Notes taken by Father Pierre Aubin, MSC, from the book entitled
Emigrés in the Wilderness by T. Wood Clarke, NY 1941, The Macmillan Company.
Jean Le Ray of Nantes, Sieur de la Clartais and his wife Elizabeth Doré were large estate owners during the reign of Louis XIV. Their son, René François Le Ray was born at Nantes in 1686. He added to the title of Sieur de la Clartais that of Sieur de Fumet. He held many important positions at the time of Louis XV, mayor of Nantes, municipal judge, king’s councilor and then was made chevalier of the Order of St. Michael. His son Jacques Donatien Le Ray was born at Nantes in 1725. While the Le Rays had considerable wealth and took a prominent place in civic affairs, they were not of the hereditary aristocracy.
René became a ship owner. His son Jacques followed. From the port at Nantes, their ships sailed the seven seas, and the owner rapidly accumulated a fortune. At the age of 25 he married Marie-Thérèse Jogues des Ormeaux, and purchased the famous château of Chaumont sur Loire. Situated between Blois and Tours, it was built in 940. And so, he became known as Jacques Donatien Le Ray de Chaumont. He was strongly pro-American as he was dealing with the American colonies and he hated the English. So he was very supportive of the American revolution.
Louis XVI appointed him a member of his council. He became one of the king’s chief advisers on matters of commerce. Later he was asked to be Secretary of the Treasury, a position he refused. He felt that he could better help the American revolutionists as a private citizen than as a member of a ministry of a nation officially at peace with England. In 1774 he purchased the estate of Passy, half-way between Paris and Versailles. Its beautiful château known as the Hotel Valentinois or the Grand Hotel was occupied by Jacques and his family. On the arrival of Benjamin Franklin, the Petit Hotel which was used as a guest house was turned over to Franklin for the use of the American Commission. He sold that property in 1791 because of financial difficulties.
For nine years, this spacious house and lovely garden at Passy was the headquarters for all American diplomatic activities in Europe. M. de Chaumont refused to accept money from his tenants. There many plans were hatched to aid the newly formed United States of America, and to confound the hereditary enemy of France.
M. de Chaumont sent to Boston and Philadelphia great quantities of powder and balls, uniforms and guns which he bought with his own money or which were supplied from the national arsenals of which he had charge. The receipt of the supplies was entrusted to M. Holker, M. de Chaumont’s agent in America, who, after France recognized the government of the United States, became France’s first Consul General at Philadelphia, though retaining his personal business connections with M. de Chaumont.
On December 5, 1777, John Paul Jones, a young sea captain, arrived in Paris and became a member of the coterie at Passy. When at last it was found that Jones could not expect to obtain a squadron from the French government, M. de Chaumont himself purchased and equipped the entire fleet.
Franklin signed the treaty of peace with England in 1783. By then, Jacques Donatien Le Ray de Chaumont was in a serious financial predicament. He had contributed two million francs to the cause of America, and the penniless infant republic was quite unable to repay him.
When Dr. Franklin first arrived at Passy, Jacques Donatien LeRay de Chaumont’s eldest son was a lad of sixteen. This boy, baptized Jacques, but in later life always known as James Donatien Le Ray de Chaumont, was born in the chateau of Chaumont on November 12, 1760. He and Dr. Franklin spent many hours together, the boy learning English from his venerable companion and giving him complete devotion. The talks with the aged philosopher, the hours spent with the enthusiastic John Paul Jones, the picture of his father spending his fortune for the liberation of the colonies, the general atmosphere of endeavor, intrigue, and heroism which surrounded him, inculcated in his soul a burning love for this new land of liberty across the sea.
In 1784, M. de Chaumont’s financial position became critical. He had advanced to the government of the US the equivalent of his entire fortune. Reluctantly, early 1785, he sent young James to America to plead his cause before Congress. After four years of fruitless effort James appealed to Dr. Franklin who had returned home. As a result, by 1790, James was able to return to Paris with a partial recompense for what his father had expended. Before doing so, he married, on February 21, 1790, Miss Grace Coxe, the daughter of Charles Davenport Coxe of Sidney, New Jersey, and became an American citizen. Furthermore, through Gouverneur Morris, former ambassador of the US to France, and M. le Comte de Forest, the French ambassador in America, he had met many business leaders in New York – men who were to have a marked influence on his future life.
In 1792, the French Revolution was in full swing. William Constable had become owner of nearly four million acres of land covering all of the present Lewis County, most of Jefferson, Franklin and St. Lawrence counties and the northeastern part of Oswego County (Macomb’s Purchases). Constable, believing that many wealthy aristocrats would jump at the chance of procuring estates in America, set out for Paris. James Le Ray de Chaumont, whom he had known in New York, had returned to France two years before. On reaching Paris, Constable hunted up James and by him was introduced to his brother-in-law, M. Paul Chassanis.
In August 1792, Paris was in a state of chaos. William constable arrived with a plan of salvation. With the backing of James Le Ray, he offered to M. Paul Chassanis a vast tract of land in northern New York. The Company of New York was formed. In December, the Company having failed to collect the fifty-two thousand pounds necessary for the completion of the deal, William Constable withdrew from his bargain. In April 1793 he sold two hundred and fifteen thousand acres for twenty-thousand pounds. In the meantime the tension in France had greatly increased with the execution of Louis XVI.
On June 28, 1793, two weeks after the assassination of Marat and the accession of Robespierre to control of the government, while the mobs were rioting in the streets, Chassanis met with forty-one subscribers and drew up an elaborate constitution. This newly acquired tract was name Castorland, the word “castor” being the French for beaver, an animal said to abound in the region. It was to be the meccas of oppressed aristocrats and ambitious artisans. The first commissioners appointed included M. Chassis as director and James Le Ray de Chaumont. Those to go to America were M. Peter Pharoux, an eminent Parisian architect and M. Simon Déjardines, a visionary adventurer.
On June 4, 1793, Pharoux and Déjardines set out for New York. On September 27, they are in Schenectady where they hired Marc Isambard Brunel, a 24 year old trained surveyor, a born leader and a genius who was later to become famous as a builder of railroads in England, the engineer of the Thames tunnel, and the organizer of the machine shops of the Royal Navy. On October 20, after a perilous trip they land at Henderson Harbor and set foot on the promised land (Castorland) at the mouth of the Black River. They got as far as what is today Watertown and realized that the main river of their domain on which they had pictured ships sailing was blocked by a series of impassable waterfalls. As winter was approaching they decided to return to civilization until spring.
Great efforts and much money were spent to establish Castorland with meager results. In 1802, Napoleon Bonaparte became First Consul of France. Appreciating that the absence of many thousands of the best minds of his country was a loss to France, he issued an edict giving the émigrés permission to apply for repatriation and for restoration of their property. Some returned to France, others went to other parts of America. In 1804, First Consul Bonaparte was proclaimed Napoleon I. When in 1814 La Compagnie de New York was dissolved, it had a debt of over half a million francs. The property was sold at auction, and was soon added to the extensive holding of M. James Le Ray de Chaumont.
During the five years that James Le Ray de Chaumont spent in his effort to persuade Congress to make restitution to his father for his expenditures on behalf of the American colonies in the War of Independence, he became infected with the prevailing epidemic of land speculation. Gouverneur Morris, his most intimate friend in America, himself a daring land speculator, urged the advisability of recouping his lost fortune by indulging in the getting rich-quick scheme of buying wild land at a few cents an acre and selling it to settler for a few dollars. Before returning to France, Le Ray had made extensive investments in various parts of the country.
The region most intimately associated with the name of Le Ray is northern New York. At one time, Le Ray owned the greater part of four northern counties. He devoted the best years of his life to settling and developing them. Here he sent as agent Jacob Brown who, a few years later, was to achieve fame as a general in the War of 1812, and in 1818 become commander-in-chief of the US armies. He founded the village of Brownville at the mouth of the Black river, where the Castorland colony had planned their port of Basle.
On his return to France in 1790, James Le Ray de Chaumont found his father in a serious financial situation. In 1791 the town house at Passy had to be sold and the family returned to the Château de Chaumont sur Loire. This retrenchment and the money received from America reestablished the family finances. To save the château from the French revolutionists, the title of the property was transferred to James, a free republican of America, and therefore a friend of the French Revolution.
James Le Ray lived quietly on the estate for several years, keeping out of political entanglements and devoting his time to the care of the property and to the reorganization of his father’s involved finances. In 1794 he was commissioned by the US government a special envoy to Algiers to negotiate a treaty of peace with the Dey.
In 1799, James Le Ray’s American wife was in poor health and returned home with her two youngest children. In 1802, James followed his wife and the reunited family lived for a while in Burlington, New Jersey. From there he kept touch with his real estate holdings to the west and north. While in Burlington he sold to a party of Quakers a tract of ten thousand acres of land, and donated an extra lot of four hundred and forty acres for religious and educational purposes. The next year the colony of Quakers moved north and founded the village of Philadelphia in Jefferson County.
His father having died in 1803, James Le Ray returned to France the next year to settle his affairs, and remained there for three years. In 1806 he had his friend and family physician, Dr. Beaudry, select a site and build a residence for James and a house for himself. On a spot just north of the Black River on the border of the Pine Plains he erected in the wilderness the Le Ray Mansion at what became Leraysville, still one of the most beautiful homes in America. In 1808, James and his family occupied the mansion.
Immediately work began and a systematic campaign was started to bring settlers to the land. His son, Vincent Le Ray, was born on September 9, 1790, in the Château de Chaumont, shortly after James returned to France with his American bride. He received an excellent education that prepared him to carry on his father’s various business interests. He completed his studies in 1807 and at once set sail for America to join his family. He went with them to Leraysville in 1808, and remained in the North Country for nearly thirty years. In many ways he was quite as remarkable as his distinguished father.
In 1810, James Le Ray had to return to France. He took with him his family with the exception of Vincent. Leaving Vincent in charge, he expected to return in a few months, but it was six years before he again saw Leraysville. His wife died and was buried in Switzerland where, at the request of DeWitt Clinton and Gouverneur Morris, James was trying to negotiate a loan of six million from European bankers for the construction of the Erie Canal. But the outbreak of the War of 1812 with England frightened investors and the mission failed.
James Le Ray returned to America in 1816 bringing with him his daughter Teresa recently married to the Marquis de Gonvello. He plunged into the work of developing and settling his lands, but four years later he had to have recourse to the bankruptcy courts. This resulted in his entire property being assigned to his son Vincent who soon had the property straightened out, paid all his father’s debts and still retained a large part of the estate. The beautiful Château de Chaumont, however, was lost to them forever.
For twenty years both father and son lived on their northern New York estates, and to them is largely due the development of the land north and west of the Adirondack Mountains. Generous to a fault, they were the lords of the North Country. Villages were laid out and settler brought in. Besides the villages of Leraysville and Chaumont, which commemorate his family name and his château in France, Cape Vincent and Alexandria Bay bear the names of his sons, Vincent and Alexander, and Theresa the name of his daughter.
While a strict Catholic with his own chapel and priest, Le Ray was ever ready to promote the religious life of his neighbors and tenants, whatever their creed. Besides the four hundred acres given for a Quaker meeting house at Philadelphia, he contributed in both money and labor toward Presbyterian churches at Leraysville and Cape Vincent. When the Baptist Church at Evans Mills was burned he had it rebuilt. He gave sites for Catholic churches at Clayton, Cape Vincent and Belfort.
In 1817, to promote interest in agriculture he organized the Jefferson County Agricultural Society and was elected its first president. Later he was the first president of the New York State Agricultural Society. During the twenty-eight years that James Le Ray lived at Leraysville the mansion was noted for its lavish hospitality, expended to many of the most prominent men of the country, including President Monroe.
James also built two other houses, one at Chaumont and the other at Cape Vincent. The Chaumont house is located where the Chaumont River enters Chaumont Bay. (It is still there: the last house on the left before the bridge as one goes toward Cape Vincent.) This simple stone house was used as a land office and was occupied by M. Le Ray only when he had to remain there overnight for business reasons. In 1815 was begun the construction of the house on the banks of the St. Lawrence at Cape Vincent which is still known as “the Stone House”. It was to be a home for Vincent Le Ray who occupied it for a few years. After being vacant for a few years, it was purchased by members of the colony of Napoleonic exiles who came to this country after their emperor was sent to St. Helena.
For a number of years after Vincent Le Ray took over the property, the owners experienced a period of great prosperity. The Le Rays were on the road to becoming multimillionaires and they lived in all the style and luxury concomitant with their exalted position. Then suddenly an unforeseen calamity occurred. The Erie Canal opened.
This epoch-making event probably did more than any other factor in the first half of the nineteenth century to make America the country it became. But it also brought ruin on the landlords of northern New York. The easy transportation by boat to the unclaimed Indian lands of western New York diverted the streams of settlers in that direction. The influx of settlers to the North Country stopped. Many who were there, lured by the tales of fertile fields to be had almost for the asking in the newly opened west, packed up their belongings and faded away. Farms were left vacant; rentals stopped; sales were a rarity; hope turned to despair. The bubble had burst.
Though the Le Rays stuck it out for a few years, by 1832 it had become evident that little more was to be gained by staying on their lands. Leaving an agent in charge of the property, the entire family returned to France. There James Le Ray died in 1840. Vincent made several visits to his property in the following thirty years, but never again made his home there. He died in 1875. His son James married the daughter of the Marquis de Valois. The direct line ended with the death in 1917 of their only son, Charles Le Ray de Chaumont, Marquis de St. Paul. While none of these ever lived in New York State, their landed interests remained and until the year 1914 they kept an agent who conducted a land office for them in Carthage.
INFLUENCE OF THE BONAPARTES
Joseph Bonaparte was the elder brother of Napoleon. He had a quiet generous temperament, very different from his fiery energetic brother. When Napoleon gained power, he was forced into public life. He was appointed ambassador of France to Parma and then to Rome. In 1800 he carried to a successful conclusion the Treaty of Mortefontaine that straightened out misunderstandings between France and the United States. The next year he negotiated the peace with Austria and the year after he signed in the name of France peace with England. In 1806, Napoleon made him king of Naples and two years later king of Spain. In 1811 he was driven out and he returned to France with most of the Spanish crown jewels and many works of art. After the abdication of the Emperor in 1814, Joseph took refuge in Switzerland with his family. When Napoleon returned from Elba he sent for his brother to join him.
After the defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo, June 18, 1815, when James Le Ray was at the Château de Chaumont, he went to pay his respects to the former king of Spain who was in Blois, the neighboring city.
Though James Le Ray had acknowledged Napoleon as Emperor in 1804, he was a royalist at heart, and he had little sympathy for the Bonaparte family. But he was a real estate speculator. King Joseph was soon to be forced to find a new home outside of France. Le Ray had hundreds of thousands of acres for sale and King Joseph was fabulously rich. During dinner, a train of heavily laden wagons stopped at the hotel. They were loaded with his valuables and contained, among other things, a quantity of silver and jewels. Fearing that they would be confiscated if he were caught, King Joseph asked James to accept $120,000 worth of these precious belongings in exchange for land in America of equivalent value. And so, King Joseph became the owner of 26,840 acres in the wilderness of northern New York.
On July 25, 1815 King Joseph traveled incognito to New York from Royan near Bordeaux aboard the Commerce. For some weeks Joseph lived in a house overlooking the Hudson River, now used as a restaurant – the Claremont Inn on Riverside Drive near Grant’s Tomb. Then he moved to Philadelphia into Landsdowne house, the former home of John Penn, the last governor of Pennsylvania, and of Edmund Randolf, attorney-general of the US. Owing to poor health, his gentle kind wife, Queen Julie-Marie, could not travel across the Atlantic. She and her two daughters, The Princesses Zenaide and Charlotte, made their home in Italy.
Soon Joseph felt the need of feminine companionship. Before long, lovely Annette Savage, daughter of a respectable shop keeper, succumbed to the blandishments of the elegant Frenchman, forgot her strict Quaker training, and took up residence with him at Lansdown. This so scandalized the highly moral society of Philadelphia that the “Count de Survilliers” who at first had been received with open arms became persona non grata. Disgusted with this treatment, he left the city and, on July 2, 1816, purchased the beautiful estate known as Point Breeze, on the Delaware River near Bordentown, N.J. This property of two hundred and eleven acres, which he bought from Stephen Sayre for $17,500, was rapidly added to, until it contained eighteen hundred acres. There he built a regal mansion where he lived the life of a simple gentleman in spite of the fact that he entertained some of the most notable men and women of France.
He established Annette Savage in a nearby charming house called Rose Hill where she lived for several years, popular with the French people, but completely shunned by the good ladies of Philadelphia and nearby Trenton. Here she bore Joseph two daughters. The first was killed by a falling flower pot, the second, Charlotte, became a source of comfort for her often lonely mother.
In 1821, Joseph’s vivacious daughter, the Princess Charlotte, joined him at Bordentown. Three years later she returned to France to marry her cousin Napoleon Louis, the son of Louis, King of Holland, and brother of Napoleon III. In 1823, her elder sister, Princess Zénaide, came to America with her young husband Charles Jules Bonaparte, prince of Canino. This couple occupied a small house near the mansion. It was here that Charles Jules Bonaparte began his studies of American birds, which resulted in his attaining an international reputation as an ornithologist, and in a close friendship and scientific association with John James Audubon, America’s greatest naturalist.
Joseph Bonaparte spent the winter at Point Breeze, but traveled extensively in the summer. In 1817, he was in New England, Utica, NY and Niagara Falls. In 1818 he made his first trip to northern New York, where he visited James Le Ray at Leraysville and inspected the land he had purchased from him three years earlier. He was so delighted with the country that he decided to make for himself a home in the wilderness. He built three for himself: (1) the main one at Natural Bridge was half home half fort, because of his constant fear of the Bourbons; (2) another at Alpina, at the foot of the largest lake on his property, called by him Lake Diana, known today as Lake Bonaparte; (3) the third as a rustic hunting lodge on the high cliffs at the east end of the lake. He also built a substantial stone house for Annette Savage in Evans Mills. These houses were lavishly furnished with works of art, tapestries, cut glass, silver and gold.
For several years, Count de Survilliers, as Joseph Bonaparte was know in the north country, made annual pilgrimages. He intended to make his Natural Bridge house his permanent home, but one taste of the heavy snow and bitter cold of a late fall day sent him scurrying back to Point Breeze. He may be said to be the first of the many thousands of summer visitors who for more than a century have made the Thousand Islands area one of the summer playgrounds of the world.
At Natural Bridge and on Lake Bonaparte he entertained elaborately and lavishly. His homes became rallying places for the colony of French aristocrats and gentry, which was rapidly growing in northern New York. From Leraysville, from Cape Vincent and from the surrounding country the French exiles gathered about their wealthy ex-king and paid him court. Legally, aliens were not allowed to hold property in NY State. In 1825, Joseph was granted permission to hold his property under his own name; thus his title was secured. Similar legislation had been passed in New Jersey in 1817, affecting his Bordentown property.
As time went on Joseph disposed of a number of parcels of land, some by sale and others by gift. One piece was given to his nephew, Prince Napoleon François Lucien Charles Murat, the son of Napoleon’s brilliant cavalry officer Joachim Murat, whom the Emperor had married to his sister Caroline and had placed on the throne of Naples when he transferred his brother Joseph to Spain. The young Prince joined his uncle Joseph at Bordentown when he was still in his teens. There he constantly got into all kinds of troubles. He went to his uncle’s estate in Jefferson where he was given a tract of land between Evans Mills and Theresa. Here he decided to build a city named after his father, Joachim. It was a complete failure. Finally, after being haled into court at Theresa for defaulting on his obligations, and pursued by numerous creditors, he faded away from the scene. The buildings (an inn, a store, a grist mill), a bridge across the Indian River, everything fell to pieces and soon, where the city was to have sprung up, nature reclaimed its own.
Annette Savage had a pleasant life in the North Country as hostess for the many visitors of Joseph who were mostly Frenchmen and followers of the Bonapartes. She was always addressed as Madame Bonaparte.
Joseph Bonaparte spent only a few summers in his northern homes. But his influence was great in attracting other French families to the region. He and James Le Ray were responsible for the development of the French manorial system, which flourished for some years.
When, in 1830, the revolution in France put Philippe on the throne, Joseph hastened back across the Atlantic. Annette remained in the stone house in Evans Mills. When it was evident that the ex-king had rejoined his wife at Geneva and did not intend to return to her and to America, she married a former valet in his household, Joseph de la Foille. The house in Evans Mills thereafter was known as the De la Foille house. After residing there for some years, during which the husband squandered the money Joseph Bonaparte had left her, the couple moved to Watertown and decided to take up the occupation Annette was in before her romance began, and kept a small store. After De la Foille’s death, Annette married Mr. Harry Horr, and moved to New York City where she spent the rest of her life.
Charlotte, the daughter of Joseph Bonaparte and Annette Savage, married Zebulon Benton, the son of a poor physician at Oxbow. The marriage was not a happy one. The thirty thousand dollars which Joseph Bonaparte settled on his daughter at the time of her marriage, was soon squandered by her husband in wild speculations. For some years the Bentons lived in the house her father had built at Alpina and then moved to Watertown where she taught school. In 1859 she traveled to France and visited Napoleon III, the new Bonaparte Emperor. He declared her birth legitimate and appointed her daughter Josephine a maid-of-honor to the Empress Eugénie. With the downfall of Napoleon III after the Franco-Prussian War, Charlotte’s pension stopped. She returned to America and in 1890 died in poverty at Richfield Springs. She was buried on what had been her father’s property at Oxbow on the Oswegatchie River.
Though Joseph Bonaparte returned to America in 1836, and visited his estate at Bordentown, he did not go to northern New York State as all that remained of his property there had been sold the previous year to John La Farge.
THE CONSPIRATORS OF CAPE VINCENT
James LeRay, living in France in 1815, kept in touch with the members of the crumbling Napoleonic aristocracy. He let no opportunity slip to advise them to emigrate to America. At the same time he was carrying a vigorous real estate sales campaign among settlers of more humble walks in life, with the object of forming a French colony on the banks of the St. Lawrence. In 1816, the settlers began to arrive. Many gathered in the town of Cape Vincent.
The coterie of officers of Napoleon’s army lived on the banks of the St. Lawrence for a number of years. They kept their French customs and mode of living, and held themselves aloof from the few non-French residents of the neighborhood. In intimate touch with Joseph Bonaparte, who visited them many times and received them with hospitality in his homes, they kept up the Napoleonic traditions. This group of Napoleon’s officers lived in the hope of rescuing their beloved leader from St. Helena and establishing him on the banks of the St. Lawrence. Traditions have it that they held many long secret conferences on the subject and were in close touch with Napoleonic exiles in various parts of the world.
The leading spirit in the conspiracy was Comte Pierre François Réal. First a royalist, he became a sympathizer of the revolution, then was imprisoned. During the rise of Napoleon he was made a member of the Council of State and of the Ministry of Police. During the hundred Days, he was Napoleon’s prefect of police. On his arrival in Cape Vincent he built “The Cup and Saucer House” resembling an inverted cup in a saucer. The living areas were beautifully decorated, containing masterpieces of art, a library as well as a Stradivarius violin. The cup part of the house had two rooms. One was equipped as a laboratory, the other was filled with Napoleonic relics. It was generally believed to be intended for the personal use of the Emperor when his escape from St. Helena should be accomplished. Count Réal was accompanied by his secretary Professor Pigeon, an accomplished astronomer, who brought with him and set up in the House a set of instruments for astronomical observations perhaps unsurpassed on the continent at that date.
The most distinguished of the Cape Vincent coteries was the Marquis Emmanuel de Grouchy, better known to history as Marshal Grouchy. This soldier was of noble lineage, born in Parish in 1766. First an officer in the king’s bodyguard, he resigned his commission and joined the populist party with the outbreak of the revolution. He served under Napoleon, was made governor of Lyon, then a marshal. He was later blamed for the defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo. He purchased land in Cape Vincent where he wrote a treatise defending his behavior in Waterloo.
With the death of Napoleon at St. Helena in 1821 the plotting stopped, the chief purpose and interest of the little colony was lost, and the desire to remain in this strange rigorous land rapidly waned. In 1830, Louis Philippe was elevated to the throne. It then became safe for the Napoleonic exiles to return to France. All except the brothers Peugnet, Louis, Hyacinthe and Theophilus, returned to their native land.
Louis and Hyacinthe Peugnet went to the military college of St. Cyr thanks to a chance encounter with Napoleon. After graduation they entered the service of the Emperor and distinguished themselves. After the battle of Waterloo at which Louis was wounded, the bothers lived a life fraught with danger. They were imprisoned and released. In 1819 they were recalled to the service and once again their patriotism was tested. They again landed in prison but were finally able to gain their freedom and sail for Canada where they wanted to establish a farm. After many months of hardships, they went to Cape Vincent where they purchased land from M. Le Ray. There they became members of the French colony. In 1824 they were joined by their younger brother Theophilus who had accompanied the Marquis de Lafayette on his last visit to this country. Theophilus escorted to this country Madame Eulalie de Lacuée, the widow of General de Lacuée, and the only daughter of Count Real.
With the departure of the other colonists to France, the Peugnets took over their homes. Theophilus moved in to the Cup and Saucer House and lived there until it burned to the ground in 1867. He died the next year and lies in the St. Vincent de Paul cemetery at Cape Vincent. Louis built a substantial stone house south of the village, on a site known as the McKinley farm. Hyacinthe purchased in 1837 the “Stone House” built by Vincent Le Ray. It remained in the hands of his descendents for four generations. The various branches of the family, Forts, the Beauforts and the Finlays, scattered from New York to St. Louis, gathered here for the summers months. Hyacinthe died in 1865 and was buried next to his brother Theophilus.
Louis and Hyacinthe spent their winters in New York City. There they founded the “Frères Peugnet School” at Bank and Twelfth Streets, for many years the most fashionable private school in New York. Louis died in 1877 in Switzerland and was buried at Carens, Canto de Vaud.
Beside the select colony of Napoleonic officers, Cape Vincent received a large contingent of French people of less exalted rank, whose descendants, many of whom have anglicized their names, still occupy their original farms. Except for the old “Stone House”, a few ancient gravestone in the cemetery and some local traditions, the last trace of the aristocratic colony of Napoleonic conspirators has disappeared from Cape Vincent.
MADAME JENIKA DE FERIET
When James Le Ray de Chaumont returned from France in 1816 with his daughter, the newly married Countess Teresa de Gonvello, they brought with them a lady who aroused more interest and was the source of more romantic tradition than any other French aristocrat of northern New York – Madame Jenika de Feriet.
The De Feritet family was a member of the French nobility since 1521. Rumors were that she was an intimate friend of either Lady Hester Stanhope or Madame de Stael. Jenika was acquainted with Madame de Stael. It is said that Jenika happened to meet James Le Ray in London in 1816. Since she was a woman of wealth he convinced her to go to America with them in order to sell her some of his land. Prior to her coming to America she may have been Teresa’s governess, and possibly the mistress of James Le Ray.
For several years Madame de Feriet remained at Leraysville as the guest of Le Ray and the companion of the Countess de Gonvello. There she occupied a small house on the estate. In 1820 she purchased from her host a large tract of land on the great bend of the Black river and, at the hamlet which still retains her name, built a beautiful mansion she named “The Hermitage”. It was completed in the spring of 1824 and was artistically decorated. She lived there for fifteen years. She entertained lavishly and was the guest of the American landed gentry as well as the French. A skilled musician, a competent artist, a versatile litérateur, a wit, and a woman of exceptional personal magnetism, she held social sway over the countryside in her miniature court at the Hermitage.
But with all her charm and ability to make others happy she was not happy herself. Then she began having financial difficulties. As early as 1826 she was ready to sell her estate. Vincent Le Ray was asking her to make her installment payments which she was unable to meet. This seems to have led to an estrangement with the family with whom she had lived for four years. As the Le Rays were influential citizens and her nearest neighbors, this increased her sense of loneliness. By 1828 the property had been mortgaged. In 1831 she built a bridge to make her land more sellable and started to build a village near The Hermitage to attract settlers. But the houses remained untenanted.
By 1830 most of the other French aristocrats had returned to France. When in 1832 the Le Rays departed she was left very much alone. As the years went on, her finances grew worse and her loneliness and homesickness for France increased. In 1836, at the urging of her brother in New Orleans, she finally put her property on the market. As there were no purchasers and her nostalgia was too much to stand, she made another visit to her brother in New Orleans. After a miserable trip she spent a year with him and her married nephews and nieces. In 1839 she returned to The Hermitage.
She finally left for France on July 15, 1841. There, most of her friends were dead or moved away. Lonely, poor, disheartened and ill she did not long survive her return. She died on May 6, 1843 at Versailles.
In 1871 her stately home burned to the ground. The ancient bridge had been replace by a modern span of steel and concrete. All that remain today to make the site of the Hermitage is a row of trees which lined the driveway and the name of the quite village, Deferiet.
JEAN FREDERIC DE LA FARGE
Born in Charente, France on April 8, 1786, Jean Frédéric de la Farge was the son of Pierre de la Farge and Marie Frugier. His father took an active part in the French Revolution. At sixteen, Jean was appointed ensign in the French navy and accompanied the expedition under Napoleon’s brother-in-law, General Le Clerc, against the Negro rebellion in Santo Domingo. On the way, they encountered an English fleet under Admiral Pellew. De la Farge was wounded in this engagement. On reaching Santo Domingo, wanting to see active service, he asked to be transferred from the naval to the military forces. Soon he was made Lieutenant. Disease and the superior generalship of the Negro generals, Christophe, Dessalines, Guerrier, and Toussaint L’Ouverture, forced the army to retire, leaving General Le Clerc dead of yellow fever. De la Farge was taken prisoner by General Guerrier. His companions were put to death with torture, but De la Farge’s life was spared. General Guerrier took a great fancy to him and made him his secretary in charge of teaching the general how to read and write. After the evacuation of General Le Clerc’s army, he was given more liberty. He traveled through the island and made many friends. Learning about plans to kill all the white inhabitants on Easter Sunday, 1806, he was able to escape to Haiti where he boarded a ship which landed in Philadelphia in August 1806.
De la Farge, who anglicized his name to John La Farge, did not remain long in Philadelphia. He returned to Europe and became rich by running the blockade between France and England. Next he formed a mercantile firm Russell and La Farge, in Havre. This company carried on an extensive business with the West Indies, largely through the efforts of the sailing master and ship-owner Peter Penet. After the American revolution, Penet purchased land in Schenectady and became trader with the Oneida Indians. He got them to give him a tract of ten miles square north of Oneida Lake. He picked a square of which the northwest corner touched the St. Lawrence at the site of the present village of Clayton. When the state sold all the north country to Macomb, Penet’s square was excepted from the sale and remained in Penet’s name. Penet never occupied his land, the title became questionable and squatters took possession. Not too long after, Penet was lost at sea.
When John La Large who had joined the French colony at New Orleans learned of Penet’s death, he immediately set out to acquire Penet’s property. In 1817 he obtained title to part of the land and gradually increased his holdings until by 1825 he owned the whole of Penet’s Square. But the squatters believed that they owned the land on which they lived. Though apparently just in all his demands, La Farge was hated by most of his squatter neighbors. His property was mutilated, and he was fired upon by the enraged people who wished to live on his land but were unwilling to be his tenants.
La Farge rapidly increased his holding until he owned an enormous estate including all the lands previously owned by Joseph Bonaparte. During his residence in northern New York, John La Farge built four stone houses. (1) He purchased land in the neighborhood of Theresa High Falls and here he built a one-and-a-half-story house in what is now the village of Theresa. But because of unclear titles he soon got rid of this property and (2) erected his second house at the village then called Log’s Mills, now La Fargeville. This building, also made of stone, was intended as a combination residence and land office. It still stands in the village of La Fargeville, having been used ever since La Farge day as a country inn. It is called “The Orleans House”. (3) At the head of Perch Lake located six miles southeast of La Fargeville he build his third house. It was also of gray stone, had wide verandas which commanded a beautiful view of the lake and was sumptuously furnished. But Perch Lake was far from the nearest neighbor. The irate squatters took advantage of this isolation, broke windows, destroyed property and even took pot shots at the owner. The house was therefore never occupied by Mr. La Large. It rapidly went to pieces. The fine cut stone in later years was used to build farm houses in the neighborhood. All that remains today are a hole in the ground and a few foundation stones. (4) Infuriated, La Farge built in 1833 a mansion on the road one mile south of La Fargeville, half residence, half fortress, with several feet thick. In its day it was one of the finest houses in America.
At the age of forty-seven, shortly after the completion of the mansion, La Farge went to New York and returned with a sixteen year old wife. She was Miss Louise Josephine Binsse de St. Victor, the daughter of a former Santo Domingo planter then living in New York. The family of Binsse de St. Victor were people of culture and artistic taste. The young wife was never happy in her beautiful northern New York mansion. The hatred of the squatters worried her. And the fact that her husband, who was considered a mere businessman, was never quite accepted as a social equal by the Le Rays, the Bonapartes, Madame de Feriet, and the other aristocrats of the neighborhood hurt her pride. She was lonely during her summers there. After four years, she persuaded her husband to sell the property and return to the more congenial atmosphere of New York City. A public auction was held on June 12, 1837. But the property was not all sold immediately. When John La Farge abandoned it he put in charge his brother-in-law. Dr. John Binsse, who for many years practiced medicine in Watertown.
In 1840 the mansion was purchased by Bishop Du Bois. A Catholic theological school, called the St. Vincent de Paul School, was opened there by Father Francis Guth. But the location was too far away and isolated for the fifteen students, most of whom came from New York City. After three years the school was moved to Fordham and grew into St. John’s college, now known as Fordham University. For a dozen years the property was in the hands of caretakers. It was then purchased by Archbishop Hughes of New York, who established his two brothers on the estate. Here the Archbishop spent his vacations. After a precarious existence in the hands of careless tenants the property became so run-down that in the early years of this century the mansion with the exception of one wing was torn down. Today, the wing (used as a farmhouse), four rows of fine old trees lining what was the driveway, and four rickety stone gateposts are all that remain to remind us of the glories of the La Farge Mansion.
After La Farge’s return to New York he continued to prosper. Among his many business connections he was American agent for King Louis Philippe of France. He died at his summer home at Glen Cove, Long Island, in 1858. His son John, the eldest of nine children was born in New York in 1835. John was very artistic. Always deeply religious, he found his chief joy in depicting religious subjects. He became the outstanding religious artist in America and the world‘s authority on the production of stained glass windows. For his exhibit of stained-glass work at the Paris Exposition in 1889, he was awarded the decoration of the Legion of Honor. He had four sons and three daughters. One son, Bancel La Farge, became a well-known artist, carrying on his father’s work in glass and he bequeathed in turn the artistic tradition to his four sons. One of them, Christopher Grant La Farge became America’s leading church architect. His outstanding achievement was the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York. The third son, John, became an eminent Jesuit priest. The artistic ability of Christopher Grant La Farge’s sons, Christopher and Oliver, turned to literature. Oliver became an ethnologist of note and added several novels to the literature of America, of which Laughing Boy is the best known.