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GILBERT IMLAY: CITIZEN of the WORLD This Page Intentionally Left Blank GILBERT IMLAY: CITIZEN of the WORLD GILBERT IMLAY: CITIZEN OF THE WORLD This page intentionally left blank GILBERT IMLAY: CITIZEN OF THE WORLD Wil Verhoeven First published 2008 by Pickering & Chatto (Publishers) Limi ted Published 2016 by Routled ge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, U SA Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © Taylor & Franc is 2008 © Wil Verhoeven 2008 All rights reserved, including those of translation into foreign languages. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered tradem arks , and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Verhoeven, Wil Gilbert Imlay: citizen of the world 1. Imlay, Gilbert, 1754?–1828? 2. Adventure and adventurers – United States – Biography I. Title 973.4’092 ISBN-13: 978-1-85196-859-6 (hbk) Typeset by Pickering & Chatto (Publishers) Limited CONTENTS Acknowledgements vii List of Figures xiii Prologue: e Many Lives of Gilbert Imlay 1 Part I: America 1 War Child and Soldier 7 2 Land-Jobber à la Mode 35 3 Friends in High Places 59 4 Slave Trader 83 Part II: England 5 Authority on the American West 93 6 Jacobin Novelist and Defender of the Rights of Woman 123 Part III: France 7 Expat Radical and Conspirator 141 8 Purveyor to the French Revolution 159 9 Blockade Runner and Infamous Lover 177 Epilogue: Lost in Speculation 203 Notes 213 Bibliography 263 Index 291 Emory Elliott ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Like the subjects they write about, biographers have their own genealogies. I am proud to acknowledge my indebtedness to my predecessors in the search for the elusive Gilbert Imlay, notably Richard Garnett (1903), John Wilson Townsend (1907), Ralph Leslie Rusk (1923), Oliver Farrar Emerson (1924), W. Clark Durant (1927) and Joseph Lewis Fant III (1984). e research for this book spans the best part of ten years and was car- ried out in libraries and manuscript collections all over the United States and Europe. During that time I have worked with innumerable (reference) librarians, archivists, curators, archive researchers, cataloguers and bibliographers, not to mention scores of historians, biographers, genealogists and other fellow archives’ rats – whom I have found to be extremely knowledgeable, committed, resource- ful and always willing to help, o er advice and honour my endless requests for copies, scans or photographs. Inevitably, over the years I have incurred massive debts of gratitude: quite literally, without the people that make the archives work, this book would not exist today. Following Imlay’s trail has led me on several research trips to Kentucky and over the past few years I have come to appreciate the state and its people as equally congenial and welcoming. I spent a few extraordinarily fruitful and enjoyable weeks at the Filson Historical Society in Louisville, an institution that oozes the history of the Ohio River Valley. I want to thank the Society’s Executive Director Mark Wetherington and his expert sta , particularly Jim Holmberg, Curator of Special Collections, Judith Partington, Head Librarian, Mike Veach and Robin Wallace, Special Collections Assistants, and Pen Bogert, Reference Specialist. No-one can claim to have an inkling of local Kentucky his- tory who has not consulted Neil O. Hammon. I harassed him with many an email and phone call, but Neil always had the answers. I also thank him for gen- erously sharing his own extensive research data with me, and for saving me from making some glaring mistakes. Mary Ellen Moore and Dolores Salsman, archive researchers at the Nelson County Court Archives, Bardstown, have provided stacks of photocopies of old court cases. It was a great pleasure to nally meet them in the vaults of the Court House and to join them in the hunt for further – vii – viii Gilbert Imlay: Citizen of the World traces of Gilbert Imlay in the largely unsorted, uncatalogued and partially burnt records of Nelson County Court. I want to thank Walter Bowman, archivist at the Kentucky Department for Libraries and Archives in Frankfort, for guid- ing me through the complex world of the District of Kentucky Supreme Court and Court of Appeals Deed Books. Doug Davies helped me locate important documents in the Archives and Records Department of Je erson County Cir- cuit Court, Louisville. At the Kentucky Historical Society, Frankfort, Library Branch Manager Jim Kastner, Manuscripts Archivist and Curator Lynne Holl- ingsworth and Sta Researcher Elizabeth Wills generously provided advice, copies and research leads. Kandie Adkinson at the Land O ce Division at the O ce of the Secretary of State, Frankfort, has been crucial in sorting out the complexities surrounding Imlay’s land patents. I am deeply grateful to her for nominating me to be commissioned a Kentucky Colonel by the Governor and the Secretary of State, an honour bestowed on ‘individuals in recognition of noteworthy accomplishments and outstanding service to a community, state or the nation’. On a rare break from the archives, my friend John G. Cawelti o ered me a splendid dinner and company a er taking me to see the forks of Beargrass Creek, winding their way through what is now Louisville’s East End before owing in the Ohio River just north of the Falls – the area where Imlay had planned his utopian community of ‘Bellefont’ (and where in the end he did not take Mary Wollstonecra ). e state of New Jersey may have, shall we say, a ‘mixed’ reputation in the United States, but I confess I am thrilled that my search for Gilbert Imlay’s roots has taken me on several occasions along the by-ways and high-ways of the Garden State (including the infamous New Jersey Turnpike). omas J. Imlay shared some of his own explorations into his family roots, and I cannot thank him enough for putting me in touch with Leslie V. Meirs. I had long suspected that the family papers that in 1881 were in the possession of Mrs Elizabeth Imlay would still be in some relative’s drawer or shoebox – and they were. Les- lie Meirs graciously entrusted the Bruere-Imlay papers to me for my perusal. I am grateful to Joan Ruddiman for introducing me to John Fabiano, president of the Allentown-Upper Freehold Historical Society, who spent hours with me at the Allentown Public Library going through the local history collection and the micro lm copies of the Charles Hutchinson collection. At Special Collec- tions and University Archives, Rutgers University Libraries, Albert C. King, Manuscripts Curator, and David Kuzma took the trouble to advise me on Imlay holdings. Margaret Sherry Rich, Reference Librarian and Archivist at Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University Library, helped me nd my way through the Lee Family manuscripts (thanks, also, to AnnaLee Pauls and Lisa Dunkley). I have bene ted much from the help and advice of Gary Saretzky, County Archivist, and Mary Ann Kiernan, Reference Specialist, both Acknowledgements ix at the Monmouth County Archives in Manalapan, New Jersey. I would also like to thank Tim Decker, Collections Manager at the New Jersey Historical Soci- ety; Carla Z. Tobias, Monmouth County Historical Association, Freehold, New Jersey; and New Jersey historian David Fowler. Elsewhere in the United States I have received support, advice and encour- agement from scores of people I have worked with over the years; many of whom have responded e ciently and graciously to my endless requests for copies, scans and micro lms. Charles W. Royster at Louisiana State University was kind enough to answer my queries about Light-Horse Harry Lee. Dr Nicholas Butler, Special Collections Manager at Charleston County Public Library, helped me nd material on Imlay and Freneau in those Charleston records not destroyed in the city’s various res, hurricanes, earthquakes and military sieges. Kathie Lud- wig, Librarian at the David Library of the American Revolution, Washington Crossing, Pennsylvania, always promptly answered my reference questions and provided countless photocopies. anks, too, to Meg McSweeney, Chief Oper- ating o cer at the David Library, for inviting me to work there. For helping me locate sources and pointing out further avenues of research I am also grateful to William S. Poole, Professor of Southern History at the College of Charles- ton; Lisa Reams, Librarian, South Carolina Historical Association, Charleston; Elizabeth Gallow, Assistant Special Collections Librarian, Maryland Historical Society, Baltimore, Maryland; Leah Prescott, Manuscripts and Archives Librar- ian, Wendy Schnur, Reference Manager, and Peggy Tate Smith, Rights and Reproductions and Sales Coordinator, all at the G. W. Blunt White Library of the Mystic Seaport Museum (Mystic, Connecticut); Janet Bloom, at the William L. Clements Library, University of Michigan; Ward J. Childs, City Archivist, at the Philadelphia City Archives; Matthew Edney, Director of the History of Car- tography Project, Department of Geography, University of Wisconsin; Sister Benedicta Mahoney, of the Sisters of Charity of Cincinatti Archives Depart- ment; Professor Daniel Schaefer of the University of North Florida; Kristina Perez of the Missouri Historical Society, St Louis, Missouri; Nancy Mulhern of the Wisconsin Historical Society; Cindy VanHorn, Library Assistant, at e Lincoln Museum, Fort Wayne, Indiana; John McClure, Reference Department Manager, and Toni M. Carter, Assistant Librarian at the Virginia Historical Society, Richmond, Virginia. I would like to thank Fredrika Teute, Editor of Publications, Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, for her interest in my work and for suggesting that Imlay would take over my life if I did not write this book; Jack P.
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