Background

Michel-Guillaume Jean de Crevecæur was born on January 31, 1735 in Caen, France. He was the son of Guillaume Jean de Crèvecæur and of Marie-Anne-Thérèse Blouet.

Education

He had received part of his education in England, which he had left in 1754.

Career

Though the descendant of families of distinction, the young man chose to become a pioneer and wanderer. He migrated to Canada and served under Montcalm in the last of the French and Indian wars.

During his services in New France he explored the vast tracts of land near the Great Lakes and the Ohio River. His official duty was, perhaps, that of map-maker. In any case, he acquired a knowledge of the countries of the Scioto and the Muskingum, and of their Indian peoples. These adventures were a mere overture to his later participation in the drama of American colonization and revolution.

At the age of twenty-four (1759), he landed in New York. For the next decade he again traveled widely, acquiring a thorough knowledge of Pennsylvania and New York, and, presumably, penetrating into the Carolinas. Now, however, there were anchors for this French voyager.

In December 1765 he became a naturalized American citizen; in 1769 he settled on his farm, at "Pine Hill, " Orange County, New York. Though details of his experiences are wanting between 1769 and September 1780, when he embarked for France, it is probable that during this decade he wrote most of the charming and informative essays on which his reputation rests. These are, for the most part, available in Letters from an American Farmer (1782) "by J. Hector St. John, " a name which Crèvecæur occasionally used simply because he liked it; and in Sketches of Eighteenth Century America (1925). It is likely that he sometimes wrote long after the event, and the particular essays cannot be finally dated, but it is reasonable to think that these two volumes present substantially the Farmer's reactions to American life during his stay here.

Immediately after the war he returned to America, arriving in New York, November 19, 1783, only to discover that his home had been burned.

He corresponded with Washington; he knew Franklin; he wrote for the American newspapers over the signature "Agricola, " and at the marriage of his daughter, America-Francès, Thomas Jefferson was present. Perhaps of equal interest to this born farmer was his boast that he had introduced into America sain foin, lucerne (alfalfa), the vetches, vignon, and racine de disette.

In 1790 he took final leave of his adopted country.

He died at Sarcelles, on November 12, 1813.

Had Crèvecæur written nothing, his life as a Frenchman living through the upheaval of the Revolution would have been remarkable. He was a master of the forest and of the pioneer farm. He studied with the utmost thoughtfulness the vexed question of taxation. He was familiar with the evils of fraudulent titles, heavy mortgages, and imperfect agricultural equipment. He understood the misery of the poor, and he observed the vast reestablishments in America of feudal systems under the Dutch and other colonial aristocrats. He was particularly interested, since this was his own lot, in the difficulties of the independent family tilling the soil, under cramped methods of husbandry, for a perilous livelihood. Finally, he experienced the despair of the Revolution which set at naught all that he, and those like him, had gained. Though deeply attached to the common people, he became, perhaps because of an innate aristocratic bias, a Loyalist; and he saw in the chicanery of some so-called patriots much to support him in this conviction. In Landscapes, an early specimen of American drama, and in various essays, he penetrated shrewdly economic and personal motives that underlay the Revolution. An intense lover of true liberty, he saw clearly the oppressions committed in America in its name, and he could not endure those, as he said, who were "perpetually bawling about liberty without knowing what it was. " All this he set down in vigorous English, in such letters or essays as "What is An American? or "The American Belisarius. " These great issues he viewed with a broad and sane philosophy, but he described also in detail the physical and social conditions of rural life in America.

Achievements

• He became French consul at New York and endeavored to cement the friendly relations of his two countries.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Voyage dans la Haute Pensylvanie Et dans l'État de New-York, Vol. 1: Depuis l'Année 1785 Jusqu'en 1798 (Classic Reprint) (French Edition)

    (Excerpt from Voyage dans la Haute Pensylvanie Et dans l'É...)

  • Voyage dans la Haute Pensylvanie Et dans l'État de New York, Vol. 2: Par un Membre Adoptif de la Nation Onéida (Classic Reprint) (French Edition)

    (Excerpt from Voyage dans la Haute Pensylvanie Et dans l'É...)

  • Letters from an American Farmer

    (This book is in English. This book contains 219 pages.)

Connections

In 1769 he married Mehetable Tippet of Yonkers.

Father:

Guillaume Jean de Crèvecæur

Mother:

Marie-Anne-Thérèse Blouet

Spouse:

Mehetable Tippet