Jean Etienne Bore was an American planter. He was also appointed the first Mayor of New Orleans from 1803 to 1804.
Background
Jean Bore was born on December 27, 1741, in Kaskaskia, Illinois, United States. The family belonged to the old Norman nobility and some of its members had risen high in the service of the French kings. One Michel de Boré had been a conseiller de roi as well as a postal official under Louis XIII, and Robert Louis de Boré, the great-grandfather of Étienne, had performed like services for Louis XIV. For some reason not explained, Étienne's father had turned from the life at court and had sought his fortunes in the far-off French possessions in America. There he married one Céleste Thérèse Carrière, and there his son was born.
Education
At the age of four years, Jean was taken to France to be educated there.
Career
When his age permitted, Jean Bore took his place as a member of the Mousquétaires du Roi, the king's own household troops in which the private held the rank of captain. For ten years he remained in the service, then accepted the command of a company of cavalry, only to resign and turn his face westward toward the land of his birth. Establishing himself upon a plantation situated six miles above the city of New Orleans, he shared the hopes and disappointments of the native planters in the search for a profitable staple and at length, like the others, turned his major attention to the cultivation of indigo. For a time all went well but in the early seventeen-nineties insects ravaged the crops with disheartening regularity and slaves used in the work sickened and died. In despair the planters were forced back into the old search for a staple.
Under such conditions Étienne Boré resolved upon a new attempt at the hitherto unsuccessful making of sugar. Purchasing cane from the planters Solis and Mendez, who raised it for syrup and tafia, he planted his fields, built a sugar house, and in 1795 was ready for a trial. Amid intense excitement the time for the strike was awaited, and the cry of the sugar maker, "It granulates, " was carried far and wide as the announcement of a new day for the province. Louisiana had at last found a staple. From this time on Boré's fame and fortune expanded. Profits took the place of losses; his fields widened and his negroes, under semi-military discipline, grew in numbers and contentment. His great house with its moat and ramparts, reminiscent of old France, opened its doors with equal hospitality to the exiled brothers of Louis XVI or to the American generals who were serving with Andrew Jackson. Throughout the province he was honored and revered as the great benefactor of agriculture.
When Louisiana was transferred from Spain to France in 1803 Boré was appointed mayor of the city of New Orleans and continued to serve on into the American period. He was then appointed a member of the first Legislative Council under the new government, but, consistent with his opposition to the form of government imposed, he refused to serve, and returned to his rural life. He died at the age of seventy-nine years, requesting that his funeral be conducted with the greatest simplicity, so that the money saved thereby might be given to the Charity Hospital of New Orleans. The wish was characteristic of the man.
Achievements
Jean Bore was known for growing of sugar cane and producing the first granulated sugar in Louisiana in the 1790s.
Connections
Jean Bore was married to Marguerite Marie Destrehans, daughter of the former royal treasurer in Louisiana who had large possessions in that province.
