments in Kentucky. Among the Roman
Catholic clergy were many Frenchmen, among
them Archbishop Cheverus of Bordeaux, who
was for many years Bishop of Boston, Massa-
chusetts. He kept in touch with his old
parishioners down to the end of his long and
honored life, and he was but one of many
French priests in the United States.

Among the noteworthy , early French priests
was the Rev. Louis Barth de Walbach, of Al-
sace. Bom at Munster in 1764, he arrived in

FRENCH COLONISTS AND EXILES

Baltimore in 1791, and after long years of
active service in the ministry of his church, he
and his brother, General John de WfiJbach, a
veteran of the American War of Independence,
quietly lived in Georgetown College, District of
Columbia, where the former died in 1844!, the
latter in Baltimore, in 1857.

VII

French Settlers and Exiles in South
Carolina ^

The Huguenot emigrants, who arrived in
Charleston, South Carolina, 1680-86, began
their French Church about 1687 on land given
by Ralph Izard; Isaac Mazyck, one of the
earliest and wealthiest of his race, gave gener-
ously to its erection and support.

The prosperity of the Huguenots aroused
the jealousy of their neighbors; many of the
refugees being possessed of considerable prop-
erty in France, had sold it and brought the
money to England. Having purchased large
tracts of land with this money, they settled
in more advantageous circumstances than the
poorer sort of the English emigrants. Hav-
ing clergymen of their own persuasion, for
whom they entertained the highest respect and

*•• Charleston: The Place and the People," by Mrs.
St Julien Ravenel. New York. Macmillan, 1906.
91

FRENCH COLONISTS AND EXn.ES

admiration, they were disposed to encourage
them as far as their narrow circumstances would
permit. The two pastors who accompanied
them were the Reverend Elias Prioleau, of the
Church of Pons in Saintonge, whose grand-
father, a member of the ducal house of Priuli,
had surrendered rank and fortime for the
Protestant faith sixty years before; and the
Reverend Florente Philippe Trouillard. Prio-
leau was dead (his monument may be seen in
the French Protestant Church of Charleston),
but M. Trouillard and his *^ ancien " or elder,
M. Boutelle, petitioned the Proprietors on the
injustice done to their people. The Proprietors
in answer, ordered that the French have equal
justice with Englishmen and enjoy the same
privileges. In 1697 an act was passed making
aliens free of this part of the province and
granting liberty of conscience to all Protes-
tants, with a preamble acknowledging their
loyalty and industry. When in 1706 the
Huguenots outside of the town cast in their lot
with the Episcopal Church, those of Charleston,
having a church with ample endowments, kept
and preserve to this day their own independent
99

IN THE UNITED STATES

organization. In 17S6 the Huguenots estab-
lished in a small way the South Carolina Club,
still in active life, which besides assisting in-
digent widows and orphans, established a school
for boys and girls.

In the Revolutionary War, the Huguenots
furnished such soldiers as Motte, grandson of
the first immigrant of that name; Marion,
Huger, Robert, and many others. In 1792
the French refugees from St. Domingo found
shelter in New Orleans and Charleston, where
they were received with kindness and sympathy.
The townsfolk threw open their houses to re-
ceive the fugitives. Nothing coiild exceed their
courage and cheerfulness. Uncomplaining,
gay, and pathetically grateful, they won the
esteem and respect of their hosts. No one had
cause to repent his hospitality. For their
assistance the city gave $12,500, besides the
proceeds of a concert and many gifts, and the
United States government appropriated $1750.
This help enabled many of them to begin some
occupation ; they would take no more than was
absolutely necessary, and quickly bestirred

themselves for their own support. They were
93

FRENCH COLONISTS AND EXILES

accomplished in music, painting, and the lan-
guages, and pupils were soon found. Some of
the gentlemen were good musicians and entered
the orchestra of the theatre, which greatly
benefited by their skill. Thirteen of the best
teachers in town were refugees. Two of the
schools established by them were long the most
fashionable. In an inferior class, the best
bakers, pastrycooks, dressmakers, hairdressers,
and clearstarchers, were refugees or their chil-
dren, and they were the best dancing-teachers,
too. A few who had some knowledge of busi-
ness became successful merchants, and more
than one was distinguished in medicine. One
of these. Dr. Polony, was the most eminent,
being a member of learned European societies
and a correspondent of Buffon. Seven years
after their arrival, the Due de la Rochefoucauld
Liancourt visited Charleston, and in his Travels
speaks warmly of the gentleness, courtesy and
agreeability of these refugees, and the untiring
kindness and liberality of the citizens, who were
well rewarded by the example of good manners
and accomplishments which embellished society.

The mother of Joseph Jefferson was one of
94

IN THE UNITED STATES

these refugees, and the great actor told the
story of her life and its many vicissitudes in
his autobiography.

In the churchyard of the Roman Catholic
Church are many graves of St. Domingan
refugees, among them those of the daughters
of Count de Grasse, the commander of the
French auxiliary fleet during the Revolution.

In 1825 Lafayette visited Charleston, and
was greeted by Colonel Huger, who had risked
his life in a vain effort to rescue him from
prison. He renewed his acquaintance with the
survivors of his campaigns in the Revolution,
with General Pinckney, and the daughter of
General Greene, and the widow of Colonel
Washington. Later his nephew De Lasteyrie
visited Charleston and married a Charleston
girl, Lafayette Seabrook, named in honor of
his uncle's visit to her parents in 1825. In
the midst of the excitement of nullification in
18SS, a subscription ball was given under the
patronage of Count de Choiseul, for ** poor old
M. FayoUe, who had lost his all in a ship-
wreck," an old St. Domingan refugee, who had

taught half Charleston to dance. Choiseul was
95

FRENCH COLONISTS AND EXILES

for many years French consul at Charleston;
a royalist, his eldest son fell fighting gallantly
as captain of the Louisiana Zouaves in the Civil
War, and the second son became Marquis de
Choiseul.

VIII

French Settlements in the West
AND IN Canada

" Obigine et Progrfes de la Mission du Ken-
tucky" (Paris, 1821), is a pamphlet giving
an encouraging account of the French settled
in that State. Twenty-four Catholic families
came to Kentucky in 1786 from Maryland;
their number increased, and in 179S Bishop Car-
roll of Baltimore sent M. Badin, of Orleans,
who for many years had spiritual charge of the
Catholics in Kentucky, while M. Rivet of
Limoges came in 1795 as vicar general to
Vincennes, on the Wabash, in Indiana. In
1797 and 1799 Messrs. Foumier and Salmon
of Blois, followed by a number of French
priests exiled from France by the Revolution,
came to Kentucky. M. Olivier of Nantes set-
tled at Prairie du Rocher, Illinois, and served
there and at Kaskaskia, Cahokia, Saint Louis,
Ste. Genevieve, etc. In 1808 an episcopate was
7 97 •

FRENCH COLONISTS AND EXILES

established at Bardstown, Kentucky, where
later French Trappists established a convent
with a branch at Cahokia, in which many
Indians were educated. At Gallipolis, in Ohio,
where in 1791 there was a colony of French
people, victims of a miserable speculation, who
had mostly abandoned the place, Messrs.
Barri^res and Badin baptized forty children in
1793, and the whole village was inspired by the
service.

The popularity of the French is attested by
the names, Bourbon County and Paris, Ver^
sailles, Louisville, in Kentucky. There were
five Frenchmen bishops, — M. Marechal of
Orleans, in Baltimore; M. Cheverus of Paris,
in Boston; M. Flaget of Auvergne, in Ken-
tucky; M. David of Nantes, his coadjutor; M.
Dubourg of St. Louis, Bishop of Louisiana and
Florida. M. Flaget came to America in 1792
with Messrs. David and Badin. At Bardstown
many important schools were under the
care of French priests. An appeal was made
to the people of France to help them with
money, books, church ornaments, etc. It would

be interesting to know how far it was answered.
98

IN THE UNITED STATES

Drovine's '* Les Royalistes Fran9ais ref ugi&
an Canada " (Quebec, 1906), gives many facts
of interest. In 1798 Abbe Desjardins recalled
from Gallipolis Dom Didier, a Benedictine,
from the Abbey of St. Denis. He says : GalK-
polis ^as founded in 1790 on the banks of the
Ohio. In 1796 the colony niunbered about
eighty, and in 1806 this was reduced to twenty.
Asylum, on the Susquehanna, was founded in
1794 by Messrs. Noailles and Talon ; it began
with thirty houses, and included among its
number, M. Blacons, deputy to the constituent
assembly; Bee de Lifevre, canon; Archdeacon
Toul ; Abb^ Fromentin, Abb6 Charles, M. d'An-
delot of the French infantry; Du Petit Thou-
ars, officer of the navy ; Brevost of Paris ; Mme.
d'Autrepont. These settlers became farmers
and made potash, sugar, molasses, and vinegar.
Many priests came to Canada, and Drovine
tells their story with great, fulness and detail.
The same ship that brought Chateaubriand to
Baltimore carried five priests and two semin-
arists. After a voyage of three months they
landed and soon established a seminary near

Baltimore, in 1791 ; later, in 1798, eight more
99

A , 4

FRENCH COLONISTS AND EXILES

arrived, and in 1798-4-6-6-8, new anivals
came, in all twenty-nine, while forty-five went
to Canada. Of the former six became bishops,
one an Archbishop and Cardinal, Cheverus of
Boston, later of Bordeaux. While the clergy
were helped by large subscriptions and by the
government, an effort was made to quicken the
emigration of lay royalists to Canada. Cha-
teaubriand says that in London some soljd
coal, others made hats, some taught French.
Then it was " a proposal for a subscription to
form Colonies in Canada of French Emigrants,
Royalists, and ecclesiastics " was published in
London, and its execution was undertaken by
Count Joseph de Puisaye, who had been a
soldier by turns in the Cent Suisses, in the
National Guard, in the Federal Army, at the
head of the Chouans in Brittany, where he
organized a Military Council and issued three
millions of paper money like the assignats of
the Republic. He went to London and enlisted
the help of Pitt, who gave him a command in
the unsuccessful attack on Quiberon, which
was repelled by Hoche. Thiers says he had

great intelligence, a rare talent for organiza-
100

IN THE UNITED STATES

tion, activity of mind and body, and vast ambi-
tion. He wrote a paper on the establishment
of a French colody in Canada, and five hundred
persons applied to join — eight marquises, two
bishops, one Benedictine monk, two priests, one
doctor, six counts, one baron, many naval
officers, seven Chevaliers de St. Louis, a prin-
cess, a countess, a marquise and a long list of
other noble personages. Out of thirty-eight
who actually emigrated few of the people of
rank really left England. Arrived in Canada in
October, 1798, Puisaye, strongly recommended
by the home authorities, was allowed five thou-
sand acres, and land was set apart on and near
Lake Ontario for the settlers and a town and
farms. Puisaye was made a justice of the
peace and commandant of a corps with one
major commanding, two captains, two lieu-
tenants, four sub-lieutenants, one adjutant, one
quartermaster, one chaplain, one surgeon and
an assistant, six sergeants, eight corporals, and
one hundred and fifty soldiers. The land,
over four thousand acres, was distributed
among the settlers, but of the forty, only

twenty-five remained. Puisaye himself soon
101

FRENCH COLONISTS AND EXILES

went back to England, and others followed, so
that the colony was practically abandoned.
Later a mysterious person settled near Trois
Rivieres, who it is supposed was the Due de
Vicence, Caulaincourt, one of Napoleon's gen-
erals ; he came in 1816 and left in 18S0, but the
mystery of his identity was never really solved.
Most of the clergymen remained and many
were useful parish priests, some teachers, others
high dignitaries of their church.

Brili^t Savabin in the United States

Bbillat Savabin came as an exile from the
French Revolution in 1793, and resided three
years in New York, where he. taught French
and played in the orchestra of a theatre, re-
turning to France in 1796, where he filled
important posts, and died in 18S6.

In his " Physiologie du Goiit " he says that
in Boston he found Julien keeping a restau-
rant — ^he had been cook for the Archbishop of
Bordeaux; Brillat Savarin showed him how to
cook eggs with cheese, and it was so popular
that Julien sent him in New York part of a
young roe deer from Canada. Captain Collet
made quite a fortune in selling ices and sorbets
in New York in 1794}-96. In New York he
met the Vcte. de Massue and M. Fehr of
Marseilles, exiles, too. In Connecticut he dined
at a farm house near Hartford (in October,

1794), on corned beef, stewed goose, a haunch
103

FRENCH COLONISTS AND EXILES

of mutton, vegetables in plenty, and two huge
foaming pots of excellent cider, and later ex-
cellent tea. They shot next day partridges,
squirrels, and wild turkeys; then returned to
supper, ate like famished men, with an ample
bowl of punch to crown the entertainment.
His host, M. Barlow, had served in the War of
Independence, and spoke in high praise of
"the Marquis'* La Fayette. The daughter
sang " Yankee Doodle," " Major Andre's
Lament," and other popular songs. His host
said in bidding him adieu, that he was a happy
man — ^he owned his property, his daughters
knit his stockings, his shoes and clothes were
made from his own flocks, which provided his
food, too; he had no locks on his doors, taxes
were nominal. Congress favors our rising in-
dustry, agents visit us to purchase what we
have to sell — e. ^., flour at $24 per ton [««?],
the usual price having been $8. The sound of
the drum is never heard except on the Fourth
of July, and only on that day soldiers are seen.
During his ride home, Savarin was think-
ing how to cook his turkey, and he gave a

dinner at Hartford to his American friends,
104

IN THE UNITED STATES

with the wings of the partridges " enpapillote,"
the gray squirrels stewed in Madeira, while
the roast turkey was pleasing to the eye, flat-
tering to the smell and delicious to the taste;
and when the last particle had vanished, there
was a universal murmur of applause.

His friend shot wild turkeys in Carolina
and found them excellent, of much better flavor
than those reared in Europe. Savarin,
who was a cousin of Mme. Recamier, always
spoke with pleasure of his stay in the United
States.

Fbench Land Companies in the
United States

Gouveeneub Mokbis was busy with land
sales abroad, as well as with diplomatic mis-
sions, and to his great friends, for he was as
rich in them as in American lands, he was con-
stantly pointing out the great future for invest-
ment in them. In 1794 he notes that Le Ray
de Chaumont had been ahead of him in dealing
with the Baron de Coppet, Necker. Already
in 1789 he had broached to his friends in
France a plan for a settlement on the banks of
the river St. Lawrence for those who want
to go out to America. In 1790 he writes to
Robert Morris that frequent applications were
made to him for advice about American lands,
but he felt that it would hardly do for him
to bear the responsibility of advising French
citizens to abandon their native country i He
was therefore anxious that an office should be

106

FRENCH COLONISTS AND EXILES

opened in Paris where maps could be seen and
titles lodged, adding: ^* Furdiasers here are
for the most part ignorant of geography. So
far from thinking the forests a disadvantage,
they are captivated with the idea of having
their chateaux surrounded by magnificent trees.
They naturally expect superb highways over
the pathless deserts, and see with the mind's
eye numerous barges in every stream." His
journey in 1794 to Quebec and Northern New
York only increased his faith in the great
future of the then " West," and he described
his lands there as the finest he ever saw. In
1808 he wrote to Mme. de Stael: "I shall
expect to see you with your son next spring.
I know your friend Le Ray keeps you well in-
formed about your affairs. If your landed
property were all lying together it would be
more valuable, because it could be managed
with more ease and less expense." Indeed at
thirty-five, Mme. de Stael was seriously consid-
ering Morris' urgent recommendation to go to
the United States as a safe refuge from the
troubles in Europe. Alike in Paris and in

Grermany, Morris encouraged his friends of all
107

FRENCH COLONISTS AND EXILES

ranks to save their money by putting it into
American land, and no doubt Le Ray de Chau-
mont and others who planned French colonies
in the United States did so with his help.

The elder Le Ray de Chaumont was owner
of a luxurious home at Passy, where in one of
its dependencies, the Hdtel Valentinois, Frank-
lin found a quiet retreat. Le Ray was
Grand Mfiuster of the Waters and Forests of
France and Honorary Intendant of the In-
valides. He was rich and occupied the chateau
of Chaumont on the Loire, as well as the house
at Passy. He was the close friend of the Due
de Choiseul, his neighbor at Chaumont, and
had declined his invitation to enter the min-
istry, as he preferred to act as an intermediary
between the [American] Commissioners and
Versailles.^

J. Donatien Le Ray de Chaumont was the

son of Franklin's host at Passy. The father

had advanced large sums to the struggling

colonies, and the son came over to settle his

father's accounts. At the suggestion of

Grouvemeur Morris he bought large tracts of

^ Smyth: Life of Franklin, p. 306.
106

IN THE UNITED STATES

land in Northern New York, and at one time
owned thirty thousand acres in Franklin
County; seventy-three thousand acres in St.
Lawrence County ; one hundred and forty-three
thousand five hundred acres in Jefferson
County ; one hundred thousand acres in Lewis
County. In 1816, through Duponceau as
agent, he conveyed one hundred and fifty thou-
sand acres to Joseph Bonaparte. The actual
sale, it is said, was made in France, a^ Joseph
was flying from the allies, and he paid down
in gold and precious stones from the store he
was carrying off. Joseph was supposed to
intend to make a refuge for Napoleon, if he
should escape to the United States. It was
intended to found large manufacturing estab-
lishments on the Black River, to injure the
English industries. The details were discussed
with a son of Murat, when he was visiting
Le Ray in his new home. Le Ray built a large
house at Le Rayville, ten miles east of Water-
town, and there he entertained many notable
Frendi visitors. Joseph Bonaparte came in
1816, and in 18S8 built a hunting-lodge,
where he spent several simimers. Tradition

109

FRENCH COLONISTS AND EXILES

reported in county histories (see Sylvester's
"Northern New York," Troy, 1877, and
Hough's " Jefferson County," Albany, 1854)
that dressed in a green hunting^suit he drove
in a coach and six over roads he had cut
through the forests, and that on the Black
River he had a six-oared gondola. In 18S5
he sold his land to John La Farge, of New
York. Le Ray began settlements in 1801 and
in 1803 laid out the village still called Chau-
mont. An earlier effort to establish a French
colony in the wilds of New York was made by
French agents of William Constable, the
partner of Macomb, the owner of over three
and a half million acres. Their company was
to set apart two thousand acres for a city, two
thousand acres for a town on Lake Ontario,
six thousand acres for artisans, twenty thou-
sand acres for roads, bridges, etc. Le Ray's
purchases included part of this vast estate,
and his plans are described in the Appendix
to St. John de Crevecoeur's " Travels in Penn-
sylvania " (French ed., Paris, 1801). Le Ray
sold tracts to many noted Frenchmen, among

them Caulaincourt, Real, Grouchy, and De
110

IN THE UNITED STATES

Fumeaux, and it is said that among the pur-
chasers were Mme. de Stael; but at all events
Le Ray spent years in promoting settlements
on his lands. His last visit to them was made
in 1836, and he died in Paris in 1840.

Donatien Le Ray de Chaumont married a
Miss Coxe of New Jersey. Their son, Vincent
Le Ray de Chaumont, published in Paris, in
1833, a pamphlet, " Renseignemens sur la
Partie des Etats Unis la plus favorable aux
Agriculteurs venant d'Europe,'* in which he
advises intending French emigrants. He " rec-
ommends them to buy and settle on his tract
of three hundred thousand acres in Jefferson
County, New York, or in the neighborhood,
for the State of New York sold its lands much
lower than the United States in order to in-
crease its population and its representation and
influence in Congress. It is near sawmills,
flourmills, etc., and farm products bring much
better prices than on the Ohio or anywhere
in the West. The country is favorable for vine-
yards and silk culture. The father and the son
are ready to answer any inquiries made of them

at their house in Paris." An extract from an
111

FRENCH COLONISTS AND EXILES

address by Major Curry before the Jefferson
County Agricultural Society, gives an account
of the success of the vines and mulberry trees
sent by Le Ray. A circular signed by thirty
or more residents of Rosi^re, the name of the
first settlement, commends it and the adjoining
lands of M. Le Ray de Chaumont. The signers
give their French homes, Haute Saone, Vitrey,
Arbecey, Combeaufontaine, etc., and their
statement as to the advantages of their new
home is attested by the curate, by the bishop of
New York, who had himself visited the new
colony, and by the French consul general.

In Smyth's Franklin, vol. ix, p. 686, etc.,
Franklin writes to Le Veillard, of the visit of
Messrs. Picque and Saiigrain, the latter a
brother-in-law of Dr. Guillotin, who had re-
solved to remove to America, and these two
went ahead to investigate the country. Frank-
lin wrote to Guillotin from Philadelphia on
May 4, 1788, of bad news of an accident to
them on their way down the Ohio, and again
on October 23, 1788, confirming the loss of
" poor M. Pique '* in a wilderness country, and

Guillotin never came.

119

IN THE UNITED STATES

The following books on French colonies in
the United States are of interest : ^^ Le
Nouveau Mississippi ou les Dangers d'habiter
les Bords du Scioto par un patriote Voy-
ageur'* [Sergeant Major Roux], Paris, 1790,
was written to disabuse the unhappy victims
of the Scioto speculators. There was estab-
lished in Paris, rue Neuve des Petits Champs,
No. 162, a company under the name of Scioto.
Roux, secretary of the government of Com-
piegne, who travelled in 1784 through the
country of the Scioto and the Ohio, said
" he could have bought for twenty-five louis,
three or four leagues on the shores of the Ohio,
with Congress paper money at ninety per cent.,
but it would have been a total loss. He warns
others that they will lose their money and be
worse than slaves. He cites a memoir deposited
in the Bureau of the Navy in 1784. He warns
his countrymen against the enterprise of the
Scioto Company. The soil has little depth,
crops diminish yearly, trees have shallow roots,
in three years the land must be abandoned.
The American works but two or three days a
week, that he may drink or idle the others;
8 213

FRENCH COLONISTS AND EXILES

the labor is done by * redemptionists,' men
who pay for their passage by hiring them-
selves out. AU men of talent in America are
traders. Manufactures can never compete
with the superior products of Europe. The
Scioto Society boast of the soil, but say noth-
ing of the dangers of climate, want of good
water, of the savages, which will destroy any
French settlement."

" Lettres Sorites des rives de POhio, par
Claude Fran9ois Adrien de Lezay [Marquis
de] Mamezia, citoyen de Fensylvanie. Au
Fort Pitt et k Paris, an IX de la Republique."
Querard says this pamphlet was seized by
the police and is very rare. First letter
from "Marieta," [ric] November 16, 1790:
" Living in the finest house here, surrounded by
generals, majors, colonels, chevaliers of the
Order of the Cincinnati, — ^that is, lodged in a
wretched hut, with titled neighbors who drive
their own teams, cultivate and very badly their
fields, wear poor clothes, entertaining some
visiting Indians, who prefer Frenchmen to
Americans, since the latter can never culti-
vate the arts." Second letter. Fort Pitt, No-
114

IN THE UNITED STATES

vember 2, 1791 [to Bernardin de St. Pierre] :
" I came to America to find a safe and peaceful
retreat from the turmoil of France, to take
possession of a tract of land on the banks of
the Ohio, but I found the promises of the
prospectus of the Scioto Company false in
every respect, except as to the good soil. That
Company has utterly failed in its plans. Leav-
ing New York for my land on the Scioto and
Ohio, I stopped first at Bethlehem, Pennsyl-
vania, with the Moravians. [Here follows a
glowing account of their schools, etc.] The
best site for a French colony would be at the
head of the Ohio, between the Aleghain and
the Monongahela. Let fifty families, part
nobles, part good citizens, come with their ser-
vants and farm-hands, mechanics, — in all from
one thousand to twelve hundred persons ; with
money enough to buy lands for themselves and
for those who, approved by a two-thirds vote,
may join them, the latter paying, of course,
a proportion of the expenses already incurred.
Fifteen hundred acres will suffice for a farm
that will maintain in comfort each family.

There will be no difficulty in buying land ; the
11^

FRENCH COLONISTS AND EXILES

Americans are lazy and bored, often moving
from place to place for the sake of change;
in the thirty years that the Pennsylvania
neighborhood suggested has been settled, it
has changed owners two or three times. The
sight of money will tempt any American to
sell, and off he goes to new country, leaving
the newcomer all his improvements.

*' The Ohio, Monongahela, and Allegheny
rivers are full of fine fish, the forests of game —
wild turkies, deer, pigeons, pheasants, etc.
Vegetables grow to a size unknown in Europe ;
in four or five months, the splendid forests
will be converted into smiling farms, each pro-
ducing food enough for thirty persons, besides
that for the cattle in the winter. These
families, unlike the Americans, will spend the
winter in earnest studies and innocent amuse-
ments. In the centre of the village build a great
temple, with houses for the clergy on either
side; at opposite points a palace of justice,
and a meeting place; beyond a college and a
school for girls. In the middle of this square,
put a fountain at the footof a column instruct-
ing posterity as to the motives of the emi-
116

IN THE UNITED STATES

grants settled here. Erect a hospital cared for
by Sisters of St. Vincent de Paul; workshops
where local material can be manufactured for
the use of the people, the fifty families of the
settlement, governed by twelve administrators,
one-fourth reelected annually; the newcomers,
all French, will produce hats and linen and
cloth and other useful articles, and as each
year will bring new hands, new industries will
be introduced. Their products will find ready
markets in Kentucky and in the South and
the Antilles. The profits can be used to buy
land as an endowment for schools, churches,
etc. New colonies will rise in other quar-
ters, where new industries will follow — ^glass-
making, potteries, watchmaking, papermak-
ing, iron works, all supplied with ex-
perts from France. All these colonies will
unite in building a central city, to be called St.
Peter's, where illustrious Frenchmen will be
immortalized, by streets, fountains, squares,
etc., named Ffoelon, BulFon, Paschal, Catinat,
Rousseau, Racine, Comeille, La Fontaine,
Massillon, Vincent de Paul, Sully, Necker,

Montesquieu, Tollendal, Mounier, Clermont-
117

FRENCH COLONISTS AND EXILES

Tonnerre. Have a bishop and twelve clergy-
men, five magistrates, twelve heads of business,
a college with professors of medicine, mathe-
matics, botany, chemistry, teachers of music
and drawing; the town reserved for the
proprietors, tradesmen and mechanics will live
in the suburbs; many of the clergymen will
also be teachers; the bishop will be elected by
heads of families, and he will be the head of
a future university, so that the State of Penn-
sylvania and the United States will benefit
by the example and instruction of this French
colony." The author suggests some improve-
ments in the American government ; " let it
divide the country into eight monarchies, or
into a number of small republics, or into a
Southern Monarchy and a Northern Republic,
thus securing justice and moderation which
would be lost in a single great Republic."

In a letter dated Philadelphia, December 16,
1791, he describes his plantation on the Monon-
gahela, and near it the home of another
Frenchman, Montpelier, whose owners have
had a romantic history that fills many pages.
On the advice of Francklin [««;] the hero of
118

IN THE UNITED STATES

the story and his sweetheart sailed for America,
were married at the Catholic Church in Phila-
delphia, went to Fort Pitt, made near it their
future home; then after five years (with a
fortune inherited in France) built a new house
filled with every luxury; not far off was the
home of another French family, that of M. de
Lassus, with every attraction, thus offering to
Americans the best examples of good taste,
and to other French exiles the advantage of
other countrymen near by. One such, M. Au-
drain, has for five or six years lived at Fort
Pitt, and helped his coimtrymen ruined by the
Scioto Company's failure.

The letters of Lezay M amezia are interest-
ing as a typical example of the dreams of
exiled Frenchmen, for a home in America, as
a refuge from the storms in France. Im-
practicable as his schemes seem to-day, still
they no doubt attracted the notice of some
of those Frenchmen who did come to the United
States and made a valuable addition to its
population.

Lezay Mamezia [Claude Fran9ois Adrien,
Marquis de], bom in Metz, France, August
119

FRENCH COLONISTS AND EXILES

24, 1735, died in Besan9Dn, November 9, 1800,
was captain in the King's Regiment, retired
to his estate, abolished " corvees et mainmorte "
there, advocated in the assembly equal taxation
and suppression of feudal privileges; joined
the left, and left France in 1790, taking
workingmen, farmers, and artists, to found a
colony in Pennsylvania; spent a year in try-
ing to do so, and after its failure returned by
way of England to France; then went to
Switzerland and to France finally. Among
many writings, he published a letter to M.
Adriani, merchant, Pittsburg, describing his
stay in Pennsylvania [Paris, 1797] ; he pub-
lished in Paris, 1792, his " Voyage." His son
wrote a book, " Considerations sur les Etats de
Massachusetts et Pennsylvanie," Paris, 1795.
Another son who had accompanied the father
to Pennsylvania, became a French Senator in
1852 and died in that year.

French Plan op Education in the
United States

DupONT DE Nemouks helped, under Ver-
gennes, in the recognition of the United States
by France, became secretary of the assembly
of notables, and a member of the Etats
g^n^raux, as representative from Nemours, in
1795, one of the Conseil des Anciens, an exile
to the United States in 1797, remaining there
until 180S; he left France again in 1815,
joining his sons, who had established themselves
in business in Delaware, and died there in 1817.
He published in Paris in 1812 a work on
National Education in the United States.^ It
was, he says, in his Preface, written in 1800 at
the request of Mr. Jefferson, then Vice-Presi-
dent of the United States. He says: "The
United States are more advanced in educa-

*Dupont de Nemours : "Sur Tfiducation Nationale
dans les £tats Unis d'Am^rique," 2e edition, Paris, 1819.
131

FRENCH COLONISTS AND EXILES

tion than most other countries. There are
many schools for children, almost every one
learns to read, write and reckon. Only four
per thousand do not, while in Spain, Portugal,
and Italy, hardly one-sixth can do so; in Ger-
many and France more than one-third, in
Poland, only two per cent., and in Russia not
1 per cent. England, Holland, and the Protes-
tant cantons of Switzerland come next to the
United States. He urges Congress to offer
prizes for the best books for education. Their
sale will bring in an income of $50,000, while
$10,000 will pay for the books and the prizes.
He advises the establishment of colleges in
every county, or in less populous neighbor-
hoods for every group of two or more. Free
scholarships should be given according to the
votes of the students, to be held for seven years.
Six professors can teach in each college, seven
classes, ten courses, twenty sciences, and forty
methods of studying them will provide a pro-
gramme. Each class will xote for the prizes
to be awarded to its members, and at the end
of seven years the winners will be made free
students at the University. He gives tables
199

IN THE UNITED STATES

of the distribution of hours and studies, and a
schedule of salaries :

One president at $500 a year ; six professors
at $300, $1,800; two supervisors, at $200,
$400; one cook at $200; three servants at
$160, $450; prizes, repairs, etc., $150; total
$3,500 ; for ten colleges, $35,000.

One hundred and forty free scholarships,
fourteen for each college, at $150, $66,000;
special schools, $10,600 ; fifty free students in
schools, $10,000 ; cost of a college in Virginia,
$76,600.

Students' annual fees, $160; students other
than free scholars, $1S6; students for open
courses, $100.

The special schools will be those of The-
ology, Law, Medicine, Arts, which with the
colleges and the primary and secondary schools
will constitute the University of North
America.

The course in the Medical School should
cover five years, the Law School three years,
the School of Social Science three years, the
School of Mathematics three years. Each

133

FRENCH COLONISTS AND EXILES

State and the United States should each have a
Council of Instruction, to be in close touch
with the Legislatures and Executive.

This paper is dated New York, 15 June,
1800.

^S^yjT ^S^yjT ^5^^^ 'S^^C 'S^^C
e^oKs e^oKs e^^9 eO« eO«

XII

French Colonies in the United States:
Gallipolis, Ohio; Asylum, Pennsylvania

The story of the French colony at Galli-
polls is told by McM aster in the second volume,
pp. 146, etc., of his History of the United
States. " It is no wonder that the sad experi-
ence of the French emigrants attracted to that
place by the Scioto Land Company and its
agent in France, Barlow, and its manager in
New York, Duer, long deterred any similar
attempts. Barlow went to Paris just after
the opening of the French Revolution, and
began to sell title deeds to estates in the West
at five shillings the acre. Tempted by his
exaggerated descriptions of the land, the soil,
and the climate, no taxes, no military service,
no soldiers to live on the people, no wolves,
or foxes, no bears or tigers, the land on the
shores of the Ohio, called the Beautiful, in its

waters enormous fish, on its banks majestic
195

FRENCH COLONISTS AND EXILES

trees, out of whose sides ran sugar, and bushes
with berries yielding wax, — ^with such a picture
before them, numbers of Frenchmen made haste
to sell what little stores of worldly goods they
had and buy lands in America. Before the
close of 1791 five hundred emigrants from
Havre, Bordeaux, Nantes, and Rochelle, were
on the sea. Some could build coaches, some
make perukes, some carve, others gild. The
first shipload started with words of encourage-
ment fr(Hn Barlow, under the charge of a man
named Boulogne, who was bidden to inform
the gentlemen proprietors of lands on the
Scioto, that each was to receive a house lot
and a right to the commons in the dty they
were about to found. They were to be the
fathers and founders of a nation. In May,
1790, after a voyage of seventy-two days, the
first shipload brought to Alexandria, Virginia,
two hundred of the newcomers, and one hun-
dred and twenty arrived a httle later. After
the hardships of their long voyages, came the
discovery that the agent in charge was a knave.
Some had lost clothing, some baggage, which
they asked in vain that the Scioto Company

126

IN THE UNITED STATES

should reimburse them. A few took refuge
with the French Minister and were sent home.

* The rest, after endless hardships, reached the
promised land, only to find that the sellers had
no title to the land. At the end of a year
food gave out and they were forced to beg or
l)uy it from the emigrants that went by on the
river. In the spring of 1792 the Indians
carried off one of their number. Filled with
alarm, some went to Detroit, some to Kaskaskia,
and of the few that remained, travellers gave
a fed description. In 1795 Congress gave
them twenty-four thousand acres of land oppo-
site the mouth of the Little Sandy River, and

* three years later twelve hundred more, known
as the French Grant." The site of the Scioto
Company was within the territory which
Franklin nearly forty years before had pointed
out for colonization.

As early as 1754, soon after the Albany
Convention of that year, Franklin wrote a
paper " For Settling two Western Colonies in
North America '' (printed in Smyth's Frank-
lin, vol. iii, p. 358, etc.), in which he argued

that this would prevent " the dreaded junction
137

FRENCH COLONISTS AND EXILES

of the French settlements in Canada with those
in Louisiana," and suggested that ^ two char-
ters be granted, each for some considerable part
of the lands west of Pennsylvania and the Vir-
ginian mountains, to a number of the nobility
and gentry of Britain, with such Americans as
shall join them in contributing to the settle*
ment of these lands, either by paying a pro-
portion of the expense of making such settle-
ments, or by actually going thither in person
and settling themselves and families. That by
such charters it be granted that every actual

settler be entitled to a tract of acres for

himself, and acres for every poll in the

family he carries with him; and that every

contribution of guineas be entitled to a

quantity of land equal to the share of a single
settler," etc. A small fort on the Buffalo
Creek on the Ohio, and another at the mouth
of the Tioga, on the south side of Lake Erie,
where a post should be formed, and a town
erected, for the trade of the lakes, would suffice.
* The river Scioto, which runs into the Ohio,
is supposed the fittest seat for the other colony,

there being for forty miles on each side of it
138

IN THE UNITED STATES

a body of all rich land, the finest spot in its
bigness in all North America, and has the
particular advantage of sea coal in plenty
(even above ground in two places), for fuel,
when the woods shall be destroyed. Again, in
1772 (Smyth's Franklin, vol. v, p. 479, etc.)
Franklin urged the confirmation of Walpole's
grant for a settlement on the Ohio River. He
said that the lands in question are excellent,
the climate temperate; native grapes, silk-
worms, and mulberry-trees are everywhere;
hemp grows spontaneously in the valleys and
low lands; iron ore is plenty in the hills, and
no soil is better adapted for the culture of
tobacco, flax, and cotton.

In " Travels in America," by Thomas Twin-
ing [reprinted. New York, 1894], the young
Englishman speaks of meeting at Mr. Bing-
ham's in Philadelphia, in 1796, Count de
Noailles and Count Tilley, and the celebrated
Mons. Volney, of whom he says: "He told
me he should probably publish some account
of America. He examined things very mi-
nutely. I cannot say I was much pleased with
Mons. Volney. He was cold and satirical. X
9 129

FRENCH COLONISTS AND EXILES

concluded that the political troubles in whicli
he had been engaged, and the persecution
which had banished him from his country, had
caused this splenetic unsociableness or increased
a constitutional irritability. He was little
pleased with America, and where he was not
pleased he expressed himself with much
severity. As a philosopher he might be ex-
pected to see with less surprise and dissatisfac-
tion the imperfections of a new State, so remote
from the improvements and influence of
Europe ; and as the guest of America he might
be expected to repay her hospitality with more
urbanity and indulgence. It appeared to me
that Monsieur Volney was disappointed be-
cause he had unreasonably expected too much,
and unjust in blaming a society that could
hardly be other than it was." Twining also
mentions seeing "a tall gentleman in a blue
coat, pointed out as M. Talleyrand," walking
on Chestnut Street, in Philadelphia.

VOLNET's travels in the UNrrED STATES

Volney says that the land of the Scioto

Company offered in Paris at six livres an acre
130

IN THE UNITED STATES

was really worth six or seven sous an acre, but
partly misled by Brissot's book, partly by the
growing disorders in France, in 1791 quite
a number of purchasers sailed from Havre,
Bordeaux, Nantes, and Rochelle, for their new
home. In 1796 Volney could get no particu-
lars of the colony at Gallipolis, and made the
journey thither to see it. He heard the story
from the settlers and saw the poor results of
their efforts to make a living — only fifty were
left. He visited Vincennes on the Wabash,
where a colony of French " Canadians " had
settled before the American Revolution.
" After being by turns French and Spanish and
American subjects, the government, in 179S, in
compensation for their losses, gave them four
hundred acres for each taxpayer, and one hun-
dred more for every man who could bear arms ;
but hunters rather than farmers, they sold
their lands to Americans for one-tenth of their
value and took payment in goods at far more
than their real value. Reduced to poverty, the
old settlers complain, but in vain, of laws they
do not understand, and judges who do not
understand them. The Americans charge them
131

FRENCH COLONISTS AND EXILES

with indolence and ignorance; there were no
schools until the French Revolution sent them
a missionary, — yet of ninety French settlers,
hardly six could read or write, while of
every hundred Americans, ninety can do so.
Largely sprung from French soldiers sent to
Canada, they still long for a military govern-
ment. The same conditions exist with the
French settlers in Illinois, Kaskaskia, Caho-
kias, Prairie du Rocher, St. Louis; within five
or six years the Americans have become owners
of all the good land. Only a hundred and
fifty French families were reported by Sargent,
secretary of the Northwest Territory, in 1790.
The same conditions existed at Fort Detroit,
most of the French going across the boundary
into King George's Canada, just as those
further southwest to New Orleans and other
parts of Louisiana." Volney regrets that the
French colony of Gallipolis had not gone to
one of the old French settlements and strength-
ened it.

Volney saw Gallipolis in 1796, and in his
^' View of the Climate and Soil of the United
States " says he was struck with the wild ap-
139

IN THE UNITED STATES

pearance and the sallow complexions, thin
visages and sickly looks and uneasy air of its
inhabitants. One of the settlers at Gallipolis
was Jean Jules Le Moyne de Villers, a native
of Paris. He settled in Washington, Penn-
sylvania, about 1797, became a leading physi-
cian, and was a generous benefactor of local
education. His descendants are active and
useful citizens.

There was a settlement made by the French
under the old claim on the site of the present
city of Erie, Pennsylvania, where they built a
rude log fort called " Presq'Isle," the first one
of the chain of forts built by the French from
the St. Lawrence to the Ohio. Not a trace was
left forty years after its capture by the
British, in the old French War.

The Centennial of Gallipolis, celebrated
October 16-19, 1890, by the Ohio State
Archeological and Historical Society, is fully
described in its volume (Columbus, Ohio,
1895), with illustrations — the city of 1890,
views of the cabins built 1791, its pub-
lic square in 1790 and in 1846, a map of

1791, and maps of the purchases of the Ohio
133

FRENCH COLONISTS AND EXILES

and Scioto Companies and that issued by the
latter in Paris to be shown to intending settlers.
An exposition of relics brought together quite
a goodly array of articles of furniture, etc.,
brought out by the original settlers and still
cherished by their descendants and their
owners.

Mr. John L. Vance read a paper on " The
French Settlement and Settlers of Gallipolis **
(pp. 45-81) ; he quotes at length a letter of
M. MeuteUe, one of the original settlers,
printed in the American Pioneer, Cincinnati,
April, 1848, and an earlier letter from Mr.
Le Turc, a Gallipolis merchant, dated July 6,
1792, with a gloomy view of the prospect. It
was largely through Duponceau's help that
Congress made "the French Grant" of
twenty-four thousand acres opposite the Little
Sandy, for the people of Gallipolis. He gives
a sketch " map of the four-acre lots drawn by
the inhabitants of Gallipolis January 20,
1791," with a numeral list of the town lots,
with their original disposition, making in all
two hundred and thirty-four, and all names are
French. There is also a paper of Deconber

134

IN THE UNITED STATES

14, 1796, giving the plan of distribution of
the town- and out-lots. Reference is made to
the account given by John Heckewelder of his
visit in 1792, in company with General Putnam,
when they found skilled workmen, goldsmiths
and watchmakers, stonecutters and sculptors,
whose productions were sold as far as New
Orleans, a glassworker making thermometers
and barometers, and chemists making nitric

--acid, phosphorus, etc. There is also a long
extract from H. M. Brackenridge's Recol-
lections. He stopped at Gallipolis previous
to 1796, with Dr. Saugrain, chemist, nat-
ural philosopher, and physician, a royalist
like most of the settlers, making a bold
struggle against great difficulties. A school
started twenty years later, was called Gallia
Academy, and GaUia County perpetuates the
nationality of the French settlers of Gallipolis.
In 1824 Lafayette visited it, as Louis Philippe
and his brothers did at a much earlier date, on
their way to New Orleans. To-day it is a

t prosperous town, but with few descendants of

the original French settlers. A translation is

given of Manasseh Cutler^s " Description,"
135

FRENCH COLONISTS AND EXILES

etc., for Barlow's use in floatmg the Scioto
Company in France, published in Paris
in 1789, from the original English ver-
sion issued in Salem, Massachusetts, in 1787.
The copy used bears on its title-page the name
of one of the French settlers, dated 1806. An
account is given (p. 128) of the Society of
the Scioto, organized in Paris by Barlow, in
1780, to which he sold three million acres, at
$1.14 per acre. A land office was opened
in Paris, and maps with glowing descriptions
of the lands on the Ohio and the Scioto were
issued. Gallipolis was laid out, and one of
the original deeds is still preserved there. FuD
details are given of the transfer to the Ohio
Company, and of the complicated difficulties
that led to the failure of these great land
schemes, of Duponceau's efforts to secure from
Congress relief for his defrauded countrymen,
and abstracts of the laws passed for the
purpose.

Volney, after an imprisonment of ten
months in France, sailed in 1706 for the
United States, remaining there until 1708,

when the " epidemic animosity against the
136

IN THE UNITED STATES

French " compelled him to leave the country.
In the English edition of his " View, etc., of
the United States," (London, 1804, pp. 866,
etc.), he gives an account of Gallipolis, or the
French colony on the Ohio. He attributes
much of the success of the Scioto Company's
scheme in Paris to Brissot's account in his
Travels in the United States. The emigra-
tion began in 1791, through Havre, Bordeaux,
Nantes, and Rochelle.

Volney on his arrival in Philadelphia, in
1796, inquired in vain after the colony, so in
the following .summer he travelled from Phila-
delphia through Virginia, in an open boat
down the Great Kanhaway [«ic] into the Ohio,
and at last reached the village of Gallipolis.
There he found two rows of little white houses,
built on the flat summit of the bank of the
Ohio. He found the place wild and unkempt,
the people thin, sickly, and uneasy. The
houses were nothing but huts made of trunks
of trees, plastered with clay and covered with
shingles, whitewashed, but damp and badly
sheltered from the weather. About five hun-
dred settlers, all of them mechanics, artists, or
137

FRENCH COLONISTS AND EXILES

tradesmen in easy circumstances, had come in
1791 and 1792, to New York, Philadelphia,
and Baltimore. Each had paid twenty or
twenty-four guineas for passage, and their
journey by land in France and America had
cost as much more. After an Indian assault,
the greater number abandoned the place, some
removing to Louisiana. Then after more
litigation, the remaining settlers obtained a
tract of nine hundred and twelve acres from
the Ohio Company. In 1796 Congress granted
twenty thousand acres to the poor pillaged
Frenchmen, and Volney found them trying to
secure a livelihood on their new home. Later
he visited the French colonies on the Mississippi
and Lake Erie. At St. Vincent the French
settlers had been established for sixty years,
and there as with those at Easkaskia, Caho-
kia, Rocky Meadows, and St. Louis, discour-
agement, apathy, and wretchedness prevailed.
Andr^ Michaux's " Travels into Kentucky,
179S-96," and Fran9ois Andr6 Michaux's
" Travels to the West of the Allegheny Moun-
tains in the States of Ohio, Kentucky, and
Tennessee," 1802, have been reprinted by
138

IN THE UNITED STATES

Thwaites in vol. iii of his "Early Western
Travels," Qeveland, Ohio, 1904.

The son presented to the American Philo-
sophical Society the father's field notes, and
these were printed by the American Philosoph-
ical Society in 1889. Although Michaux's
comment on the French settled in the West is
unfavorable, yet he records the number of
Frenchmen who became prominent and useful
citizens of the West — ^Lucas at Pittsburg,
Lacassagne at Louisville, Tardiveau, Hourie,
and Depauw at DanviUe. Father and son both
visited Gallipolis; the former speaks of it as
" that unfortunate colony ; of the six hundred
persons who came there to settle, only one
hundred and fifty remained in 1793." In
1802 the son visited GallipoUs and found that
only thirty families had gone to the lands
granted by Congress, while most of the
original log houses were in ruins, the former
owners having gone elsewhere, some to New
Orleans, others to Pittsburg and points in
Western Pennsylvania. Thwaites says that
in 1898 Gallipolis had grown into a flourishing
town, through the energy of the American and
139

FRENCH COLONISTS AND EXILES

Grerman settlers, and but three families de-
scendants of the French colonists lived there.

THB FKENCH COI<ONY OF ASYLUM IN PEKN-
STLYANIA

Rochefoucauld, in vol. i, p. 161, of his
Travels in the United States, gives an account
of his visit to the colony of " Azyl " in Penn-
sylvania. It is perhaps the earliest descrip-
tion of an attempt to colonize French royalist
exiles, made under auspices that at the outset
promised success. Rochefoucauld gives the
names of the principal settlers — ^De Blacons,
a deputy in the Constituent Assembly from
Dauphine, and his wife, Mdlle. de Maulde;
they were keeping a store, in partnership with
M. Colin, formerly the Abb^ de Sevign6 ; M. de
Montul6, captain of cavalry ; his cousin, Mme.
de Sybert, of St. Domingo ; De Bee de Liivre,
in partnership with the Messieurs de la Roue,
officers of the French army; M. Beaulieu,
captain of infantry in France, served in the
Pulaski Legion in the American War of Inde-
pendence, keeping a tavern; M. Bayard,

planter from St. Domingo, now with wife and
140

IN THE UNITED STATES

children and some negroes who came with
them; M. de Noailles, of St. Domingo; M.
d'Audelot, of Franche-Comt6, formerly an
officer in the French army, then a farmer; Du-
petit Thouars, officer of the French navy, now
farming; his companion in his adventurous
escape from Brazil, M. Nopfes; Mr. Keating
(the founder of a well-known family in Phila-
delphia), M. Renaud, an exile from St.
Domingo; M. Carlier, Canon of Quercy; M.
Prevost, of Paris, well known for his active
charitable work there, now a farmer on his Kttle
property on the North Branch of the Susque-
hanna ; Mme. d'Autrepont, with her sons, work-
ing for daily bread, like all the members of the
colony.

One fault of the French settlers was their
unwillingness to learn the language or conform
to the customs of their neighbors, the old
American settlers. The other, said Roche-
foucauld, is the need of more and better work-
ing-people, to make the somewhat unfavor-
able site at least as prosperous as the other
farm settlements. The Duke's hopes for the
French colony at Asylum were not realized^
HI

FRENCH COLONISTS AND EXILES

and its failure is described by later travellers
and in the account given by a resident of to-
day.

Rochefoucauld mentions all the Frenchmen
he met on his long journey, mostly individual
settlers, trying, as in South Carolina, to intro-
duce home industries, but few of them suc-
ceeded or left any lasting trace of their
residence. Mrs. Murray in her account of
Asylum says that the thirty houses built for
the settlers had chimneys, doors, staircases,
window-glass, shutters, and piazzas and sum-
mer-houses, all unknown luxuries to the few
neighboring old residents. Some quaint little
shops were on the public square with a small
chapel and a theatre, as well as a bakery, all
evidence of French needs.

Asylum, near Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania,
was planned by the Vicomte Louis de Noailles,
a brother-in-law of Lafayette, and the
Marquis Omer Talon; it was a land com-
pany owning a large tract on the North
Branch of the Susquehanna. Established in
1794, on land sold to the Company by Morris

and Nicholson, it secured a tract of two thou-
14i2

IN THE UNITED STATES

sand acres, cuid a M. Boulogne was the active
manager until he was drowned in 1796 in Sulli*
van County and buried at Asylum. The first
settlers came in ITOS, among them Dupetit
Thouars, later killed in command of a man-of-
war at the battle of the Nile. Noailles was em-
ployed by Robert Morris, but soon left to take
part in the French attack on Havana, and died
of the wounds received in action. A Catholic
church W61S built^ and a large house put up, it
was said for the King and Queen of France,
when they should make their escape from cap-
tivity and seek safety in shelter among their
loyal friends at Asylum.

Rochefoucauld in his Travels describes it
as he saw it on his visit in 1796. A year
later an English traveller. Weld, visited it and
tells what he saw in his Travels. Wilson, the
ornithologist, was there in 1804 and refers to
it in his poem describing his pedestrian tour to
Niagara. Louis Philippe and his brother
came there too from Philadelphia. John
Keating, an exile from St. Domingo, was one
of the settlers for a time cuid remained the

agent of the Company in Philadelphia and
143

FRENCH COLONISTS AND EXILES

wound up its business. He was the first of a
family well known in Philadelphia and still
affiliated with France. Some of the colonists
returned to France and became men of note;
others went to New Orleans, and in ten
years the colony was at an end. The Honor-
able John Laporte, M.C., was the son of one
of the colonists. Mr. J. W. Ingham described
it in the New Engkmd Magazine^ N. S., vol.
xxxi, pp. 81, etc., 1904-06. "Exiled from
France and from St. Domingo, thousands of
Frenchmen sought shelter in the United
States."

" The Story of Some French Refugees and

.their Colony of Azilum,'' 1798-1800, by
Louise Welles Montgomery, Athens, Pennsyl-
vania, 1908, is ;the local version of their trials.
The original plot of their settlement is in the
Bradford County Historical Society. Omer

* Talon came to Philadelphia in 1792, and took
the oath of allegiance to the State of Pennsyl-
vania. He joined in Philadelphia the Vicomte

' de Noailles, who was in business with William
Bingham, and had bought land from Robert
Morris. Their agent selected eight lots of

IN THE UNITED STATES

three hundred acres each in Luzerne County
on the North Branch of the Susquiehanna, for
a French colony. They also bought one hun-
dred thousand acres of wild land, on the Loyal-
sock; in 1794 they organized a land company
on the basis of a capital stock of a million
acres, in five thousand shares of two hundred
acres each. In 1801 the Company was reor-
ganized, and later on the land was sold by
trustees. Talon and Dupetit Thouars and
Boulogne were active managers. Some of the
roads built by Omer Talon are still in use,
and one is to-day known as " The Old French
Road." A weekly express to Philadelphia was
maintained for several years. The Due de
Rochefoucauld describes the place as he saw it
in 1796 — ^a settlement in the wilds made for
French people of position at home.

The deeds conveying property mentioned
some of the advantages of the properties. Mrs.
Murray prints an agreement by which Sophia
de Sibert sold Nos. 416 and 417 of the Asylum
Company's property to Gui de Noailles, and
describes the house as having fireplaces, the

garden a number of fruit trees, young Lom-
10 145

FRENCH COLONISTS AND EXILES

bardy poplars and weeping wiUows, and a
lattice summer house, and a nursery of nine
hundred apple trees, with a gristmill and a
bam that might be altered into a dwelling-
house.

Among the relics brought from France there
was a beautiful illuminated missal, used in the
religious services in the log chapel, later given
to a priest in Tonawanda, by whom it was
taken to Rome and presented to the Vatican
Musemn. Even those of the settlers who re-
turned to France gave accounts of the Susque-
hanna Valley which later attracted settlers
whose descendants still live in Bradford
County, Pennsylvania, notably the Piollets and
the Delpeuchs.

The fate of the originators of "Azylum "

was very sad. Noailles died of his wounds in

a successful naval engagement off Havana;

Dupetit Thouars fell in the Battle of the Nile,

and Omer Talon returned to France and died

in an insane asylum ; De Blacons too returned,

became a member of the National Assembly,

and died by his own hand; Fromentin, once

priest, became a judge in Florida; Beaulieu
146

IN THE UNITED STATES

left descendants now known as Boileau, scat-
tered tiirough Pennsylvania.

In 1801 John Brevost advertised in the
Wilkes-Barre Gazette that he would open at
Asylum a school for teaching the French lan-
guage, " which within a hundred years has
become the common tongue of Europe; is
spoken by two large regions of the continent,
and which the reward of a sincere friendship
between the American' and French nations will
render necessary to young gentlemen who in-
tend to follow the political or mercantile life ; '*
his price was sixty bushels of wheat a year,
but he soon moved to New Orleans.

The list of taxables at Asyliun for the year
1796 (the earliest known) has a goodly array
of French names, but it is pathetic to follow
the decrease in successive years, showing the
scattering of the settlers. " The French at
Asyliun " are the subjects of a paper by the
Reverend David Craft, printed by the Wyom-
ing Historical Society, in vol. viii of its Pro-
ceedings, in 1902, following an earlier paper
by him of 1898, in vol. v, for 1900. It de-
scribes actual visits and the results of a careful
147

FRENCH COLONISTS AND EXILES

inspection of the traces of the settlement of
1796.

Of the " great " house, where Omer Talon
lived in generous hospitality, entertaining
travelling Frenchmen, and caring for his
neighbors, not a trace is left, while the gardens
and orchards have all disappeared, and all
that they were is told in Alexander Wilson's
verse:

*' Gaul's exiled royalists, a pensive train.
Here raise the hut and clear the rough domain,"

while of their leaders, there are remembered
only Noailles and Dupetit Thouars, and that
for their heroic death in the service of their
country.

In Alexander Graydon's Memoirs (Harris-
burg, 1811 ) he says : " A letter about the year
1790 or 1791 introduced to me Mr. Talon, then
engaged with the Viscomte de Noailles in estab-
lishing a settlement on the North Branch of
the Susquehanna, and to which they gave the
name of Assylum [^]. He several times
passed through Harrisburg. Mr. Talon fully

justified to my conception the favorable idea
148

IN THE UNITED STATES

of a Frenchipan of rank. I have seldom seen
a gentleman with whose manners I was more
pleased. Though he spoke but little English,
and I less French, yet from the knowledge we
had of each other's language, we contrived to
make ourselves mutually understood. On one
of his visits to Harrisburg he was attended
by not less than ten or a dozen gentlemen, all
adventurers in the new establishment, from
which they had just returned on their way to
Philadelphia. Of these I only recollect the
names of M. de Blacons, Captain Keating, and
Captain Boileau. Captain Keating was an
Irishman, and Captain Boileau had been among
the troops which had served in this country.
M. Blacons expatiated on a projected road
from Assylum to Philadelphia, which required
nothing but the consent of the Legislature, to
be completed out of hand. Talon had been
adverse to the Revolution in France in all its
stages and modifications. He was the person
on account of whose courteous reception Gen-
eral Washington had been roundly taken to
task by the Citizen Grenet. The Duke de la

Rochefoucauld gives some particulars of the
149

FRENCH COLONISTS AND EXILES

Assylum settlement, humorously called by some
of the settlers, refugmm peccatorvmy and
enumerates the families which had established
themselves there. The settlement is now en-
tirely abandoned by the French; a tract more
rugged and mountainous could hardly be
found. It agrees with Mr. Talon's account
of it : ^ A narrow strip of flat land along the
river.' Talon was Avocat General under the
old regime, of the family of the one spoken of
by Cardinal de Retz.'*

XIII

French Settlement in Iowa

Theee has been little written about the
French settlements in Iowa, chiefly because the
French pioneers made few settlements in Iowa
that continued and because the immigration
since has been slight. Of French communities
existing to-day there are but four in the State.
Near Waterloo, south and east, there is a com-
munity that was known as " Frenchtown *' in
common parlance, but in the Postal Guide it
goes under the name of GilbertviUe. There is
a French community near Woodstock, a rural
agricultural folk. Not far from Sioux City is
a little town of Salix, made up almost wholly
of French, many of them descendants of
Canadian voyageurs who returned from fruit-
less expeditions up the Missouri River in the fur-
trading days and became the pioneers of Wood-
bury County and the first settlers of Sioux City.
In the northern part of Washington County,

151

FRENCH COLONISTS AND EXILES

Iowa, in the southeastern portion of the State,
there is another French community. It is some-
what interfused with other peoples at present.
Another French community is the religious
brotherhood at the monastery of MeUeray, not
far from Dubuque, in northeastern Iowa. Of
the early settlements, Dubuque contained the
greatest number and they constitute to-day a
noticeable element in that city. Girard (now
McGregor) opposite Prairie du Chien in Wis-
consin, Bellevue in Jackson County, and Mont-
rose in Lee County, and St. Mary's, Pottawat-
tamie County, are defunct French settlements.
Davenport and Keokuk contain some descend-
ants and originals of the pioneer French stock
that first invaded Iowa. Not a few of the
Icarians or their descendants are found in
Keokuk to-day. The architect of Iowa's
capitol was an Icarian, S. Picquenard.*

The Socialist colony of Icaria in Iowa is
described by Nordhoff in his " Communistic
Societies of the United States," New York,
1875, pp. 834, etc., and in an article in the

* Letter from Prof. F. I. Herriott, Drake University,
Dubuque, Iowa.

159

IN THE UNITED STATES

Lofidon Quarterly Review of June, 1848, pp.
16, etc., and by Hillqnist in his "History of
Socialism in the United States." He says the
founder, Cabet, was bom in Dijon in 1788,
was a member of the French Assembly in 1834.
He bought a million acres in Texas, arrived
in New Orleans in 1848, with four hundred
followers, and by 1849 had five hundred. The
Texas scheme failed, and he next moved to
Nauvoo, Illinois, lately abandoned by the Mor-
mons ; in 1866 Cabet was expelled, and he died
soon after in St. Louis, near which some him-
dred of his adherents settled, but that colony
broke up in 1859. The others had gone to Iowa
and established a colony which broke up in
1887, part of it going to California, while
the old Icaria ended in 1895. The California
colony lasted only a few years, but was fol-
lowed by many French settlers, to whom is
largely due the successful culture of vineyards,
olive and fig and peach and other small fruits,
which contribute greatly to the prosperity of
the State.

" Soon after the last remnant of Mormon
population disappeared from Nauvoo there
153

FRENCH COLONISTS AND EXILES

appeared on that historic spot the advance
agents of a new colony seeking opportunity
to exploit other peculiar theories of social life
in this far western country.^ Nauvoo was an
ideal site for such an experiment, and the
agents hastily returned to New Orleans with a
favorable report and an option on the land
for the waiting colonists. These were the
Icarians, a considerable body of communists,
organized in France by Etienne Cabet of
Dijon. The foundation of his dream of abso-
lute equality, as typified in a democratic re-
public to be called Icaria, was laid in 1830,
and by 1847 four hundred thousand names
were reported as signed to the Social Compact.
A year later, having obtained a large tract of
land in Texas, an advance guard of sixty-nine
sailed from France to take formal possession;
others followed, but from various causes, more
particularly the nature of the country and the
prevalence of malarial fever, this first coloniza-
tion was an utter failure, so that when, in
1849, Cabet reached New Orleans and took

* Settlement of the Icarians at Nauvoo, p. 347,
Parrish's Historic Illinois.

154

IN THE UNITED STATES

personal command of the entire force, then
numbering iSve hundred, including many
women and children, agents were despatched up
the Mississippi seeking a more suitable location
for permanent settlement.

" In March, 1849, the remnant of the colony,
still firm in belief of their dream, began their
journey up the river. It proved a fearful
one. Cholera broke out and many died.
Twenty miles below Nauvoo, ice blocked
further passage northward by steamer, and
they were compelled to tramp the remainder of
the way knee deep in snow and slush, carrying
children and sick as best they could. At
Nauvoo they found some comfort in the houses
still standing as the banished Mormons had
left them, yet much suffering remained. The
climate was severe, water unwholesome, food
costly, indeed nearly impossible to obtain at
any price. For months they subsisted entirely
upon beans. But in the midst of all this hard-
, ship, the spirit of the Icarians remained un-
broken. Slowly they built their little common-
wealth, a mere child's toy compared to the
stately city of their enthusiastic leader's plans,

155

FRENCH COLONISTS AND EXILES

yet ruled by thexsame laws, controlled by the
same ideals, which had made them exiles. Six
directors, elected aimually, controlled the ad-
ministration ; the laws were made by a general
assembly, including all men over twenty.
Cabet was elected president year after year,
yet exercised little authority, as the title was
merely one of honor. The colony was purely
communistic, the members putting their pos-
sessions, even books and heirlooms, into the
common fund. Furniture, tools, and cooking
utensils were equally divided; tasks and hours
of labor were evenly proportioned. Homes
were separate, each family occupying its own
house, but the colony school reared the children
in common ; all ate at one table ; individualism
was treated as unworthy.

" For a while the community flourished and
increased; it became fairly prosperous. By
1865 they had with great industry and self-
denial erected mills and workshops, their farms
were well tilled, their school ranked among the
best in the State. A well-selected library of
over six thousand volumes had been established,

and a well-organized trained orchestra was the
156

IN THE UNITED STATES

marvel of the neighbors. A weekly magazine
was published in three languages, with a wide
circulation in the United States and Europe-
New members were constantly arriving, among
them men and Women of culture, accomplished
musicians, painters of reputation, a famous
civil engineer, a physician of standing in
Vienna, an authority on bee culture, Picque-
nard, afterwards architect of the capitols
in Iowa and Illinois; Vallet, a sociologist,
Gauvain, officer, teacher, nobleman. Cabet
himself was the cause of failure. Late in 1855,
tired of being president only in name, he tried
to have the constitution revised so as to give
him almost dictatorial powers; but this led to
a bitter contest. Cabet was deposed at the
election, but was restored on his appeal to the
voters.

" Later he commanded his old officials not to
vacate their positions to those newly elected.
This led to a strike by Cabet's loyal followers,
who refused to work when the new directors
were put in by force by the majority. After
a bitter struggle the majority burned Cabet's
' Icaria,' until then their creed, a legal divi-
157

FRENCH COLONISTS AND EXILES

sion of the community property was decided
upon, and Cabet by vote expelled. One hun-
dred and eighty disciples accompanied him into
exile, while eight himdred remained. A week
later he died suddenly of apoplexy in St.
Louis. His followers located six miles below
that city, prospered for a while, then broke up.
The majority drifted away from Nauvoo to
a tract of land in Iowa. There by 1876 they
reached the height of their prosperity, after
much struggle, and then a second division
separated the younger from the older members,
the former drifting to California, the latter
clinging to Icaria, until by 1896 the last
vestige of their community had perished, al-
most without a ripple, from mere exhaustion.
The California colony lasted a little longer,
but that too iSnally ended from want of the
old enthusiasm and of new recruits."

XIV

BONAPARTIST ExiLES

Among French exiles to America who be-
came prominent on their return to France,
were Marshal Grouchy, Lefebvre Desnouettes,
Clausel, later governor general of Algiers and
marshal, Lackanal, later minister of educa-
tion under Napoleon. In 1817 Parmentier
obtained a grant of land in Alabama for
French refugees, who left Philadelphia and
settled at St. Stephen's, on the Tombigbee ; at
the suggestion of Comte Real it was called
Demopolis. German Redemptioners were hired
to work the land, but it was finally abandoned
after vain efforts to introduce the culture of
vines, olives, etc., leaving debts and quarrels
with neighbors. Of the settlers Clouis, once
secretary of the Due de Rovigo, died in Mobile^
in 1846, and Chaudron in 1846. Chaudron
had lived in Philadelphia, delivered an oration

on Washington before the Masonic Order, and
159

FRENCH COLONISTS AND EXILES

was a frequent contributor to French journals.
"The Napoleonic Exiles in America; a
Study in American Diplomatic History, 1816—
1819," by Jesse S. Reeves, Ph.D. Baltimore.
Johns Hopkins Press, September-October,
1906, is No. 9-10 of Series 2S of Johns Hop-
kins University Studies in History and Polit-
ical Science. It opens with an account
of the unfortunate colonial enterprise called
Champs d'Asile, on the bcmks of the Trinity
River, in Texas. Balzac in the third part
of " Les Cilibataires " sketched the pur-
poses and results of the plan of founding a
French colony of Napoleon's old soldiers, par-
ticularly the remnant of the Old Guard, partly
to get them out of Paris and France, to the
relief of the newly restored Bourbons, partly
to carry out Napoleon's vague plan of seeking
an asylum in America. Joseph Bonaparte did
so for sixteen years, living in or near Philadel-
phia from 1816 until 1882. Of the other
soldiers of Napoleon sent into exile, the first to
land was Marshal Grouchy, who reached Balti-*
more in January, I8I69 — ^published in Phila-

160

IN THE UNITED STATES

delp^a, in 1818, his account of Waterloo, and
in 1820 a pamphlet on Napoleon's Memoirs.
Later came the Lallemands, Lef ebvre Desnou-
ettes, Rigaud, Clausel, Real, Galabert, Schultz,
Combes, Jordan, Latapie, Voi:^ter, Douarche,
Charrasin, Ta^illade, D^foumi, and others of
less rank. Lakanal brought a letter from
Lafayette to Jefferson, and first settled in
Gallatin County, near Vevay, Indiana.

A company was formed in Philadelphia in
1816 to secure a grant of land for settlement
and cultivation of vine and olive. The secre-
tary. Colonel Parmentier, secured the grant for
" The French Agricultural and Manufactur-
ing Society," and the Tombigbee Association.
General Charles Lallemand was elected presi-
dent, and most of the shareholders were the
French officers of Napoleon's army, whose
names are given above. The site selected was
on the Tombigbee River in Alabama. One
hundred and fifty sailed from Philadelphia in
1817, and later a still larger number ; all were
heartily welcomed. " Demopolis " was sur-
veyed, but being outside the grant, "Aigle-
ville " took its place. ** Marengo," as th§

FRENCH COLONISTS AND EXILES

name of the county, still preserves this Napo-
leonic idea.

The leading colonist was Lefebvre Desnou-
ettes, with a farm of five hundred acres, and a
log cabin, which he called his sanctuary ; in it
(tradition says) was a large bronze statue of
Napoleon, at its base the swords and pistols
Lefebvre had taken in battle, and on the walls
the colors of the Emperor. Peniers and Raoul
and Clouis were his neighbors. The colony soon
melted away, and Lallemand planned another
in Texas. Meantime Hyde de Neuville, then
French Minister in Washington, was fright-
ened by the plan of a Napoleonic invasion of
Mexico, where Joseph Bonaparte was to be
made Emperor. It really had little to do with
the plans for the Texas colony, which landed
in Galveston in 1818, welcomed by Lafitte,
and all, some three or four hundred, soon left
for the site of the new colony on Trinity River,
where fort and blockhouses were built, ground
was cleared, and a proclamation of its plan
issued. It was published in Paris, and one
hundred thousand francs were subscribed there
for the colony. Beranger wrote a hymn in
169

IN THE UNITED STATES

its honor, but the colony melted away at the
threat of a Spanish invading force. It re-
treated to Galveston, joined D'Auvray, a
Frenchman who planned wresting Texas from
Spain, but a storm wrecked the place, and
Lafitte rescued them. The younger Lalle-
mand returned to Philadelphia and after
marrying a niece of Girard, went with the
elder brother to Europe ; Lakanal, after a hard
experience in the West, went to France and
became a person of much importance.

M. Georges Bertin gives a very clear account
of a leading French exile in his " Joseph
Bonaparte in America," 1816-1832 (Paris,
1898). He describes his estate at Borden-
town, and his large purchase of wild land in
New York from Le Ray de Chaumont, made
in 1814 in France, when sales of smaller tracts
were made to Real, Caulaincourt, and later iti
1816 to Grouchy, Desfoumeaux, and others.
Joseph Bonaparte had, before the fall of the
Empire, loaned two hundred thousand francs
to Le Ray, and in payment took the
lands on the Black River which he saw
for the first time in 1818. There he saw
163

FRENCH COLONISTS AND EXILES

a cottonmiU, an Iron forge, and a papermill,
and was delighted with the improvements made
in the last four years. He meule more pur-
chases of land from Le Ray, making a total
investment of $120,000, partly in payment of
the original loan of $40,000, and partly in
diemionds, carried from his French home at
Morfontaine, hidden in Switzerland, and re-
turned there to his agent Maillard. He built a
house, gave hunting parties on his estate of one
hundred and fifty thousand acres, and fished
and sailed on his lake of twelve hundred acres,
filled with wooded islands. His daughter
Charlotte made sketches, of which some were
lithographed. The Legislature of New York
passed an act enabling him to hold the land.
The Emperor in St. Helena approved of his
brother's plans, and said that if he had gone
to America, he would have gathered around
him all his family, and with the millions he
had given them, in a year he would have had
sixty thousand Frenchmen with a capital of
twenty million dollars, and America would
have been a true asylum for those who had fled

from the system that had triumphed in
164

IN THE UNITED STATES

Europe, and from which they would send
forth sound doctrines. Joseph made homes
for some of the French officers exiled to
the United States, but in 1829 he offered
to sell land that had cost him five dollars an
acre in 1814, for from three to seven dollars
an acre, and said there were a thousand settlers
with roads, mills, villages, etc. In 18S5 he
sold his land to Mr. John Laf arge of New York
for eighty thousand dollars, a heavy loss on his
original investment. He spent one hundred
and fifty thousand dollars on his Bordentown
estate, and the expenses of living there made
deep inroads on his diminishing fortune, while
he supplied the money to establish in New York
the Courrier des Etata Unis, in charge of La-
coste, formerly an officer in the French army,
and an aid of Marshal Glerard at Waterloo.
Hyde de Neuville on his arrival as French Min-
ister to the United States, in 1816, found
here, as he tells us in his Memoirs, many
Napoleonic exiles whose movements he reported
to his government. In New York were
Regnault de St. Jean d'Angely, Quinet, and

Real; in Philadelphia, Grouchy, Clausel,
165

FRENCH COLONISTS AND EXILES

Gamier de Saintes, and near by Joseph Bona-
parte with his associates and frequent visitors,
among them Colonel Behr, who was planning
for him a kingdom in Mexico, helped by
Lakanal. Napoleon at St. Helena heard of
the report and laughed at the idea. Lakanal
was really in earnest at work as president of the
University of Louisiana, a post he held until
his return to France.

General Bernard, according to Neuville, one
of the conspirators, was glad to &id employ-
ment as an engineer in the service of the United
States, and in grateful acknowledgment, named
his. son, bom here in 1819, Columbus. Re-
turned to France after the Revolution of 1880,
he died there holding the office of minister of
war. Grouchy published in I%iladelphia, in
1815, his criticism of Gourgaud's account
of Waterloo, and again, in 1820, that of the
authenticity of the Memoirs attributed to
Napoleon. He was one of the owners of land
on the Black River, New York, and thus had
business dealings with Joseph Bonaparte. An-
other of his visitors was General Vandamme,
in whose division Joseph Bonaparte had a regi-
166

IN THE UNITED STATES

ment. He, too, lived in Philadelphia, until
with Arnault and Bory Saint Vincent, he re-
turned to France in 1820. The Lallemands
were warmly welcomed by Joseph Bonaparte,
and Neuville said they were leaders in the
Texas colony and in the plans for a Napoleonic
confederation in Mexico.

Lefebvre Desnouettes was shipwrecked on
his voyage home and lost on the Irish coast.
Charles Lallemand, after the failure of the
colony in Texas, opened a school and thus
maintained himself until his return to France,
where Louis Philippe gave him an important
command. Chiles J. IngersoU has recorded
in his " History of the Second War with Great
Britain," many details of his personal acquaint*
ance with ** the Comte de Survilliers," as the
ex-king of Spain chose to call himself. Two
of his friends,. Lallemand and Rigau, both old
soldiers under the great Napoleon, had charge
of the four hundred men who went to the
French colony " Champs d'Asile." Rigau
died in New Orleans, leaving a daughter whose
descendants include Mme. Jules Ferry, Colonel
Charras, Scheurer Kestner, and Charles

167

FRENCH COLONISTS AND EXILES

Floquet. A detailed account of this French
colony in Texas, was published in Paris in
1820.

Bertin cites from Ingersoll, the following
names of Frenchmen who were visitors at
Joseph Bonaparte's: Grouchy, Clausel, Bern-
ard, Charles and Henry Lallemand, Lefebvre
Desnouettes, Vandamme, Combes, Girardin,
Latapie, the sons of Grouchy, Regnault de St.
Jean d'Angely, Real, Miot de Melito, Lakanal,
Quinet, two sons of Fouch6, a son of Marshal
Ney, the son of Marshal Lannes, a very fair
showing of the French officers of Napoleon,
from time to time in America. Lafayette him-
self on his triumphal tour of the United States
in 18S4, wa3 more than once a guest of
Joseph Bonaparte. Many of his visitors re-
turned to France and received offices from Loujs
Philippe, thus reducing his adherents in the
vain struggle to restore his nephew, the son
of the great Napoleon, to the throne. While
he was supporting the French paper in New
York he was asked to help others in France
and England, and to get money for this pur-
pose, he tried to sell his Black River property

168

IN THE UNITED STATES

to Girard, but the death of the ktter turned
the sale in another direction. He kept
in close touch with the attacks on the govern-
ment of Louis Philippe and noted that of
Cabet, later founder of Icaria, the unsuccess-
ful colony in the West. In 1832 he left the
United States, after a stay of seventeen years,,
and a farewell reception from the President of
the United States, an honor not accorded him
until he was about to leave the country. Com-
ing to it an exile, he had planned to bring
together many of his fellow exiles, but some of
them returned to France to take service under
Louis Philippe, while others returned to take up
again the apparently hopeless effort to put a
Bonaparte on the throne of France, and a few
remained to lead quiet lives as good American
citizens.

" The French Grant in Alabama; a History
of the Founding of Demopolis," by Gains
Whitfield, Jr. (From the Transactions of the
Alabama Historical Society, Reprint No. 16.)
Montgomery, Ala., 1904, refers to accounts in :

1. Pickett's History of Alabama, entitled,
" Modern French Colony in Alabama."

FRENCH COLONISTS AND EXILES

2. Professor Thomas Chalmers McCorvey's
"The Vine and Olive Colony," in Alabama
Hiiiorical Reporter^ Tuscaloosa, April, 1886.

8. Anne Bozeman Lyon's article on ^^The
Bonapartists in Alabama," in the Southern
Home Journal, Memphis, March, 1900, and
reprinted in the Gulf States Historical Magar
ztne, Montgomery, March, 1903.

4. Articles in the Demopolis Express, by
J. W. Beeson.

It cites from NUes* Register (note p. 824)
an estimate that not less than thirty thousand
French emigrants came to the United States,
and a correction that it could not be three
thousand. An assodaticni was organized in
Philadelphia to establish a colony in the West,
but its agents, Pennier and Meslier, could not
find a suitable site. Meantime it sent Colonel
Nicholas Parmentier to Washington to peti-
tion Congress for a tract of land. They
decided, finally, to settle near the confluence of
the Black Warrior and Tombigbee Rivers, in
what waJ3 then the Mississippi Territory. It
was near Mobile, where there were many sym-
pathizers, and not far from Louisiana, where

170

IN THE UNITED STATES

they hoped to get help towards their plans to
restore Napoleon to his empire. Congress
granted them the tract by Act of March 8,
1817, " four contiguous townships, each six
miles sqiiare in the Mississippi Territory, at
two dollars per acre, payable fourteen years
after a contract with agents of the late emi-
grants from France, associated for a settlement
in the United States, with provisions for culti-
vating vines, etc., no patent to be issued until
payment had been made, nor to any one person
for more than six acres." Parmentier sailed
from Philadelphia and reported his arrival in
a letter dated Mobile Bay, May 26, 1817, pub-
lished in the National Intelligencer on the
following July 17.

It was decided to settle where Demopolis
now stands, and the name of IVfarengo was
given to the county. The emigrants came by
way of Mobile and by the Ohio, chose lots,
erected cabins, and at the suggestion of Count
Real, one of the Philadelphia incorporators
who never came to Alabama, named it Dem-
opolis. The contract signed with the Secretary

of atie Treasury conveyed the land for $184,-
171

FRENCH COLONISTS AND EXILES

SSO, to be paid on or before January 8, 1833.
It provided for clearing ten acres on each tract,
for planting five hundred olive trees within
seven years, and for annual reports as to vine
and olive cultivation, and with it was a list of
nearly four hundred persons to whom allot-
ments were made, among them the two sons of
Marshal Grouchy, Greneral Lallemand, Colonel
Douarche, Colonel Comb, Colonel Jordan,
Colonel Vorster, Colonel Galabert, Colonel
Rigau, Lakanal, Tulane, Clouis, Greneral
Clausel, Colonel Charassin, Colonel Raoul,
Colonel Taillade, Bujac, Salaignac, Brugi^re,
General Lefebvre Desnouettes, Ducommun,
Melizet, and others still known in Philadelphia
and Mobile. Their first town site was found
not within their grant, so a second was laid
out and called Aigleville. The reports of the
agent of the treasury were regularly printed
for Congress and described their houses, etc. ;
but the colonists suffered great hardships, in
spite of frequent remittances of money and
supplies from France. Their vines and olives
were total failures from the unsuitable loca-
tion. Some of the settlers went with Lalle-
179

IN THE UNITED STATES

mand to Texas to establish ^^ Champs d'Azile,"
but that too fafled. In 1820 some of the St.
Domingo refugees came from Philadelphia to
join the Demopolis colony. In 1822 Congress
passed an act to convey title to those who
might pay for their land. Their agent,
Charles Villars, said there were three hundred
and twenty-seven persons in the colony, eighty-
one actual planters, with eleven hundred acres
in full cultivation, and fifteen hundred by
lease; ten thousand vines in full growth, and
more than $160,000 spent. The Treasury
Agent reported, in 1827, seven thousand four
hundred and fourteen acres in vine, com, cot-
ton, small grain, etc., and in 1828 another
agent explained the reasons for the failure of
the vines, and in another report described the
receipt of vines imported from France, losses
on the way, after planting, by drought, etc.
Many of the colonists returned to Europe,
others to Mobile and neighboring cities; some
became men of importance in France, and per-
haps the most distinguished, Lef ebvre Desnou-
ettes, was lost at sea on his way home. Colonel
Raoul kept a ferry near Demopolis, then went
173

FRENCH COLONISTS AND EXILES

to Mexico, returned to France and became Gk>v-
emor of Toulon. Pennier was appointed
subagent to the Seminoles, and died in Florida.
Clouis kept a tavern in Greensboro and died in
Mobile. Chaudron, "the blind poet of the
canebrake/' who had edited a French paper in
Philadelphia and attracted notice by his
eulogy of Washington before the Grand Lodge
of Masons in that city, died in Mobile in 1846,
" leaving many interesting works, which were
published in Paris." Clausel lived near Mobile,
raising vegetables, which he sold in the dty
market; returned to France in 1825, be-
came a marshal and was made governor gen-
eral of Algiers by Louis Philippe. Ravesies
was a refugee from St. Domingo, became ^
business man in Philadelphia, was made agent
of the Tombigbee Association in 1820, and
after living on his grant moved to Mobile,
where he died in 1864.

Daudet in his " Le Brise-Cailloux, 1816,"
tells a story of a plan to take Napoleon to
America, as follows : When, after Waterloo,
Napoleon went to the island of Aix, on the eve

of his surrender to the English, a ship captain,
174 --^

IN THE UNITED STATES

Vildieu, proposed to take him to America,
through the English lines. Vildieu was an
ardent Bonapartist, an excellent sailor, having
made a special study of sailing small craft on
the open ocean, — ^was sure of his boat and was
ready to take it to the end of the world. The
Emperor heard the whole of his story,
walked up and down in silence, then looking at
the ocean for some minutes, shook his head and
said no. The plan did not inspire confidence
and he preferred surrendering to the English.
Some months later, Vildieu, to show that his/
plan was a good one, on the same boat that he
had offered to Napoleon, sailed to America with
two men, one his son. At the end af six weeks,
he landed at Halifax, much to the surprise of
the crew of a frigate, near which he anchored.
Long years afterwards, the son, then an old
man, told Daudet the story. How much truth
is there in it? At all events it confirms the old
tradition that Napoleon really considered this
and other projects for taking refuge in the
United States.

Royalist Exiles

Htde de Neuville came to the United
States in ISO?, a royalist exile, and spent seven
years in this country. His first thought was
to establish an agricultural settlement, and
with this in view he travelled through the
country. In his letters (pp. 460, etc., of the
first volume of his Memoirs, Paris, JIS80) he
speaks of the country as he saw it, of the
boundless forests, the virgin soil, the industry
of the people, of his visits to the Indians in
Western New York, of the good work among
them of the French missionaries during the rule
of France, and their neglect later on; living
on the allowance paid by the Holland Land
Company, he found them little like the war-
like savages described by Chateaubriand. He
went as far West as Tennessee, to visit the
colonies established by Church and Dupont de
Nemours. He corresponded with his country-
17^

FRENCH COLONISTS AND EXILES

women, Mme. de Noailles, Mme. de Mouchy,

Mme. de Damas, Mme. de Rochemore, Mme.

de Montechenu, and Mme. de Pastorpt,

and the Princess de Tremoille. To the

last he wrote that if the Americans were

wise, they would in time dictate laws to

both worids, the Old and the New, and equal

in power the great nations of Europe. He

thought thirty or forty years would see this

result, and if other Presidents had followed

the example of Washington, whom he praises

in the strongest terms, perhaps it would not

have taken a century to realize his aspirations

for the future of American greatness. He

formed many strong friendships with the

Crugers,the Wilkes, the Churches, the Simonds,

the Roulets, and with the Moreaus, the general

then in exile from the enmity of Napoleon.

Opposed as they had been in politics in France,

in America the French exiles met on a common

ground of love for France. A brother, after

two years of rigorous imprisonment in France,

joined him in New York; in the interval he

had studied medicine and became in 1810

" Doctor " Neuville. He established in New
U 177

FRENCH COLONISTS AND EXILES

York a school for the children of the families
exiled in 1800 from St. Domingo. Among
them was the family Ricord, whose son, edu-
cated in this school, after his return to France
became the celebrated Dr. Ricord, and in his
house there later on welcomed his benefactor.
The State of New York appropriated money
for the school and Hyde de Neuville published
a monthly literary paper to earn more for it,
the Journal of the Hermit of the Passaic^ for
near New Brunswick, New Jersey, he made his
home, tried farming, and saw his brother mar-
ried to the daughter of the Marquis d'Espin-
ville, an exile from Havana. Soon afterwards
General Moreau left his peaceful home at Mor-
risville, Pennsylvania, to return to Europe
and fall in battle against France and Napo-
leon. Hyde de Neuville had opposed the offer
made by Moreau to serve with the allies against
France. Royalist as he was, NeuviQe was
always a patriotic Frenchman, and frankly
wrote to Louis XVIII that he thought Moreau
had not taken the right course.

Returning to France at the call of the Due

d'Angouleme, Hyde de Neuville received very
178

IN THE UNITED STATES

flattering letter^ from Dewitt Clinton, then
mayor, later governor, and from the " Eco-
nomical Society " of New York, for his services
as founder and secretary of that useful body.
In France and through Europe he resumed all
his old activity in support of the royal cause,
represented it in the French Legislature
after the fall of Napoleon, and in 1816 was
sent to the United States as French Minister.
Welcomed alike by the public authorities and
by his old friends and by the pupils of the
school he had founded, after a short stay on
his farm at New Brunswick, he went to Wash-
ington, where he was warmly received by
President Monroe, whose acquaintance he had
made when Monroe was American Minister
in Paris. He visited Madison and Jefferson
at their homes in Virginia, and his correspond-
ence with the Due de Richelieu, the French
Minister of Foreign Affairs (his wife was a
Montcalm, another suggestion of France in
America), is full of details of their recollec-
tions of their stay in Paris as American
ministers.

Much of his time was taken up in keeping
179

FRENCH COLONISTS AND EXILES

watch over the French exiles living in the
United States. Joseph Bonaparte was the
head of a large body of French exiles, busy in
scheming for Napoleon. Dupont de Nemours
asked help for a very different body of French,
refugees from St. Domingo, and Hyde de
Neuville gave the French Consuls instruc-
tions in regard to them. In New York
there were Regnault, Quinet, and Real; in
Philadelphia Joseph Bonaparte, Grouchy,
Clausel, Garnier de Saintes; in New Or-
leans, Lefebvre Desnouettes, while a colony
was established on the shores of the Ohio.
The Due de Richelieu and the King both ap-
proved his sending a portrait of Napoleon,
found in the French Legation aj. Washington,
to Joseph Bonaparte, then living at Borden-
town, whence it returned later to the legation.
Many of the French exiles fled from France to
avoid the punishment to which they had been
condemned by the Courts for political offences,
but the French authorities were apparently
only too glad to be rid of them, and the United
States gave a peaceful home alike to Girondists

and Jacobins, to Royalists and Imperialists, to
180

IN THE UNITED STATES

men of any and of no political opinions, as
long as they were peaceful residents and good
citizens. While there were some unsuccessful
schemes set qn foot in the United States to
release Napoleon from St. Helena, Neuville
wrote home that Grouchy, Lefebvre Desnou-
ettes and Lallemand and Clausel were all loyal
to the existing French government. Clausel
wrote of the misfortunes of the French officers
in exile in the United States, and suggested
that help be given them to settle in Havana
and Porto Rico. .Some of them, however, re-
turned to France and became high officers
under the more liberal policy of Louis Philippe.
The " Conventionnel Lakanal " was reported
by Neuville in 1817, as an agent of Joseph -
Bonaparte in a plan to make the latter King
of Mexico, part of Burr's conspiracy. Just
before leaving Washington, to return to
France, he obtained from the government there,
in 1818, means to continue his " Economical
School '' in New York, for the children of the
impoverished refugees from St. Domingo, and
even to help some of them to return to France.

He himself went there, and after a short stay
181

FRENCH COLONISTS AND EXILES

in Paris again returned temporarily to Wash-
ington, to complete his negotiations with the
government of the United States. Finally
recalled to France, he found his friends,
among them Chateaubriand, in the govern-
ment, and later on he became a minister
of state under Louis Philippe. Living until
1867, he was always fond of dwelling on his
American life, as exile, and as minister. His
active participation in the relief of his country-
men in exile here was without regard to dif-
ferences of political opinions, and his name
figures with honor in the writings of Chateau-
briand and Lamartine, as that of a Frenchman
who, both as a private citizen and as a minister,
appreciated this country and its welcome.

XVI
Balzac's Stoby op a French Exile

Balzac in "Les Celibataires, un Menage
de 6ar9on " (vol. ii of " Scenes de la vie de
Province ") makes his hero (and a great scamp
he is) Captain Philippe Bridau, who went from
Saint Cyr in 1813, became a sub-lieutenant in
a cavalry regiment, later a lieutenant, for
gallantry in saving his colonel in an affair of
outpost duty, was made captain at the battle
of F^re Champenoise, and ordnance officer by
the emperor, got the cross at Montereau; re-
fused to serve under the Bourbons; in 1814
rejoined the emperor at Lyons, accompanied
him to the Tuileries, was made chef d'escadron
of the Guards Dragoons, wounded at Waterloo,
where he gained the cross of the Legion of
Honor, was protected by Marshal Davoust, and
was put on half pay. After the restoration,
he joined General Lallemand in the United

States, and cooperated in founding the Champs
183

FRENCH COLONISTS AND EXILES

d'AsUe, supported by one of the most curious
mystifications known as a national subscription.
His mother had given him ten thousand francs
on sailing from Havre ; no sooner in New York
than he drew on her for one thousand francs,
having lost everything at Champs d'Asile. Re-
turned to France in 1819, ruined by his mis-
fortunes in Texas and his stay in New York,
where speculation and individualism were
carried to the highest pitch ; where the brutality
of interei^ reached cynicism ; where the isolated
man looked only for himself; where politeness
did not exist, — ^Bridau, who cared for only
one person, himself, became brutal, intemper-
ate, selfish, impolite ; misery and suffering had
depraved him. New York had taken away his
least scruples in moraUty. Bronzed by his
stay in Texas, he had a sharp and short way
of making himself respected in New York.
The idea of the conquest of Texas by the hand-
ful of the imperial army that went there to
estabhsh the Champs d'Asile, was a fine one,
for in spite of its failure, Texas is a republic
full of future greatness. Liberalism under the

Restoration was pure egotism; it helped noth-
184

IN THE UNITED STATES

ing to try to refound the empire in America.
The Hberal chiefs soon saw that they were help-
ing Louis XVIII by exporting from France the
glorious remains of its armies, and they aban-
doned the most devoted, ardent enthusiasts,
who were the first to go.

Bridau was welcomed on his return from
Texas and Champs d'Asile as a " soldier-
laborer." That was the title for a deluge bf
engravings, clocks, bronzes, etc., a sort of
tribute to Napoleon and his brave soldiers, who
figured in many plays of the time. It yielded
a fortune, and to this day the " soldier-
laborer" is found in country homes through
France in one or other of these devices.

It was always possible to threaten the
Liberals with the story of the blunders in
Texas, of the waste and pilfering of the
national subscription started for the Champs
d'Asile.

Balzac thus perpetuates the story of the
French " Champs d'Asile " in Texas and its
failure.

XVII

Fbench Members of the American
Philosophical Society

In 1768 Buffon was elected a member of
the American Philosophical Society. This
was a genuine tribute to his fame, for in those
colonial days the relations of that young
society, the outgrowth of Franklin's Junto,
were close with the Mother Country. In that
year Sir William Johnson and General Gage
followed Buffon on its rolls. Mr. T. Penn
sent to the secretary. Provost Smith, Mas-
kelyne's Observations on Venus, and he was
elected in 1771; Du Simitiere followed, a
Frenchman still known by his antiquarian col-
lections, and who no doubt brought some
French spirit to the meetings.

In 1772 Le Rey, of the Academy of Sciences
in Paris, a friend and correspondent of Frank-
lin, was elected, along with Lieutenant Adye

of the Royal Artillery, Lieutenant Hutchins
186

FRENCH COLONISTS AND EXILES

of the Sixtieth (Royal American) Regiment,
and Captain John Montresor of the engineers.
In 1774 Franklin presented Buffon's works, a
gift from the author, and Lavoisier's, with a
letter from the author, and queries from
Condorcet, and they were elected, along with
noteworthy men from London, Barbadoes, and
Jamaica, — often in acknowledgment of works
presented. In 1776 Franklin, presiding, pre-
sented a number of scientific works, and from
the outset he was active in thus securing con-
tributions; one of them was an English book,
by his friend Sir John Pringle; then fol-
lowed the interruption of the war, and when
meetings were resumed, among the newly-
elected members was Gerard de Rayneval,
French minister; and a hound volume of the
Transactions was presented to him and received
with expression of his intention to forward the
views of the Society in America and in France;
he attended a meeting and agreed to forward
to BuiFon the thanks of the Society for his
superb present of his works. In 1780 Luzerne,
the French minister, was elected and attended,

and in 1781 Lafayette was elected ; at a later
187

FRENCH COLONISTS AND EXILES

meeting Barbe Marbois, recently elected, pre-
sided ; and " ten pounds of the best kind of raw
silk produced in Pennsylvania was ordered
to be sent to Lyons, there to be wrought
in the most elegant manner, and presented to
her Most Christian Majesty as a mark of very
high respect." This was following the prece-
dent set in 1770, when the Society for Pro-
moting the Culture of Silk in Pennsylvania
sent Franklin a quantity to be presented
to the Queen of England and to the Penns,
and in 1772, when it sent him forty-five
pounds of raw silk, in acknowledgment of
the trouble he had taken in the business.
In 1783, on the motion of Jefferson,
the Philosophical Society ordered that Rit-
teuhouse should make an orrery to be
presented to the King of France. In 1784
Vergennes was elected, and later in the year,
Lafayette, by special appointment, " enter-
tained the members with an account of the
invisible power called Animal Magnetism, lately
discovered by Mesmer," and later on Marbois
presented the report of the King of France's

commissioners on the subject. In 1785 three
188

IN THE UNITED STATES

volumes of the Proceedings of the Royal
French Academy, and " a very curious elec-
trical apparatus," were presented through Mr.
Marbois, by Dr. Noel of Paris. In 1786 among
the members elected were the Due de Roche-
foucauld, the Marquis de Condorcet, Charles
the aeronaut, Cabanis; in 1787, CM±o, French
Minister to the United States, and Cadet de
Vaux; books were received from Belin
de Villeneuve, Moreau de St. Mery, Marbois,
Brissot de Warville; later in the year was
presented Quesnay de Beaurepaire's account
of the Academy of Sciences and Belles Lettres
established by him at Richmond, in Virginia;
Legau was elected in recognition, no doubt,
of his vineyards at Spring Mills, Penn-
sylvania. In 1791 Duponceau and Temant,
Minister from France, were elected; in 1792
Mathurin de la Forest and Palisot de Beauvois,
and the latter attended and submitted a paper
on a botanical subject; in 1792 Legau pre-
sented his work on Surinam, and later St.
George a paper on the Diseases of St. Domingo
and hot climates in general; and Legau one

on Vine Culture in Pennsylvania. The list of
189

FRENCH COLONISTS AND EXILES

distinguished Frenchmen who were members of
the Philosophical Society was largely increased
after France became an ally in the struggle
with Great Britain. Many of the Frenchmen
who served here were elected, and nearly aU of
its diplomatic and consular representatives
of the time; Lafayette and Chastellux, Otto,
and Luzerne, and D'Angeville, and Vergennes ;
Guichen and Rochefoucauld and Franklin's
friends, Le Veillard and Cadet de Vaux,
and Cabanis, and Le Roux; in 1789 St.
Jean de Crftvecceur (better known as Hector
St. John, the name under which he wrote his
"Farmer in Pennsylvania"), Moreau de St.
Mery, Brissot; in 1791 Gallatin, and Du-
ponceau; in 1793 Valentini; in 1796 Roche-
foucauld Liancourt, Grandpre, Le Compte,
Adet, French Minister to the United States,
Talleyrand Perigprd; in 1797 Volney; in
1800 Dupont de Nemours; in 1802 Houme;
in 1808 Delambre; in 1806 Destutt de
Tracy; in 1807 Lasteyrie; in 1809
Michaux; in 1811 Vauquelin; in 1817
Lesueur, Delametrie, and Deleuze; in 1829

Hyde de Neuville, Pougens, Jomard, and
190

IN THE UNITED STATES

Remusat. In 1793 money was subscribed
towards the expense of Michaux's Western
journey of discoveries; Citizen Genet, French
Minister, presented a letter and pamphlet on
the French reform of the Calendar; and Doctor
Nassey addressed the Society in French on
botany ; later Fauchet, French Minister to the
United States, presented a description of the
New System of Weights and Measures adopted
by the French Republic; M. Lerebours, lately
from Paris, gave an account of the late curious
and useful discoveries and inventions relating
to the arts, made in France since the commence-
ment of the Revolution, with a number of
pamphlets on the same subject; in 1796
Moreau de St. Mery presented some curious
articles from St. Domingo and a medal of
Louis XVI, July 17, 1789, and later a silver
medal of Louis XV, struck on the occasion of
the peace of 1763; he seems to have been a
pretty steady attendant at the meetings. In
1796 Doctor Grassi, " late of Bordeaux, now
of Philadelphia," Rochefoucauld Liancourt,
Le Comte, Le Fessier de Grandpre, and

Citizen Adet, Minister Plenipotentiary of
191

FRENCH COLONISTS AND EXILES

the French Republic to the United States,
were elected at the same meeting, and Grassi,
Adet, and Liancourt attended several subse-
quent meetings ; later Lerebours, ** late of
Paris, now of Philadelphia," Larocque, and M.
Talleyrand Perigord were present; in 1797 Vol-
ney attended meetings ; he was present when St.
Mery presented " from the author," Adet's
" Doctrine of Phlogistique and the Decomposi-
tion of Water " in French ; then, in 1800, the
Society received Dupont de Nemours' book,
** Philosophie de PUnivers," and thanks were
voted and deUvered by Jefferson; and later
more papers were received from Dupont, yet
the committee to which one of them was re-
ferred, reported that although ingenious, it was
not of sufficient importance to publish, but
later on the publication was ordered of his
translation of Baudry de Loziere's paper on
Animal Cotton.

In 1803 the National Institute of France
promised, as successors of the French Academy,
to resume correspondence and exchanges ; Gen-
eral Toussard presented a paper on proving

cannon; the library was enriched by the nu-
199

IN THE UNITED STATES

merous volumes of " L'Encyclopedie." In
1806 Dupont de Nemours sent from Paris De
Candolle's " Essai sur les proprietes medicinales
des plantes," and many French books were re-
ceived from other sources, some by purchase,
many as gifts, from Hassler the volumes neces-
sary to complete the Transactions of the French
Academy of Science, which Franklin left to it.

It is a noteworthy fact that Franklin's
legacy to the Philosophical Society was ninety-
one volumes of the History of the Royal Acad-
emy of Sciences of France, and that later the
Society bought from Franklin's library many
of his French scientific works, e,g,y Bailly's
History of Astronomy, those of Condamine, De
Luc, Desagulier, Berthelot, De Saussure, La-
voisier, De la Lande, as well as a number of
serial volumes of French scientific societies.
Thus was begun that collection of the Transac-
tions, etc., of French scientific societies that now
form so important a part of the library.

In 1807 Jeff^erson presented pamphlets from
the authors, De Lasteyrie on Cotton and
Cossigny on Sugar. In 1809 Michaux ob-

13 193

FRENCH COLONISTS AND EXILES

tained the completion to date of the French
scientific journals, and imported for the Society
the works of * Brongniart, Bronchart, Hauy,
and Berthelot. In 1817 the election of Lesueur
brought a French naturalist who made frequent
communication of his researches; he was con-
stant in attendance at the meetings, and took
part in the election of Desmarest, Blainville,
and Latreille of Paris in 1819 ; he served dili-
gently both before and after his Western visit
with Maclure ; in 1823 he was present when the
Society elected Joseph Count de Survilliers and
Luden Prince of Canino. In 1824 Lafayette
was received by the Society with marked honors.
In 1826 Charles Bonaparte attended and he and
Lesueur and Duponceau recalled the days of
frequent attendance by French members and
visitors. Charles Bonaparte made donations to
the library, and Lesueur gave his drawings
from the fossil bones in the cabinet. In 1829
Hyde de Neuville, then French Minister to the
United States, was elected a member; and
Pougens; in 1830 M. A. Julien ; in 1831 Louis
Philippe, King of the French; in 1833 the

members of the Society subscribed towards a
194

IN THE UNITED STATES

statue of Cuvier, and sent the money in the
name of the Society to the French Academy;
in 1833 M. Nicollet "of Paris, then in
Georgia," reported his progress in scientiiSc ob-
servations in the Southern States ; in 1834 the
death of Lafayette was formally announced
and due action taken. In 1837 the death of
Barb6 Marbois in his ninety-fifth year was
announced and Duponceau was appointed to
prepare a memoir of him. He had been Na-
poleon's Minister of Finance. Other notable
Frenchmen elected were Larrey, the great
French surgeon, Roux de Rochelle, Guizot, De
Tocqueville, Poussin, the French Minister to
the United States, Pouchet, Michel Chevalier,
Cauchey, Brown-Sequard, Durand, Elie de
Beaumont, Milne-Edwards, St. Claire-De-
ville, J. B. Dumas, Vemeuil, Lesquereux,
Renan, Boucher des Perthes, Gasparin, De
Ronge, Linant, Mariette, Lartet, Carlier, Leon
Say, Broca, Viollet le Due, Claude Jannet,
Paul Leroy Beaulieu, Rosny, Pasteur, Hove-
lacque, Levasseur, Duruy, Nadaillac, Reville,
Topinard, Taine, Berthelot, George Bertin,
Delambre, Delage, Becquerel, Darboux, Mas-
196

FRENCH COLONISTS AND EXILES

pero, Poincare. Thus from the early election
of Buffon, with the later welcome to the French
who served in the American war, the hearty
reception of French refugees and exiles, down
to our own day, with its representatives of
French science and letters, the records of the
Society show how largely its membership was
recruited by notable Frenchmen. At the elec-
tion of 1907, the Society chose M. Jusserand,
the French ambassador to the United States,
and a scholarly man of letters.

Pontgibaud says that " Duportail told him
the French refugees found Philadelphia an ark
of safety. Constitutionalists, Conventional-
ists, Thermidorians, Fructidorians, as well as
Royalists and Girondists, met on common
ground; Moreau de St. Mery kept a sta-
tioner*s shop, where they met to discuss the
future of France; Noailles, Liancourt, Tal-
leyrand speculated in stocks and land; the
French cook who supplied the Due d'Orleans
and his brothers, forbade Volney coming to his
little restaurant while they were there."

In 1844 Doctor Dunglison delivered an

eulogium on Duponceau. It followed in due
195

IN THE UNITED STATES

course that on Franklin by Provost Smith,
that on Rittenhouse by Doctor Rush, that on
Doctor Wistar by Chief Justice Tilghman, that
on Tilghman by Duponceau, and that on Jef-
ferson by Nicholas Biddle. Bom on the west
coast of France in 1760, Duponceau learned
English from the soldiers of an Irish regiment
stationed in the town, and later Italian in the
same way. Unwillingly he took the tonsure,
but soon gave up holy orders, and went to Paris
to seek his fortune. Through Beaumarchais he
entered the service of Steuben as secretary, and
with him landed in Portsmouth, New Hamp-
shire, in 1777. As a captain of infantry of
the line of the Army of the Revolution he re-
ceived a pension until the day of his death.
After leaving the army, in 1781, owing to ill
health, he became a citizen of Pennsylvania,
and settled in Philadelphia. He was secre-
tary of Robert R. Livingston, Secretary for
[foreign Affairs, studied law and was admitted
to the bar in 1786, and became one of its ac-
knowledged leaders. In 1827 he was elected
a member of the French Institute, in recogni-
tion of his linguistic studies, and in 1836 was
197

FRENCH COLONISTS AND EXILES

awarded the prize founded by Volney, for his
Memoir on the Indian languages of North
America. He spent time and money in an un-
successful effort to introduce the production
and manufacture of silk in this country.
Elected to the Philosophical Society in 1791,
he became a vice-president in 181 69 and presi-
dent in 1827. Among his bequests to the
Society were twenty-one voliunes of the
Moniteur from 1789 to 1809.

Talleyrand read a " Memoir concerning
the Commercial Relations of the United States
with England," at the National Institute, the
16th Germinal, in the Year V, to which was
added ^^ An Essay upon the Advantages to be
derived from New Colonies in the existing cir-
cumstances," read at the Institute, the 15th
Messidor in the Year V, with Notes, in the
month of Ventose, Year VH, — ^published in
London for Longman, 1806, in a pamphlet of
87 pages. In it there are a good many refer-
ences to his visit here. " In every part of
America through which I have travelled, I did
not meet a single Frenchman who did not find

himself a stranger. It is a novel sight to the
198

IN THE UNITED STATES

traveller, who, setting out from a principal
city, where society is in perfection, passes in
succession through all the degrees of civiliza-
tion and industry, which he finds constantly ,
growing weaker and weaker, until in a few
days, he arrives at misshapen and rude cabins,
formed of the trunks of trees lately cut down.
It would require a French establishment in
America to counteract the indolence and want
of native character.

" Have we not seen of late years, since there
have been political opinions in France, men
of all parties embark together, and go to run
the same risks upon the uninhabited banks of
the Scioto?

" Louisiana remains French, although it has
been under the domination of the Spaniards for
more than thirty years, and in Canada, al-
though in the power of the English for the
same length of time, the colonists of these two
countries were Frenchmen, they are so still."

In Mr. Whitelaw Reid's introduction to the

Due de Broglie's edition of the Memoirs of

Talleyrand, (there could not be better sponsors

to their authenticity, in spite of the suspicion
199

FRENCH COLONISTS AND EXILES

thrown on them by the fact that M. de Bacourt
was their custodian,) he says: "Talleyrand
spent many months in the United States soon
after the establishment of their independence,
in which France had aided ; and while a Revolu-
tion, stimulated in part by the American
example, was in progress in his own land, he
found in his recollections of his American visit
almost nothing suggested by either event, and
nothing concerning the great man, then Chief
Magistrate of the country which gave him hos-
pitality. His lack of sympathy ^nth republican-
ism, whether in the United States or in France,
explains the one omission; and Washing-
ton's refusal to receive him, explains the other.
I Lord Lansdowne had given him a warm letter
. of introduction to Washington, setting forth
that Talleyrand was really in exile because,
although a bishop, he had desired to promote
the general freedom of worship, and eulogizing
him for having sacrificed his ambition in the
Church to his devotion to principle. Wash-
ington possibly had his own views as to the
extent to which Talleyrand's exile was due to

his high religioils principles. Hamilton's in-
000

IN THE UNITED STATES

fluence, always great, was joined to Lord Lans-
downe's eulogy, but both were unavailing. The
refusal to receive the French exil^, however,
was quietly put upon political grounds." Fol-
lowing his expulsion from England by Pitt,
Talleyrand naturally had little praise for
either Pitt or Washington. Of his later
dealings with the United States, Mr. Reid
says : " Talleyrand gave notice to the
American Ministers Plenipotentiary in Paris
that they must buy peace or leave the
country. When the American Commission-
ers resented his demand for a bribe of two
himdred and fifty thousand dollars for him-
self and a bigger one called a loan for the
Directory, his representative ziaively said,
* Don't you know that everything is bought in
Paris? Do you dream that you can get on
with this government without paying your
way.'^ ' This from the man who had been
honored with Hamilton's friendship, and who
shrewdly said, shortly after the adoption of
the Constitution, * that was the true date of
the foundation of the United States; it was

the real sheet-anchor of American independ-
301

FRENCH COLONISTS AND EXILES

ence,' was a cynical measure of the men in office
under it.*'

In his story figure the names of his fel-
low-exiles, men of a very different type,
Noailles, who fell in action near Havana fight-
ing for France, Brissot de Warville, who died
on the scaffold, Barb^ Marbois, French Consul
in Philadelphia, and others.

In his narrative he tells the story of meet-
ing Benedict Arnold, just as Talleyrand was
leaving for America, and in vain asking him
for letters of introduction to his friends in
America, and Arnold's characteristic reply:
" I am the only American who cannot give you
letters for his own country." In Philadelphia
he met Casanove and Huidekoper, agents of
the Holland Land Company, and travelled with
the latter inland. He could not have had a
better guide. He speaks of the two winters
spent in Philadelphia and New York, and
praises Hamilton as on a par with Pitt or Fox
or other distinguished European statesmen.
He speaks in high praise of the enterprise of
American merchants and says that in 1794 he

witnessed the return of the first American*

202

IN THE UNITED STATES

trading expedition to the East Indies, and in
the following year fourteen American vessels
started for India from different ports in order
to obtain a share of the enormous profits
secured by the English company. He spent
thirty months in the United States, keeping up
close correspondence with Mme. de Stael, to
whom on his return he owed his introduction
to Barras, and through him his relations with
Napoleon. It was before the National Insti-
tute, organized in 1795, on the foundation of
the old academies abolished in 179S, to which
he was elected a member of the section of Moral
and Political Sciences, that he read his paper
on " The Commercial Intercourse of England
with the United States," published in its
volume of Proceedings of 1799, along with a
second, on "Advantages to be Derived from
New Colonies," which he says, attracted a cer-
tain notice. These are the results of his stay
in the United States, and have value and inter-
est on that account.

In the collection of the Philosophical Society
there is a MS. of Mr. Samuel Breck, dated
1862, giving an account of the early mem-
SOS

FRENCH COLONISTS AND EXILES

bers of the Society he had known; Mr.
Breck was then in his ninety-first year. He
was bom in 1771 in Boston ; he had become a
member of the Society in ISSS, and died in
186S, shortly after writing, at the request
of Doctor Bache, then president of the
Society, his memoranda. They have the per-
sonal note of actual acquaintance with those
whose names are now historical and of others
who by their writings have an interest as mem-
bers of this venerable Society. He says:
" Talleyrand came to Philadelphia in 1794
to reside there until France is at peace. He
took the oath of allegiance to the State of
Pennsylvania. He listened to Hamilton's
argument in the United States Court on the
constitutionality of the Carriage Tax law. He
equipped himself in full hunting-suit for a
visit to the then Western frontier, and saw
there only the destruction of the forests, just
as in our hardy fishermen he saw only idlers.
Yet both sea and forest were then beginning
to earn sums that laid the foundation of our
wealth.

" Volney was another refugee from the vio-
204,

IN THE UNITED STATES

lence of the French Revolution. He taught
French to a few pupils whose liberal pay con-
tributed to his support ;. he made an offer of
marriage, which was rejected. Perhaps this
accounted, in part at least, for his haughty
and morose nature, jealous of the least appear-
ance of slight or neglect ; and presuming much
upon his celebrity as a writer, he judged
Americans in his conversations and publications
as an inferior people, unworthy of renown and
wanting in morals and republican purity.
Washington, in his opinion, would never have
been more than a colonel in the French army ;
he condenmed the growing luxury in America,
and anticipated a visit of the Algerine pirates
to levy tribute on our ports.

" Brissot de Warville was equally hostile to
the growing luxury and refinement of the cities
of America, as a sign of decay of republican
simplicity, Alike they condemned American
manners, climate, food, and both longed for
the return to France and to the honors await-
ing them. Brissot, however, was guillotined
in 179S.

" Rochefoucauld Liancourt took his exile and
^0^

FRENCH COLONISTS AND EXILES

poverty in very good spirits, and his account
of his travels is kindly towards the New World-

" Louis Philippe came to Philadelphia in
1796, and bore his enforced exile good-
naturedly. He painted a miniature of Miss
Willing and was said to have asked her to
marry him. He was joined in Philadelphia
by his younger brothers, the Dues de Mont-
pensier and Beaujolais. They made a jour-
ney on horseback through Pennsylvania and
New York and to the Falls of Niagara."

Mr. Breck mentions the fact that Grouver-
neur Morris secured for Mrs. Robert Morris
an annuity of sixteen hundred dollars out of
the lands bought by Le Ray de Chaumont, and
this was her sole support until her death.

Mr. Breck spent four years at a military

school at Loreze in the south of France, and

in 1787 on his arrival in Paris on his way

home to America made the acquaintance of

Hector St. John de Crfevecoeur, the author of

the "Letters from an American Farmer,"

which did much to enlist foreign interest in

America. His book, published in Paris in

1787, covers his personal experiences as a
206

IN THE UNITED STATES

farmer in Pennsylvania from 1770 to 1786.
Through him Breck made the acquaintance of
Brissot de Warville, who later took refuge
from the French Revolution in Philadelphia,
and returned American hospitality by violent
diatribes against American morals and man-
ners. " Brissot came in 1788 and had little
good to say in his book, published on his return
to France, as to our future. Chastellux, on the
other hand, found only good to say of the
people and the country whose independence he
as an officer of Rochambeaii's army had helped
to secure ; his * Travels in the United States '
are of value and interest as a contemporary
record of the country. His tribute to Wash-
ington is still often quoted, for it gives a clear
and vivid picture of the great American, as
Chastellux saw and knew him, both in war and
in peace. Chastellux was elected a member of
the Philosophical Society in 1781, and died a
field marshal in 1788.''

Breck's Recollections, published in Philadel-
phia in 1877, give a further picture of the
time. " In Philadelphia all the distinguished

emigrants from France took up their abode, —
207

FRENCH COLONISTS AND EXILES

Talleyrand, his companion, Beaumais, Vicomte
de Noailles, the Due de Rochefoucauld Lian-
court, Volney, and subsequently Louis Philippe
and his brothers, the Dues de Montpensier
and Beaujolais, and later General Moreau.
Talleyrand and his companion, Beaumais,
equipped themselves in the costiune of back-
woodsmen, with rifles, guns, and hunting-shirts,
for their Western tour. Volney was a
timid, peevish, sour-tempered man. Washing-
ton hated free-thinkers and as President de-
clined to notice the French emigrants, and to
get rid of Volney, on his request at Mount
Vernon for a circular letter of introduction,
gave him one that Volney thought too feeble
for his exalted merit, hence the manner in which
he speaks of that great man. De Noailles had
been in America with Rochambeau; his sister
was the wife of Lafayette. His form was per-
fect — ^a fine face, tall, graceful, the first
amateur dancer of tlxe age, and of very pleas-
ing manners. He became a trader and
speculator, — every day at the coffee-house or
exchange, busy, holding his bank book in one

^08

IN THE UNITED STATES

hand and a broker or merchant with the other,
while he drove his bargains.''

Among the scientific men brought to this
country in 1827 by WiUiam Maclure, to help
out his plan of a geological survey of the
United States, were a number of French-
men. One of them was Charles Lesueur,
a French naturalist and draughtsman, who
drew some of ^ the engravings for Say's
Conchology, had been employed in the Jar-
din des Plantes of Paris, sent to it many
reports of his American explorations, and con-
tributed papers to the American Philosoph-
ical Society and to the Academy of Natural
Sciences, of both of which he was an active
member. He taught in the scientific school
founded at New Harmony, Indiana, of which
Maclure was part founder with Robert Owen;
later he returned to Philadelphia, where he
gave lessons in drawing and painting, and con-
tinued his scientific researches; these were re-
warded by appointment as Director of the
Museum of Natural History of Havre, his
native city, and he died there soon after his

return to France. A sympathetic memoir of
14 S09

APPENDIX A

Vergennes : M6in. Hist et polit. sur la Louisiane.
Paris^ 1802.

Milfort: Voyages dans la Louisiane. Paris,
1802.

Barbe Marbois: Hist, de la Louisiane. Paris,
1829.

Monette: History of the Discovery and Settle-
ment of the Valley of the Mississippi; 7
vols. New York, 1846.

Chotteau: Les Fran9ais en Ameriqne (1775-83).
Paris, 1876.

Gaffarel: Hist, de la Floride fran9aise. Paris,
1876.

Ramean: La colonie canadienne de Detroit.
Paris, 1881.

Maze: Role de la France dans la Republique des
£tats Unis. Paris, 1879-

Margry: D6couvertes et Establiss^iients des
Fran9ais dans Fonest et dans le sud de
TAmerique septentrionale. 1614-1754; 6
vols. Paris, 1888.

Brissot de Warville: New Travels in the United
States, 1788. Translated by Chas. Brock-
den Brown. Philadelphia, 1804.

Volney's Travels in the United States : Translated
" by his friend " Chas. Brockden Brown.
Philadelphia, 1804.

Perrin du Lac: Voyage dans les deux Louisianes.
Lyon, 1801.

APPENDIX A

Vicomte de Noailles: Marins et soldats Fran9ais
en Amerique pendant la Guerre de Tlnde-
pendance des fitats Unis (1778-1783).
Paris, Perrin, 1893.

Quesnay de Beaurepaire: Virginia Historical
Society, vol. ii, N. S., by R. H. Gains; pp.
166, etc.

Love and Adventures of M. [Louis Lebeau] Du
Portail, late Major-General in the Armies of
the United States, with incidents of the late
Count Pulauski. Boston, 1799; New Haven,
1813.

The French Regime in Wisconsin, 1634-1748.
Wisconsin State Historical Society, vols. 16
and 17, 1902 and 1906.

Chevalier, Michel: Lettres sur rAm6rique du
Nord. Paris, 1836.

Tranche, Gabriel: Narrative of a Voyage to the
Northwest Coast of America in the Years
1811-12-13-14. Translated by J. V. Hunt-
ingdon. New York, 1854.

Beau jour, Felix de: Sketch of the United States
from 1800 to 1810, with statistical tables.
Translated from the French by William
Walton. London, 1814.

Bossu: Travels through Louisiana. Translated
from the French by John Reinhold Forster.
London, 1771.

De Fonpertuis: Les fitats Unis. Paris, 1854.
213

APPENDIX A

Brissot^ de Warville, J. P. : Nouveau voyage dans
leg £tat8 Unis fait en 1788; 3 vols. Paris^
1791.

Id,: Translation^ with his Life; 2 vols. Lon-
don, 1794.

Chastellux: Travek in North America, 1780-1-2;
2 vols. Paris, 1785; 1788; London, 1787-
Id.: £xamen Critique par J. P. Brissot de
Warville. Philadelphia, 1788.

Collot, Gen. Victor: A Journey in North America.
Paris, 1826.

Michaux, F. A.: Travels to the Westward, of the
Allegheny Mountains, etc. Translated by
B. Lambert. London, 1805.

Robin, C. C: Voyages dans la Louisiane, 1802-6;
8 vols. Paris, 1807.

Id, : New Travels in North America, exhibit-
ing the campaigns of the allied armies, etc.
Philadelphia, 1783.

St. John, J. Hector: Lettres d'un fermier de
Pennsylvanie, traduites de TAnglais.
Amsterdam, 1769.

Id,: Letters from an American Farmer.
London, 1782; Philadelphia, 1793.

Volney, C. F. : Tableau du climat et sol des £tats
Unis, suivi d'eclaircissemens sur la Floride
et sur la colonic Fran9aise au Scioto; 2
vols. Paris, 1802.
Id,: Translation. London, 1804.

APPENDIX A

Rochefoucauld Liancourt^ Duke de: Travels
through the United States, 1795-6-7; 2 vols.
London, 1799.

Puisaye: M6moires, London, 1803-8; 7 vols. [A
collection of his Papers in the British
Museum.]

Brown, Chas. Brockden: Address to the Gov-
ernment of the United States on the Ces-
sion of Louisiana. Philadelphia, 1803.
Id, : Literary Magazine and American Regis-
ter. Philadelphia, 1803-7.
Id.: American Register. Philadelphia,
1806-9.

Brissot de Warville: Commerce of America with
Europe, particularly with France and Great
Britain, comparatively stated and explained,
showing the importance of the American
Revolution to the Interests of France, and
pointing out the actual situation of the
United States in regard to Trade, Manufac-
tures and Population. By J. P. Brissot de
Warville and Etienne Clair^re. Translated
from the last French edition, revised by
Brissot, and called the second volume of his
View of America, with the Life of Brissot,
and an Aspendix by the Translator [Joel
Barlow]. /London, 1794; New York, 1795.

B|>ftel Dumonf: Voyage h la Louisiane dans les

jA-^ anitS^a 179^-8. Paris, An. IX.
\/ 215

APPENDIX A

Brissot de Warville: * New Travels in the United

States Performed in 1788. London^ 1792;

New York, 1792; Boston, 1797.

New Travek in the United States, etc.; 2

vols. London, 1794.
Cr^vecoBur: Voyage dans la haute Penn.; S vols.

Paris, 1801.
Cr^ecoeur: Lettres d'un cnltivateur Americain.

Paris, 1784, 2 vols.; 1787, S vols.
Drouin de Bercy: L'Europe et FAm^rique. Paris,

1818.

*Sabin's Note s. v. Brissot: The author came to the
United States just before the French Revolutiony for
the purpose of selecting a suitable place for establish-
ing a colony of respectable persons, who had deter-
mined to abandon the then despotic government of
France and seek an asylum under the mild and equal
government of the United States. M. Brissot was
Qcmmiissioned to collect every necessary information,
prior to the execution of so important a plan. These
volumes contain the results of his assiduous labors and
minute enquiries, and sufficiently manifest that he was
qualified to accomplish such an arduous undertaking.
The second volume is a new edition of Brissot and
Clalrfere's De la France et des Etats Unis, etc., printed
at Paris in 1787, and in English in 1788. A German
translation by J. R. Foster was printed in Berlin in
1799,^ and another in Hof in three volumes in 1796; a
Dutch translation in Amsterdam in 1794 in two volumes.
It was also published by Brisson in Paris in three
volumes in 1791, and in a German translation by
Ehrmann in Heidelberg in 1799.
316

APPENDIX A

Perrin du Lac: Voyage dans les deux Louisianes.
Paris, 1805.

Robin, TAbbe: Nouveau Voyage dans FAm^rique
septentrionale en Tannee 1781, etc. Phila-
delphia and Paris, 1782.

Bayard: Voyage dans Tinterieur des £tats Unis
pendant Tet^ de 1791. Paris, 1819.

Mably: Observations sur le gouvernement et les
lois des £tats Unis. Amsterdam, 1784.

Mazzei: Recherches sur les £tats Unis, etc.; 4
vols. Colle, 1788.

Chateaubriand: Voyages en Am6rique. Brus-
sels, 1828.

Le Page du Pratz: Hist, de la Louisiane; 8
vols.

De Pauw: Recherches sur les Am6ricains; 2 vols.
London, 1770-1.

L' Academic des Sciences et Beaux Arts des £tats
Unis de TAm^rique, Richmond, Va. : M^moire
et prospectus, concernant rAcademie etablie
a Richemond, capitale de la Virginie; par le
Chevalier Quesnay de Beaurepaire, Fonda-
teur. President. Paris, Cailleau, Imprimeur
de rAcad6mie de Richmond, 1788; 8 p. 1.,
52 pp., 8°.

Murat Achille: Esquisse morale et politique sur
les fitats Unis. Paris, 1832.

Bossu: Nouveau Voyage, etc. Amsterdam, 1778.

217

APPENDIX A

Raynal: Tableau et revolutions des Colonies
Anglaises^ etc. Amsterdam^ 1781.

Bulletin of the New York Public Library^ March,
1907.

Laval, Antoine Jean de: Voyage de la Louisiana,
fait par Ordre du Roy en rann6e mil sept
cent vingt: Dans lequel sont trait^es diverses
matieres de Phisique, Astronomic, Geo-
graphic et Marine. Divers Voyages faits
pour la correction de la Carte de la Cote de
Province; Et des Reflexions sur quelques
points du Sisteme de M. Newton. Par le
P. Laval, de la Compagnie de Jesus. "A
valuable and scientific book of travels, which
enters very fully into the Physical Geog-
raphy, etc., of the French dominions in
Louisiana and the valley of the Mississippi."
Maps, folding tables, etc. Paris, 1728, 4^.

Selections from the Gallipolis Papers, arranged
and edited by Theodore T. Belote. Quar-
terly Publication of the Historical and Philo-
sophical Society of Ohio, vol. ii, 1907, No. 2.
Cincinnati, Ohio.

The Scioto Speculation and the French Settle-
ment, by Theodore T. Belote, University of
Cincinnati. Cincinnati, Ohio.

Appendix B

French Place Names in the United
States ^

Abbeville: South Carolina; settled by French.
Alexandria: New York; after Alexander Le Ray,

son of J. D., who fell in a duel in 1836.
Atala: Mississippi; after Chateaubriand's

heroine.
Bienville: Louisiana; after the French explorer.
Bonaparte: New York and Alabama.
Bonneville: Nevada and New York.
Bonpland : California,
Bordeaux: South Carolina.
Bourbon: Kentucky, Indiana and Kansas.
Cadillac: Michigan.
Cape Vincent: New York; after son of Le Ray

de Chaumont.
Carondelet: Louisiana.
Castine: Maine.
Champaign: Ohio and Illinois.

* Place Names in the United States, by Henry Gan-
nett, U. S. Geol. Survey Bulletin No. 958. Washing-
ton, D. C.

919

APPENDIX B

Charlevoix: Michigan.

Chateaugaj: New York.

Chaumont: New York.

Choteau: Montana and South Dakota.

Creve Coeur: Missouri.

Des Moines: Iowa.

Duluth: Minnesota.

Faribault : Minnesota :

Gallia: Ohio; settled by a French colony, 1790.

Gallipolis: Ohio; settled by a French colony,
1790.

Havre de Grace: Maryland; from the French
port.

Hennepin: Illinois and Minnesota.

Hugoton (for Victor Hugo) : Kansas, and

Hugo: Colorado.

Iberville : Louisiana.

Isle Lamotte: Vermont.

Joliet: Illinois.

Labaddie : Missouri.

Laclede: Missouri (founder of St. Louis).

Lafayette: Arkansas, Florida, Louisiana, Missis-
sippi, Maryland, New Hampshire, Ohio,
Wisconsin.*

Lagrange: (after Lafayette's country home):
Indiana, New York, North Carolina.

*For a number of other Lafayettes see U. S.
Postal Guide.

APPENDIX B

La Harpe: Illinois (after French explorer).

Lahonte: New York.

Lamartine: Wisconsin.

La Motte: New York (after French soldier).

Lamy: New Mexico (after Archbishop Lamy).

Langlade: Wisconsin (after first white settler).

Laporte: Pennsylvania (after early French
settler).

Laramie: Ohio (after early French Canadian
trader).

Lasalle: Illinois^ New York, Texas.

Lavallette: New Jersey.

Le Claire: Iowa.

Le Ray: New York.

Le Raysville: Pennsylvania.

Lesueur: Minnesota (after early explorer).

Low Freight: Arkansas (tr. of " Feau froid").

Luzerne: Pennsylvania (after French Minister).

Maine: (after estate of Henrietta Maria, Queen
of France).

Mandeville: Louisiana (after early French
owner).

Marengo: Alabama, Illinois, Iowa.

Marietta: Ohio (after Marie Antoinette), Penn-
sylvania.

Marseilles : Illinois.

Massac: Illinois (after French Minister of
Marine during French and Indian wars).

Massena: New York.

921

APPENDIX B

Massilon: Ohio. |

Maurepas: Louisiana. |

Marmiton: Missouri (from French word for '

scullion).
Meredosia: Illinois (from marais d'osier).
Montcalm: Michigan.
Napoleon: Ohio.
New Orleans: Louisiana.
New Rochelle: New York.
Nicollet: Minnesota.
Orleans: Louisiana^ Nebraska^ New York and

Virginia.
PapiUion: Nebraska.
Papinsville: Mississippi (after Pierre Mellecourt

Papin).
Paris: New York, Kentucky, Maine.
P^re Marquette: Michigan.
Pierre: Dakota (after P. Choteau).
Plaquemines: Louisiana (named by Bienville on

account of persimmons).
Pomme de Terre: Missouri. . ^

Poteau: Arkansas.
Prairie du Chien: Wisconsin.
Prairie du Rocher: Illinois.
Prairie du Sac: Wisconsin.
Presque Isle: Maine and Michigan.
Purgatoire Riviere: Arkansas, Colorado.
Quebec (quel bee) : Canada.
Rapides: Louisiana.

APPENDIX B

Roche Perc6e: Missouri.

Roche Moutonnee: Colorado.

Rochelle : Illinois.

Roche k Gris: Wisconsin.

Roseau: Minnesota.

Sabine: Louisiana (French for cypress).

Saint Anne: Illinois.

Saint Anthony: Minnesota.

Saint Augustine: Florida.

Saint Bernard: Louisiana.

Saint Charles: Louisiana^ Missouri.

Saint Clair: Michigan^ Alabama^ Missouri^ Illi-
nois, Nebraska, Pennsylvania.

Saint Cloud: Minnesota. i

Saint Croix: Maine, Minnesota, Wisconsin.

Saint Fran9ois: Missouri.

Saint Genevieve: Missouri.

Saint Helena: Louisiana and Colorado.

Saint Ignace: Michigan.

Saint James: Louisiana.

Saint Johnsbury: Vermont (after St. John de
CrevecoBur).

Saint Joseph; Michigan, Missouri.

Saint Landry: Louisiana.

Saint Louis: Missouri, Minnesota.

Saint Martin: Louisiana.

Sans Tache: California.

Sault Ste. Marie: Michigan.

Tchemanahaut (chemin en haut): Arkansas.
32S

APPENDIX B

Terre Haute: Indiana. *

Terrebonne : Louisiana.

Terre Noir: Arkansas.

Theresa: New York (after daughter of Le Ray

de Chaumont).
Thibodaux : Louisiana.
Toulon: Tennessee and Illinois.
Trempealeau (trempe a Feau) : Wisconsin.
Vergennes : Vermont.

Versailles: Indiana and eight other places.
Wolf River (riviere de loup) : Kansas.

Index

Acadians 80

Adams, Herbert B 73

Adet .83, 190, 192

Alabama 15, 159

Allegheny, the 18, 116

American Catholic Historical Society, the 86

American Philosophical Society, the, 8, 82, 139, 186
190, 193-196, 198, 203, 209

Armand, Colonel 64, 78, 79

Autichamp, D' 72

Ayrault 55

Baird 9, 32, 52, 55

Balch 68

Balzac ^ 160, 188, 185

Bancroft 7, 13 note, 16

Baratarians 50, 51

Barb^Marbois 42, 188, 195, 202

Bardstown, Kentucky 97-98

Barlow, Joel 20

Bartram 79

Bastrop, Baron de 46, 48

Bayards, the 68

Beaujolais, Due de 208

Beaujour, Felix de 82

Beaulieu, Pierre Leroy 11, 146

Beaurepaire, Quesnay de 73, 74, 76, 189

Belle Riviere 18

Benevolent Society, the French 87

225

INDEX

Bemadotte 82, 40

Bernard 7S

Berthier 40, 65

Bienville. Cderon de 16, 18, 25, 36, 87

Boisbriant, Pierre Dugue 28

Bonaparte, Charles 194

General 41, 80

Joseph . . .109, 160. 162-165, 166-168, 180, 181

Luden 40

Bonneville 65, 66

Bor^ 39, 49

Bouvier, John 88

Bowdoin 54

Bourbon, county, Kentucky 78, 98

Breck, Samuel 203, 206, 207

Bridau 184, 185

Brillat Savarin 103-105

Brissot de Warville 82, 189, 202, 205, 207

Burr, Aaron 48

Cabet 154, 156, 157, 169

Cadillac 13, 33, 37

Cahokia 17, 22, 28, 25-27, 43, 97, 98, 132, 188

Carolana 14

Carondelet 46-48

"Cartier to Frontenac" (Winsor) 32

Casgrain, L'Abbe 38

Castine, Maine 33

Champlain 17

Champs d'Asile 160, 167, 183-185

Charleston, South Carolina 54

"Charleston" (Mrs. St. Julien Ravenel) 91 note

Charlevoix 37, 39

Chartres, Fort 23, 25, 38, 43

Chastellux 65, 71, 190, 207

Chateaubriand 78-80, 82, 99, 176, 182

226

INDEX

Chatdet, Du 17

Chaudron 159

Chaumont, Le Ray de 106, 108, 163, 206

Cheverus, Archbishop 89

Choiseul 16, 17, 95, 96

Chouteau 43

• Family, the 45

Cibot, Father 86

Cincinnati, Society of the 67

Clark, George Rogers, 19, 27, 29-31, 85

Lewis and 45

Clausel 159, 174, 181

Collot 26, 31, 48, 83

Coudray, Du 69

Coxe 14

Cr^vecoeur, Fort 25

Hector St. John de 206

Crozat 37

Cutler, Manasseh 29, 135

Damas 71

Decres 41, 42

Delaware, Country, Upper 60-62

Depauw 139

Desert, Mount 33, 34

Des Moines River 22

Detroit 13, 17, 22, 33

De Turk, Isaac 58

Dumas 65

Dumont ! 38

Du Lac, Perrin 46

Dupetit Thouars 69, 141, 143, 145, 146, 148

Duponceau 134, 197

Du Pont de Nemours, Pierre Samuel, 58, 121, 176

180, 190, 193
Du Fonts, the 58

227 ^

INDEX

Duportail 196

Du Pratz, Le Page 47

Dupuy, Nicholas 61

Dupuys, the 54

Dufocher 45

Du Simitiere 186

"Early Exploration of Louisiana, The'* (Cox) 45

Explorers, early French 17

Faneuil 54

Fauchet 191

Ferree, Mme 57

Fersen, Count 64

Fiske S3

Fortier 42, 43

"French Agricultural and Manufacturing Society,

The," 161

French Creek 18

"French in America, The" (Balch) 68

French Grant, the 21, 31, 133

French Patriotic Society, the 77

"Frontenac" (Parkman) 33

Galissoniere 18

Gallia County 135

GaUipoUs, 19, 31, 46, 84, 98, 99, 125, 131, 132-134

135, 136, 137, 139

Galvez 39

Gayarre 48, 51

Genet 30. 31, 48, 191

Gratiot 26

Great Kanawha, the 18, 20

Great Miami, the 18

Gregoires, the 33

Grouchy 160

Harmar, Fort 29

Harmar, General 28

228

....196

47 INDEX

...m

... 54 cnry, Patrick ^

..45 Historical and Political Essays "(Lodge) 10

IS6 istorical Society, American Catholic 86

45 History of Louisiana, A" (Fortier) 35

17 [oUand Land Company, the 176

54 lourie 139

191 luger 93, 95

57 ffuguenots, the 10, 11, 52-57, 59, 91, 92, 93

(^ 'Huguenot Emigration to America" (Baird) ... .32, 57

^ Huguenot Society of New York, the 56 note

] ^^ "History of the Huguenots" (Baird) 9

Qumbert, General 44, 51

lUl Hyde de NeuviUe, 162, 165, 166, 167, 176, 178, 180, 194

Ig IberviUe, D' IS, 86, 47

gg Icarians 152, 154, 155, 169

j3 Illinois 10, 17, 22, 23, 25, 26, 45, 85

]j^ Dlinois, the 28, 29

Indiana 17

Indies, Company of the 37

Inquisition, Holy 46, 49

Iowa 151

Irving, Washington 65, 66

Izard, Ralph 91

Jefferson, Joseph 94

Joinville, Prince de 67

Joliet 17

Jumonville 18

Jusserand 8, 196

Kaskaskia, 13, 17, 21-23, 25-27, 29, 39, 43, 97, 132,
138

Lacassagne 139

La Chaise 31

Lafayette, 65, 71, 75, 95, 104, 142, 187, 188, 190, 194

Lafitte, Jean 50, 51

Lafitte, Pierre 50, 162

229

INDEX

"Lafitte, Pierre and Jean, Historical Sketch of"

(Gayarr^) 50, 51

Lakanal 44, 159, 161, 163, 166, 181

Lalande 45

Lallemand 161, 162, 167, 181, 183

La Roche 32

La Rochefoucauld, Due de, 94, 140, 142, 143, 145

189, 208

La Salle 13, 17, 18, 22, 85

Lassus ' 119

Lassus, De 48

Latour 44, 51

Laussat 40-42

Lauzun. 65

Law, John 15, 37

Le Braz, Anatole 7

Le Contes, the 58

Lefebvre Desnouettes 159, 162, 167

L'Enfant 68, 69, 71, 73

Lesueur 36

Lesueur, Charles 209, 210

Lewis and Clark 45

Lefever, Isaac 58

Lehigh, country 60

Lezay Mamezia 119

Liancourt, Rochefoucauld 191, 205

Lodge 10

Louisiana. . . .7, 10, 12, 15, 17, 30, 32, 33, 35-39, 41-43

Holy Inquisition in 49

"Louisiana: A Record of Expansion" (A. Phelps). '46
"Louisiana Sugar Plantation of the Old Regime, A"

(Gayarr^) 48

Louis XIV 33* 35

Louis Philippe, 11, 39, 143, 167, 168, 169, 174, 181

182, 206, 208

230

INDEX

Louisville 29, 85, 89, 98, 139

Lucas 139

Luzerne 72. 75, 187, 190

County 145

Maison Rouge, Marquis de 45, 48

Manakintown on the James 14

Marengo, County, Alabama 78, 161

Marie Antoinette 29, 64

Marietta 29, 84

Marion, Francis 53, 93

Marquette 17

Massac, Fort 22, 25

Maurepas, Lake 36

Mazyck, Isaac 91

"Memorials of the Huguenots" (Stapleton) 57

Mexico 32, 44

Michaux 31

Michigan 13

Mifflin, Fort 77

Milford, Pike County, Pennsylvania 62

Mir6, Governor 49

Mississippi Territory, the 171

Mobile 14, 26, 37

Monette, John W 19 note

Monongahela, the 116

Monroe County, Pennsylvania 62

Montgomery, E 88

Montpensier, Due de 208

Moreau 26, 44, 82, 178, 208

Morris, Gouverneur 106-108, 206

Morris, Mrs. Robert 206

Motte 93

"Mount Desert" (G. E. Street) 32

Muskingum, the 18

Napoleon, 8, 12, 32, 40-42, 44, 166, 174, 178, 180,
181, 203

231

INDEX

••New France and New England" (Fiske) 33

New Madrid ; 24

New Orleans, 16, 17, 22, 23, 27, 37, 39, 44, 47, 49, 82

New Rochelle 53, 55, 56

Noailles. Vicomte de, 40, 68, 71, 72, 82, 99, 129, 141,
142, 143, 144, 146, 148, 202, 208

Ohio 18, 29

Ohio, the. . . .18, 20, 22, 29, 30, 116, 125, 128, 129, 171

Ohio Company, the 20, 29, 133, 136, 137, 138

Old French Road, the 145

Old French War, the 19, 133

Paine, •*Tom" 65

Paris, Comte de 67

Paris, Kentucky 78, 98

Parkman 7, 17

Parrish, Randall 21

Patriotic Society, the French 77

Penn 5S

Penn's eariy settlers 59

Pensacola 39

Peoria 24

Peorias, the 22

Perin 46

Phelps, Albert 46

y^ Philadelphia, 20, 48, 59, 66, 68, 72-74, 77, 78, 81, 82,
/ 83, 86, 87, 89, 137

Philippe, St 23, 25, 27

Philosophical Society, the American, 8, 82, 139, 186,
190, 193-196, 198, 203, 209

Pike's Expedition 45

Pinchot, Constantine 62

Polony, Dr 94

Pontalba 40

Pontchartrain, Lake 36

Pontgibaud, Chevalier de 76, 196

Poydras 39

232

INDEX

Prairie du Chien 152

Prairie du Pont 2S

Pratz, Le Page du 37

Prioleau, Rev. Elias 92

Puisaye 101

Quincy 24

Ravenel, Mrs. St. Julien 91 note

Raynal, Abbe. 79

Rayneval, Gerard de 187

'* Relations et Memoires Inedits" (Margry) 33

"Reminiscences of Wilmington, Delaware" (E.

Montgomery) 88

Renault 23-25

Revere, Paul 53, 54

Robert 93

Roberval 32

Robin 43, 45

Robin's "Travels," 45 note

Robin's voyage to Louisiana 43

Rochambeau 10, 40, 64, 65, 72, 77, 81, 83, 208

Rocher, Prairie du 22, 23, 25, 27, 43, 97, 132

Rock Island 24

Roosevelt 7, 26, 28

Roosevelt's "Winning of the West" 19, 26, 28 note

Bcioto Company, the . .20, 21, 29, 46, 84, 134, 136, 137

Scioto County, Ohio 31

Sedella, Antonio de .49, 50

Segur 64

Sigourneys, the 54

Stapleton 57

St. Castine, Baron de 33

St. Domingo 86, 93

Ste. Genevieve 97

St. Ildef onso. Treaty of 40

St. Louis 22, 38, 43, 85, 97, 132, 138, 158

St. Louis, Fort 22, 25, 35

233

INDEX

St. Vincent 138

Street, George E 32

Talleyrand 82, 198, 200, 201, 202, 204, 208

Talleyrand Perigord 190, 192

Talon,, Omer 82, 99, 142, 144, 145, 146, 148, 150

Tardiveau .28, 139

Texas 32, 35

Tombigbee Association, the 174

Tonti 18

Toussard 73, 77

Trouillard, Rev. Florente Philippe 92

UUoa 16

Uniontown, PennsyWania 18

University of Louisiana, the 166

Mergennes 121, 188, 190

Versailles, Kentucky 78, 98

Victor, General 40

Vigo, Francis 29

Villiers, Jean Jules Le Moyne de 133

Vincennes 15, 17, 19, 21, 24, 26-28, 43, 97, 131

Virginia Company, the 18

Volney, 82, 129, 130, 132, 136, 137, 138, 190, 192, 198

204, 208

Vrain, St 48

Wabash, the ' 21, 28, 131

Walbach, Gen. John de 90

Walbach, Rev. Louis Earth de 89

Warren, Pennsylvania 18

Washington, George 18, 64, 70, 71, 80, 200, 208

Washita, the 45, 48

Western Pennsylvania 61, 63

West Virginia 18

Wheeling Creek 18

"Wilmington, Delaware, Reminiscences of" (E.

Montgomery) 88

"Winning of The West" (Roosevelt's) .. 19, 26, 28 note
234

SEP 1 8 ^^

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