J. Hector St. John de Crèvecœur

For other uses, see Crèvecœur (disambiguation).

J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur
Born	(1735-12-31)December 31, 1735 Normandy, France
Died	November 12, 1813(1813-11-12) (aged 77) Sarcelles, France
Other names	Michel Guillaume Jean de Crèvecoeur
Occupation	Writer
Known for	Pro-American writings during the time of the American Revolution
Spouse	Mehitable Tippet

Michel Guillaume Jean de Crèvecœur (French pronunciation: [miʃɛl ɡijom ʒɑ̃ də kʁɛvkœʁ]; December 31, 1735 – November 12, 1813), naturalized in New York as John Hector St. John, was a French-American author, diplomat, and farmer.

Biography

Crèvecœur was born on December 31, 1735, in Caen, Normandy, France, to the Comte and Comtesse de Crèvecœur (Count and Countess of Crèvecœur). In 1755 he migrated to New France in North America. There, he served in the French and Indian War as a cartographer in the French Colonial Militia, rising to the rank of lieutenant. Following the defeat of the French Army by the British in 1759, he moved to the Province of New York, where he took out citizenship, adopted the English-American name of John Hector St. John, and in 1770 married an American woman, Mehitable Tippet, the daughter of a New York merchant. He bought a sizable farm in the Greycourt area of Chester, NY, a small town in Orange County, New York. He named his farm "Pine Hill" and prospered as a farmer. He also traveled about, working as a surveyor. He started writing about life in the American colonies and the emergence of an American society.

In 1779, during the American Revolution, St. John tried to leave the country to return to France because of the faltering health of his father. Accompanied by his son, he crossed British-American lines to enter British-occupied New York City, where he was imprisoned as an American spy for three months without a hearing. Eventually, he was able to sail for Britain, and was shipwrecked off the coast of Ireland. From Britain, he sailed to France, where he was briefly reunited with his father. After spending some time recovering at the family estate, he visited Paris and the salon of Sophie d'Houdetot.

Author

In 1782, in London, he published a volume of narrative essays entitled Letters from an American Farmer. The book quickly became the first literary success by an American author in Europe and turned Crèvecœur into a celebrated figure. He was the first writer to describe to Europeans – employing many American English terms – the life on the American frontier and to explore the concept of the American Dream, portraying American society as characterized by the principles of equal opportunity and self-determination. His work provided useful information and understanding of the "New World" that helped create an American identity in the minds of Europeans by describing an entire country rather than another regional colony. The writing celebrated American ingenuity and the uncomplicated lifestyle. It described the acceptance of religious diversity in a society being created from a variety of ethnic and cultural backgrounds. He applied the Latin maxim "Ubi panis ibi patria" (Where there is bread, there is my country) to early American settlers. He once praised the middle colonies for "fair cities, substantial villages, extensive fields...decent houses, good roads, orchards, meadows, and bridges, where an hundred years ago all was wild, woody, and uncultivated."

The original edition, published near the end of the American Revolutionary War, was rather selective in the letters that were included, omitting those that were negative or critical. Norman A. Plotkin argues "it was intended to serve the English Whig cause by fostering an atmosphere conducive to reconciliation." The book excluded all but one of the letters written after the beginning of the war and also earlier ones that were more critical. Crèvecœur himself sympathized with the Whig cause. His wife's family remained loyal to the Crown and later fled to Nova Scotia. With regard to French politics, Crèvecœur was a liberal, a follower of the philosophes, and dedicated his book to Abbé Raynal, who he said "viewed these provinces of North America in their true light, as the asylum of freedom; as the cradle of future nations, and the refuge of distressed Europeans." Plotkin notes that "extremists in the American colonies who violated this principle, incurred Crèvecœur's harshest criticism, although the severest of these criticisms were considered unsuitable for publication at the time."

In 1883, his great-grandson, Robert de Crèvecoeur, published a biography for which he used previously unpublished letters and manuscripts passed down by the family. Although it received little notice in France, its existence came to the attention of W. P. Trent of Columbia University, who in 1904 published a reprint of Letters of an American Farmer. In 1916, Crèvecœur's first American biographer, Julia Post Mitchell, who had access to all the manuscripts, was able to make a more balanced assessment, writing that Crèvecoeur addressed "problems in political economy which European governments were trying in vain to solve." He was "...illustrating his theories from American conditions," and was not just "...a garruluous apologist of American life." The additional manuscripts were published in 1925.

Diplomat

The success of his book in France had led to his being taken up by an influential circle, and he was appointed the French consul for New York, including the areas of New Jersey and Connecticut. Crèvecœur returned to New York City as the newly appointed French consul in November 1783. Anxious to be reunited with his family, he learned that his farm had been destroyed in an Indian raid, his wife was dead, and his two younger children missing. He stayed in the house of his friend William Seton, who, as the last royal public notary for the city and province of New York, had helped to secure his release in 1780 from the British prison in the city. Principal of the import-export mercantile firm the William Seton Company, Seton helped Crevecoeur locate his children, who were safe and living with a family in Boston. The following spring, he was able to reunite with his children. For most of the 1780s, Crèvecœur lived in New York City.

St. Peter's, New York

At that time, New York City was the national capital and most of the resident Catholics were connected to the diplomatic corps. Initially they met for services at the home of the Spanish consul. Their numbers increased with seafaring people, merchants, emigrants from the Spanish West Indies, and a few Acadians. They then rented space at Vauxhall Gardens, a garden and entertainment venue located along the North River on Greenwich Street between Warren and Chambers Streets. In 1785, Portuguese consul Jose Roiz Silva, Spanish consul Tomas Stoughton and others sought to rent the vacant Exchange building and deemed Crevecoeur the best one to make the approach.

Although Crevecoeur was relatively indifferent to religion, he was sympathetic to the idea of liberty of conscience, and a friend of Lafayette. When the proposal was rejected, Crevecoeur was insulted and became very active in working for the establishment of the first Catholic church in the city. He later served as president of the first Board of Trustees of St. Peter's Church on Barclay Street.

Later life

In 1784, he published a two-volume version of his Letters from an American Farmer, enlarged and completely rewritten in French. A three-volume version followed in 1787. Both his English and his French books were translated into several other European languages and widely disseminated throughout Europe. For many years, Crèvecœur was identified by European readers with his fictional narrator, James, the 'American farmer', and held in high esteem by readers and fellow-writers across Europe.

By the time he published another three-volume work in 1801, entitled Voyage dans la Haute-Pensylvanie et dans l'état de New-York, however, his fame had faded and the damages of the French Revolution and its aftermath had made people less interested in the United States. His book was ignored. An abbreviated German translation appeared the following year. An English translation was not published until 1964. Much of de Crevecoeur's best work has been published posthumously, most recently as More Letters from the American Farmer: An edition of the Essays in English Left Unpublished by Crèvecœur, edited by Dennis D. Moore (Athens, Georgia: University of Georgia Press, 1995).

Particularly concerned about the condition of slaves, he joined the Société des Amis des Noirs (Society of the Friends of the Blacks), founded in Paris.

Crèvecœur was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 1789.

In 1789, during a stay in France, he was trapped by the political upheaval that was quickly turning into the French Revolution. At risk as an aristocrat, he went into hiding, while secretly trying to gain passage to the United States. The necessary papers were finally delivered to him by the new American ambassador to France, James Monroe. At the end of his life Crèvecœur returned to France and settled permanently on land he inherited from his father. On November 12, 1813, he died in Sarcelles, Val d'Oise, France.

The town of St. Johnsbury, Vermont, is named after him, as suggested by Ethan Allen.

Primary works

• Letters from an American Farmer: Describing Certain Provincial Situations, Manners, and Customs, Not Generally Known; and Conveying Some Idea of the Late and Present Interior Circumstances of the British Colonies of North America, 1782.
• Letters from an American Farmer, written to W.S. (William Seton), squire, from the year 1770 to 1781, translated from English by *** (Lettres d'un cultivateur américain : écrites à W. S. (William Seton), écuyer, depuis l'année 1770 jusqu'à 1781, traduites de l'anglois par ***), 1784.
• Memoire sur le Commerce Entre la France et les États-Unis D'Amerique, 1784 (manuscript rests in the U.S. Embassy, Paris).
• Eighteenth-Century Travels in Pennsylvania and New York (Voyage dans la Haute-Pensylvanie et dans l'état de New-York), 1801.
• Sketches of the Eighteenth Century America: More "Letters From an American Farmer", 1925.

References

• Guy Wilson Allen and Roger Asselineau, An American Farmer: The Life of St. John de Crevecoeur, New York: Viking Penguin, 1987

Selected criticism

• Gay W. Allen, An American Farmer, New York: Penguin Books, 1987
• David Eisermann: Crèvecoeur oder Die Erfindung Amerikas, Rheinbach-Merzbach: CMZ-Verlag, 1985
• Thomas Hallock, From the Fallen Tree: Frontier Narratives, Environmental Politics, and the Roots of a National Pastoral, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003
• Daniel Patterson, ed. Early American Writers: A Biographical Encyclopedia, Westport: Greenwood Press, 2008. "J. Hector St. John de Crevecoeur." Thomas Patchell. 96–104.
• Norman A. Plotkin, "Saint-John de Crevecoeur Rediscovered: Critic or Paneygyrist?", French Historical Studies, vol. 3, no. 3 (Spring 1964), pp. 390–404. JSTOR 285950.
• Paul P. Reuben. "Chapter 2: Early American Literature: 1700–1800 – St. Jean De Crevecoeur", PAL: Perspectives in American Literature – A Research and Reference Guide https://web.archive.org/web/20091012031553/http://www.csustan.edu/english/reuben/pal/chap2/creve.html)
• Alan Taylor, "The American Beginning: The Dark Side of Letters from an American Farmer," New Republic July 18, 2013

Primary sources

• de Crevecoeur, J. Hector St. John. Letters From an American Farmer and Other Essays edited by Dennis D. Moore (Harvard University Press; 2012) 372 pages; combines an edition of the famous 1782 work with his other writings

External links

• Works by J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur at Project Gutenberg
• Works by or about J. Hector St. John de Crèvecœur at the Internet Archive
• Letters from an American Farmer, American Studies, University of Virginia.
• Saint John de Crèvecoeur : sa vie et ses ouvrages (1735–1813), 1883 biography (in French) by his great grandson Robert de Crèvecœur
• J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur Papers. General Collection, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University.