Appendix Beta2: The Nantes Intellectual Line Connecting brothers of Phi Kappa Psi Fraternity at Cornell University, tracing their fraternal Big Brother/Little Brother line to the tri-Founders and their Pledges . . .

Joseph Benson Foraker was a founder of New York Alpha, in the Class of 1869, and studied under . . .



. . .Theodore Dwight in those first years . . .

. . . Professor Theodore William Dwight . . . William Smith was brought to Penn by was influenced by Samuel Finley Benjamin Franklin . . .  Breese Morse . . . 

. . . Samuel Finley Breese Morse was, . . . Benjamin Franklin’s endeavors were in turn, influenced by sponsored by the Frenchman Washington Allston . . .  Jacques-Donatien Le Ray . . . 

. . . Washington Allston was influenced by . . . Jacques-Donatien Le Ray was the son Benjamin West . . .  of René François Le Ray . . . 

. . . Benjamin West was influenced by . . . René François Le Ray was the son of William Smith . . .  Jean Le Ray of Nantes.

Below we present short biographies of the Nantes intellectual line of the Phi Kappa Psi Fraternity at Cornell University.

“Who defends the House.”

We begin with brother Joseph Benson Foraker of the Class of 1869, who studied under Professor Theodore Dwight in the University’s first years of existence.

 Theodore William Dwight (1822- 1892), American jurist and educator, cousin of Theodore Dwight Woolsey and of Timothy Dwight V, was born July 18, 1822 in Catskill, New York. His father was Benjamin Woolsey Dwight (1780-1850), a physician and merchant, and his grandfather was Timothy Dwight IV (1752- 1817), a prominent theologian, educator, author, and president of Yale University from 1795-1817. Theodore Dwight graduated from Hamilton College in 1840 where he studied physics under SFB Morse and John William Draper. Dwight taught the classics at Utica Academy in 1840-1841. He studied law at Yale and Yale College was admitted to the bar in 1845.

Between 1842-1858, he taught at Hamilton, first as tutor and later as professor of law, history, civil polity, and political economy. In 1853 he became dean of the Hamilton Law School. In 1858, he accepted an invitation to develop a department of law at Columbia. He was the sole professor of law at Columbia until the department was expanded in 1873, eventually became Columbia Law School. He served as the dean at Columbia Law School until 1891. That year, he and other faculty, students, and alumni of Columbia Law School, protesting the Columbia trustees’ attempts to convert Columbia law school to the case method, left to found New York Law School.

At Columbia, Dwight was the creator of the Dwight method of legal instruction, which emphasized memorization of treatises, practice drills, and frequent moot courts. The Dwight method was in competition with the case method developed by Christopher Columbus Langdell, then Dean of Harvard, which emphasized the study of individual cases, and inductive reasoning. As described by Columbia Professor Peter Strauss, "Where Dwight aimed to give a sound knowledge of the law to men of average ability, Harvard's case method aimed to give as much intellectual stimulation as possible to those who would become the profession's elite." Today, the more abstract case method dominates legal education, even at New York Law School. However, the Dwight method, while not described as such, is still used in some law schools. Dwight-like memorization techniques are also widely used to prepare for state bar exams.

2 Dwight was also a prominent figure in political and social reforms. In 1873, Governor Dix of New York appointed Dwight a member of the commission of appeals, which in 1874-1875 aided the court of appeals to clear its docket. In 1886 he served as counsel for five Andover professors charged with heresy. Dwight was particularly interested in prison reform; he collaborated on A Report on Prisons and Reformatories in the United States and Canada (1867), served as president of the New York Prison Association, and was a delegate to the International Prison Congress at Stockholm (1878). He helped draw up the bill for the establishment of the Elmira Reformatory and wrote an early report that helped lead to the organization the State Charities Aid Association.

Dwight edited Sir Henry Maine's Ancient Law (1864); was associate editor of the American Law Register and legal editor of Johnson's Cyclopaedia; and published Charitable Uses: Argument in the Rose Will Case (1863). He was a non-resident professor of law at Cornell (1869-1871) and at Amherst (1870- 1872).

Dwight died in Clinton, New York, on the 28th of June 1892.

3 Professor Theodore Dwight studied physics under inventor, and partner of Ezra Cornell, Samuel F.B. Morse:

 Samuel Finley Breese Morse (April 27, 1791 – April 2, 1872) was an American painter of portraits and historic scenes, the creator of a single wire telegraph system, and co-inventor, with Alfred Vail, of the Morse Code. Samuel F.B Morse was born on April 27, 1791 in Charlestown, Massachusetts, the first child of geographer and pastor Jedidiah Morse and Elizabeth Ann Breese Morse. Jedidiah was a great preacher of the Calvinist faith and supporter of the American Federalist party. He not only saw them as great preservers of Puritan traditions (strict observance of the Sabbath), but believed in their idea of an alliance with English in regards to a strong central government. Jedidiah strongly believed in Yale College education within a Federalist framework alongside the instillation of Calvinist virtues, morals and prayers for his son.

After attending Phillips Academy in Andover, Samuel went on to Yale College to receive instruction in the subjects of religious philosophy, mathematics and science of horses. While at Yale, he attended lectures on electricity from Benjamin Silliman and Jeremiah Day. He earned money by painting. In 1810, he graduated from Yale.

Morse's Calvinist beliefs are evident in his painting the Landing of the Pilgrims, through the depiction of simplistic clothing as well as the austere facial features. This image captured the psychology of the Federalists; Calvinists from England brought to the United States ideas of religion and government thus forever linking the two countries. More importantly, this particular work attracted the attention of the famous artist, Washington Allston. Allston wanted Morse to come with him to England to meet the famous British artist Benjamin West. An agreement for three year stay was made with Jedidah and young Morse set sail with Allston aboard the Lydia on July 15, 1811.

Upon his arrival in England, Morse diligently worked on perfecting painting techniques under the careful eye of Allston and by the end of 1811; he gained admittance to the Royal Academy. At the Academy, he fell in love with the Neo- classical art work of the Renaissance paying close attention to Michelangelo and Raphael. After observing and practicing sketches of curvatures and muscle formations, the young artist successfully created his own masterpiece, Dying

4 Hercules. Immediately, Benjamin West secured Morse’s position at the Academy and received a gold medal from the Adelphi Society.

There definitely was a political statement against the British but also American Federalists with Dying Hercules. The muscles represented the strength of the young and vibrant United States that was undermined by the dubious the British and their American supporters. During Morse’s time in Britain the Americans and English were engaged in the War of 1812 and division existed within United States society over loyalties. Anti-Federalists Americans aligned themselves with the French, abhorred the British, and believed a strong central government to be inherently dangerous to democracy. As the war raged on his letters to his parents became more anti-Federalist in their tones. In one such letter Morse said, "I assert that the Federalists in the Northern States have done more injury to their country by their violent opposition measures than a French alliance could. There proceedings are copied into the English papers, read before Parliament, and circulated through their country, and what do they say of them… they call them (Federalists) cowards, a base set, say they are traitors to their country and ought to be hanged like traitors.

Although Jedidah did not change his political views, he did influence Morse’s in another way. It unmistakably clear that Jedidah’s Calvinist ideas were and integral part of Morse’s other significant English piece Judgment of Jupiter.

Jupiter in the cloud, accompanied by his eagle, with his hand over the parties, is pronouncing judgment. Marpessa with an expression of compunction and shame, imploring forgiveness, is throwing herself into the arms of her husband. Idas, who tenderly loved Marpessa, is eagerly rushing forward to receive her, while Apollo stares with surprisem . . . at the unexpectedness of her decision. A case can be made that Jupiter is representative of God’s omnipotence watching every move that is made. One might deem the portrait as a moral teaching by Morse on infidelity. Although Marpessa fell victim she realized that her eternal salvation was important and desisted from her wicked ways. Apollo shows no remorse for what he did, but just stands there with a puzzled look. A lot of the American paintings throughout the early nineteenth century had religious themes and tones and it was Morse who was the forerunner. Judgment of Jupiter allowed Morse to express his support of Anti Federalism while maintaining his strong spiritual convictions. This work represented American nationalism through Calvinism because these individuals expelled from England, contributed to the expulsion of the English (1776 and now in 1812) and established a free democratic society. West sought to present this image at another Royal Academy exhibition; unfortunately his time had run out. He left England on August 21, 1815 and began his full time career as an American painter.

The years, 1815-1825, mark significant growth in Morse’s paintings as he sought to capture the true essence of America’s culture and life. He had the

5 honor of painting former Federalist President John Adams (1816). He hoped to become part of grander projects and saw his opportunity with the clash between Federalist and Anti-Federalists over Dartmouth College. Morse was able to paint Judge Woodward (1817) who was involved in bringing the Dartmouth case before the Supreme Court and the college’s president, Francis Brown. He sought commissions in Charleston, South Carolina (1818). Morse’s painting of Mrs. Emma Quash symbolized the opulence of Charleston. It seemed for the time being, the young artist was doing well for himself.

Between 1819 and 1821, Morse experienced a great change in his' life. Commissions ceased in Charleston when the city was hit with an economic recession. Jedidah was forced to resign from his ministerial position as he was unsuccessful in stopping the rift within Calvinism. The new branch that formed was the Congregational Unitarians which he deemed as detestable anti- Federalists because these persons took a different approach over salvation. Although he respected his father’s religious opinions, he sympathized with the Unitarians. A prominent family that converted to the new Calvinist faith was the Pickerings of Portsmouth whom Morse had painted. This portrait can then be viewed as a further shift towards anti-Federalism. A person could argue that he made his full transition to anti- Federalism when he was commissioned to paint President James Monroe (1820). Monroe embodied Jeffersonian Democracy by favoring the common man over the aristocrat; later reemphasized upon the ascension of Andrew Jackson.

There were two defining commissions that shaped Morse’s art career from his return to New Haven until the establishment of the National Academy of Design. The Hall of Congress (1821) and the Marquis de Lafayette (1825) embroiled Morse’s sense of democratic nationalism. The artist chose to paint the House of Representatives, to show American democracy in action. He traveled to Washington D.C. to draw the architecture of the new halls, carefully placing eighty individuals within the painting and believed that a night scene was appropriate. He successfully balanced the architecture of the Rotunda with the figurines and the glow of the lamplight serving as the focal point of the work. Pairs of people, those who stood alone, individuals bent over their desks working were painted simply but had characterized faces. Morse chose nighttime to convey Congress’ dedication to the principles of democracy transcended day. The Hall of Congress however, failed to draw a crowd in New York City. One possible reason for the disappointment was the shadow of John Trumbull’s Declaration of Independence that won popular acclaim in 1820. Perhaps some individuals did not appreciate the inner-workings of the American government.

Morse felt a great degree of honor of painting the Marquis de Lafayette,leading supporter of the American Revolution.He felt compelled to paint a grandiose portrait of the man who helped to establish a free and independent America. In his image, he enshrouds Lafayette with a magnificent sunset as he stands to the right of three pedestals of which two are Benjamin Franklin and

6 George Washington with the final reserved for him. A peaceful wooden landscape below him symbolized American tranquility and prosperity as it approach the age of fifty. The developing friendship between Morse and Lafayette and the discussion of the Revolutionary War, affected the artist upon returning to New York City.

Morse was in Europe for three years improving his painting skills, 1830- 1832, travelling in Italy, Switzerland and France. The project he eventually selected was to paint miniature copies of some 38 of the Louvre's famous paintings on a single canvas (6 ft. x 9 ft) which he entitled "The Gallery of the Louvre". He planned to complete "The Gallery of the Louvre" when he returned home to Massachusetts and to earn an income by exhibiting his work and charging admission. This was typical of Morse who stumbled haphazardly from one money-making scheme to another in those days.

On the sea voyage home in 1832 Morse encountered Charles Thomas Jackson of Boston who was well schooled in electromagnetism. Witnessing various experiments with Jackson's electromagnet, Morse developed the concept of a single wire telegraph, and "The Gallery of the Louvre" was set aside. He was devising his telegraph code even before the ship docked. In time the Morse code would become the primary language of telegraphy in the world.

In 1836 Morse ran unsuccessfully for mayor of New York under the Nativist banner, gathering only 1496 votes.

William Cooke and Professor Charles Wheatstone reached the stage of launching a commercial telegraph prior to Morse, despite starting later. In England Cooke became fascinated by electrical telegraph in 1836, four years after Morse, but with greater financial resources. Cooke abandoned his primary subject of anatomy and built a small electrical telegraph within three weeks. Wheatstone also was experimenting with telegraphy and (most importantly) understood that a single large battery would not carry a telegraphic signal over long distances, and that numerous small batteries were far more successful and efficient in this task (Wheatstone was building on the primary research of Joseph Henry, an American physicist). Cooke and Wheatstone formed a partnership and patented the electrical telegraph in May 1837, and within a short time had provided the Great Western Railway with a 13-mile (21 km) stretch of telegraph. However, Cooke and Wheatstone's multiple wire signaling method would be overtaken by Morse's superior code within a few years.

Morse encountered the problem of getting a telegraphic signal to carry over more than a few hundred yards of wire. His breakthrough came from the insights of Professor Leonard Gale, who taught chemistry at New York University (a personal friend of Joseph Henry). With Gale's help, Morse soon was able to send a message through ten miles (16 km) of wire. This was the great breakthrough Morse had been seeking.

7 Morse and Gale were soon joined by a young enthusiastic man, Alfred Vail, who had excellent skills, insights and money. Morse's telegraph now began to be developed very rapidly.

In 1838 a trip to Washington, D.C. failed to attract federal sponsorship for a telegraph line. Morse then traveled to Europe seeking both sponsorship and patents, but in London discovered Cooke and Wheatstone had already established priority. In 1839, from Paris, Morse published the first American description of daguerreotype photography by Louis Daguerre.

Morse made one last trip to Washington, D.C., in December 1842, stringing "wires between two committee rooms in the Capitol, and sent messages back and forth -- and, for some reason, this time some people believed him, and a bill was finally proposed allocating $30,000 towards building an experimental line".³

The general public was highly skeptical, and there were also a great many skeptics in Congress. A thirty eight-mile (61km) line was constructed between Washington, D.C., and Baltimore. The most convincing demonstration was when the results of the Whig National Convention at Baltimore in the spring of 1844 reached Washington via telegraph prior to the arrival of the first train. On 24 May 1844 the line (which ran along the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad between the Capitol and Baltimore) was officially opened as Morse sent his famous words "What hath God wrought" along the wire.

In May 1845 the Magnetic Telegraph Company was formed in order to radiate telegraph lines from New York City towards Philadelphia, Boston, Buffalo, New York and the Mississippi.

Morse also at one time adopted Wheatstone and Carl August von Steinheil's idea of broadcasting an electrical telegraph signal through a body of water or down steel railroad tracks or anything conductive. He went to great lengths to win a lawsuit for the right to be called "inventor of the telegraph", and promoted himself as being an inventor, but Alfred played an important role in the invention of the Morse Code, which was based on earlier codes for the electromagnetic telegraph.

Samuel Morse received a patent for the telegraph in 1847, at the old Beylerbeyi Palace (the present Beylerbeyi Palace was built in 1861-1865 on the same location) in Istanbul, which was issued by Sultan Abdülmecid who personally tested the new invention.

In the 1850s, Morse went to Copenhagen and visited the Thorvaldsens Museum, where the sculptor's grave is in the inner courtyard. He was received by King Frederick VII, who decorated him with the Order of the Dannebrog. Morse

8 expressed his wish to donate his portrait from 1830 to the king. The Thorvaldsen portrait today belongs to Margaret II of Denmark.

The Morse telegraphic apparatus was officially adopted as the standard for European telegraphy in 1851. Britain (with its British Empire) remained the only notable part of the world where other forms of electrical telegraph were in widespread use (they continued to use the needle telegraph invention of Cooke and Wheatstone).

In the United States, Morse had now had his patent for many years, but it was being both ignored and contested. In 1853 the case of the patent came before the Supreme Court where, after very lengthy investigation, Chief Justice Roger B. Taney ruled that Morse had been the first to combine the battery, electromagnetism, the electromagnet and the correct battery configuration into a workable practical telegraph.6 Nevertheless, in spite of this clear ruling, Morse still received no official recognition from the United States government. Assisted by the American Ambassador in Paris, the governments of Europe were approached regarding how they had long neglected Morse while using his invention. There was then a widespread recognition that something must be done, and "in 1858 Morse was awarded the sum of 400,000 French francs (equivalent to about $80,000 at the time) by the governments of France, Austria, Belgium, the Netherlands, Piedmont, Russia, Sweden, Tuscany and Turkey, each of which contributed a share according to the number of Morse instruments in use in each country."7

There was still no such recognition in the USA. This remained the case until 10 June 1871, when a bronze statue of Samuel Morse was unveiled in Central Park, New York City.

In the 1850s, Morse became well known as a defender of America's institution of slavery, considering it to be divinely sanctioned. In his treatise "An Argument on the Ethical Position of Slavery," he wrote:

My creed on the subject of slavery is short. Slavery per se is not sin. It is a social condition ordained from the beginning of the world for the wisest purposes, benevolent and disciplinary, by Divine Wisdom. The mere holding of slaves, therefore, is a condition having per se nothing of moral character in it, any more than the being a parent, or employer, or ruler.

Samuel Morse was a generous man who gave large sums to charity. He also became interested in the relationship of science and religion and provided the funds to establish a lectureship on 'the relation of the Bible to the Sciences'.9 Morse was not a selfish man. Other people and corporations made millions using his inventions, yet most rarely paid him for the use of his patented telegraph. He was not bitter about this, though he would have appreciated more rewards for his

9 labors. Morse was comfortable; by the time of his death, his estate was valued at some $500,000.

Morse married Lucretia Pickering Walker on 29 September 1819, in Concord, New Hampshire. She died on 7 February 1825, shortly after the birth of their third child. His second wife was Sarah Elizabeth Griswold. They were married on 10 August 1848 in Utica, New York. Morse died on 2 April 1872 at his home at 5 West 22nd Street, New York City, at the age of 80, and was buried in the Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, New York.

10 Professor Samuel F.B. Morse was a pupil under painter and poet Washington Allston:

 Washington Allston (November 5, 1779 - July 9, 1843) was a U.S. poet and influential painter, born in Waccamaw, South Carolina. Allston pioneered America's Romantic movement of landscape painting. He was well known during his lifetime for his experiments with dramatic subject matter and his bold use of light and atmospheric color. Allston graduated from Harvard College in 1800, then sailed to Europe, where he spent the next three years studying art at the Royal Academy in

London, England, of which the Anglo- American painter Benjamin West was then the president. From 1803 to 1808 he visited Harvard College the great museums of Paris and then for several years those of Italy, where he met Coleridge, his lifelong friend.

The remains of the Transcendentalist painter and poet who pioneered America's Romantic movement of landscape painting are buried in Harvard Square, in "the Old Burying Ground" between the First Parish Church and Christ Church. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, author of "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner," said that Washington Allston was surpassed by no contemporary artistic and poetic genius. A large portrait of Coleridge, painted by Allston, is in the National Portrait Gallery in London.

Who is this poet who died in Cambridge, where he established a studio in Central Square and painted portraits?

He was born on a plantation on the Waccamaw River in South Carolina. He began to draw when he was six. When he was eight, he moved to his uncle's home in Newport, Rhode Island. After attending a classical school, Newport Academy, he went to Harvard College, where he was called "The Count" due to his fashionable attire. Upon graduating in 1800, he sold his patrimony-his share of family property-in order that he might move to London in 1801 as a student of Benjamin West at the Royal Academy. From 1803 to 1808 he visited the great museums of Paris and then for several years those of Italy, where he met Coleridge, his lifelong friend. His proposal to Ann Channing, the sister of the Boston Unitarian minister, William Ellery Channing, was accepted in 1809, but their marriage ended when she died in London in 1815. He was accompanied on a trip to Europe in 1811 by one of his pupils, Samuel F. B. Morse, the inventor of an electric telegraph and developer of the Morse code of dots and dashes.

11 Washington Allston was sometimes called the "American Titian" since his style resembled the Venetian Renaissance artists in display of dramatic color contrasts. His work shaped the future of U.S. landscape painting. Also, many of his paintings were drawn from literature, especially Biblical stories.

Samuel F.B. Morse studied under him and Ralph Waldo Emerson was strongly influenced by his paintings and poems, but so were both Sophia Peabody-who married Nathaniel Hawthorne-and Margaret Fuller, who described his smile of genius. She wrote about him in the first number of The Dial after she and Emerson attended the Allston Exhibition. Emerson, in spite of his reservations, spoke of Allston in relation to Homer and Shakespeare. Oliver Wendell Holmes cited Washington Allston as the brightest and noblest of all American artists.

"Moonlight Landscape" and "Elijah in the Desert" are at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston; "Ship in a Squall" is in the Fogg Museum at Harvard; though unfinished after twenty years, the tragic "Belshazzar's Feast" is in the Boston Athenaeum.

In addition to Allston's poem, "The Sylphs of the Seasons" (1813), his literary work is in his Lectures on Art and Poems (1850), edited by his brother-in- law, Richard Henry Dana, Jr., author of Two Years Before the Mast.

Just before Allston's death in Cambridge at age 64, though not well, he attended the Boston banquet in honor of Charles Dickens. Before departing for England, Dickens visited the poet-painter at his "ivy-studded studio in Cambridge" to make a farewell call on a friend he called " a fine specimen of old genius."

Today part of Boston is called Allston.

12 Washington Allston studied under the painter and president, Royal Academy, Benjamin West:

 Benjamin West (October 10, 1738 – March 11, 1820) was an Anglo-American painter of historical scenes around and after the time of the American War of Independence. He was born in Springfield, Pennsylvania, in a house that is now on the campus of Swarthmore College, as the tenth child of an innkeeper. The family later moved to Newtown Square, Pennsylvania, where his father was the proprietor of the Square Tavern, still standing in that town. West told John Galt, with whom, late in his life, he collaborated on a memoir, The Life and Studies of Benjamin West (1816, 1820) that, when he was a child, members of the The College of Pennsylvania, Lenape Nation showed him how to make later “Penn”. paint by mixing some clay from the river bank with bear grease in a pot.

Benjamin West was an autodidact; while excelling at the arts, "he had little [formal] education and, even when president of the Royal Academy, could scarcely spell". From 1746 to 1759, West worked in Pennsylvania, mostly painting portraits. While in Lancaster, PA, in 1756, West's patron, a gunsmith named William Henry, encouraged him to design a "Death of Socrates" based on an engraving in Charles Rollin's Ancient History; the resulting composition, which significantly differs from West's source, has been called "the most ambitious and interesting painting produced in colonial America."

Dr William Smith, then the provost of the College of Philadelphia, saw the painting in Henry's house and decided to patronize West, offering him education and, more important, connections with wealthy and politically-connected Pennsylvanians. During this time West met John Wollaston, a famous painter who immigrated from London. West learned Wollaston's techniques for painting the shimmer of silk and satin, and also adopted some of "his mannerisms, the most prominent of which was to give all his subjects large almond-shaped eyes, which clients thought very chic”.

In 1760, sponsored by Smith and William Allen, reputed to be the wealthiest man in Philadelphia, West traveled to Italy where he expanded his repertoire by copying the works of Italian painters such as Titian and Raphael. West was a close friend of Benjamin Franklin, whose portrait he painted. Franklin was also the godfather of West's second son, Benjamin.

13 In 1763, West moved to England, where he was commissioned by King George III to create portraits of members of the royal family. The king himself was twice painted by him. He painted his most famous, and possibly most influential painting, The Death of General Wolfe, in 1770, exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1771. Although originally snubbed by Sir Joshua Reynolds, the famous portrait painter and President of the Royal Academy, and others as over ambitious, the painting became one of the most frequently reproduced images of the period.

n 1772, King George appointed him historical painter to the court at an annual fee of £1,000. With Reynolds, West founded the Royal Academy of Arts in 1768. He was the second president of the Royal Academy from 1792 to 1805. He was re-elected in 1806 and was president until his death in 1820. He was Surveyor of the King's Pictures from 1791 until his death.

West is known for his large scale history paintings, which use expressive figures, colours and compositional schemes to help the spectator to identify with the scene represented. West called this "epic representation".

He died in London.

14 Painter and president, Royal Academy, Benjamin West, was patronized by William Smith:

 The Rev. Dr. William Smith (1728-1803) was the first president of the University of Pennsylvania. He was born at Aberdeen, Scotland, to Thomas and Elizabeth (Duncan) Smith. He attended the University of Aberdeen. In 1753, Smith wrote a pamphlet outlining his thoughts about education. The book fell into the hands of Benjamin Franklin; as a result Franklin asked Smith to come to Philadelphia and teach at the newly established academy there (now the University of Pennsylvania). Benjamin West was an autodidact; while excelling at the arts, "he had little [formal] education and, even when president of the Royal Academy, could scarcely spell". In 1755 Smith became the first provost (the equivalent of the modern post of college president) of The University of Aberdeen the school. He held the post until 1779.

Smith was an Anglican priest and together with William Moore, Smith was briefly jailed in 1758 for his criticism of the military policy in the Quaker-run colony. Indeed, during the French and Indian War, Smith published two anti- Quaker pamphlets that advocated the disenfranchisement of all Quakers--who were, at the time, the political elite in Pennsylvania.

However, their pacifist beliefs made it difficult for the Quakers in government to provide funds for defense, and as a result anti-Quaker sentiment ran high, especially in the backcountry which suffered from frequent raids from Indians allied with the French. Smith's second pamphlet, A Brief View of the Conduct of Pennsylvania, For the Year 1755 (1756) actually went so far as to suggest that while one way of "ridding our Assembly of Quakers” would be to require an oath, “another way of getting rid of them" would be "by cutting their Throats.”[1] Smith's virulent attacks on Quakers alienated him from Franklin, who was closely allied with the Pennsylvania Assembly.

Smith courted and married Moore's daughter, Rebecca, and had seven children.

15 Smith advocated for the Church of England to appoint a bishop in America, a highly controversial proposal insofar as many Americans feared any ecclesiastical institution that might compel compliance with the force of royal authority. Smith received honorary Doctor of Divinity degrees from University of Oxford and Aberdeen in 1759 and from University College Dublin in 1763. In 1768 he became a member of the American Philosophical Society.

When the American Revolution broke out, Dr. Smith was in a bind. As an Anglican priest, he was viewed as a loyalist, though his sentiments were far more sympathetic towards the patriots than otherwise. Forced to leave Philadelphia, Smith moved to Maryland where he established another school, Washington College.

After the war he returned to Philadelphia where he briefly regained his post at Penn. His final project was the development of land in the western region of the state. Huntingdon, Pennsylvania was founded by Rev. Smith and his sons were the first leaders of its government.

Selina Hastings, Countess of Huntingdon, was a patron of William Smith's and had some unfortunate personal tragedies which motivated her interest in the spread of religion. Incidentally, Smith named his real estate venture Huntingdon in her honor. This was along the Juniata River, in central Pennsylvania. Lady Huntingdon was persuaded that the Church of England needed to return to the path of righteousness. The Wesleys (John Wesley, Charles Wesley) and George Whitefield whom she supported, in addition to Smith’s interests, found it easier to work towards righteousness in the “low” church or what became called Methodism or the "Methodist Movement."

To further show the problems that the colonials had with the Church of England, William Smith, seemed to be right in the middle of things. The May 1, 1760 first free and voluntary Convention of the American (Anglican) Priesthood met at Christ Church, Philadelphia, Dr. Smith presiding. The attendees wanted and needed an American Episcopate (bishop). Smith worked towards that goal.

There was a very practical element here. To obtain more priests for work in the colonies, ordination of priests had to be done by a bishop. The bishop was in England. The trip to and from England in those days was risky. Many prospective priests and those recently ordained didn't survive the trip. Thus, there was a supply problem with priests in the colonies. The Bishop of London had superintendency of the colonies but was not going to do anything that would incur Royal disfavor.

Smith was having trouble getting the Privy Council in England to pay attention to his pleas for the King to approve the consecration of a bishop that would reside in the American colonies. Archbishop of Canterbury Secker also sensed that the time was not yet right. The King was the Head of the Church of

16 England, the same King the Americans revolted against. A modern look back at this period indicates that King George III's “mental” illness of an inherited biochemical etiology (porphyria) was rather unpredictable and caused great havoc in the order of things.

No approval ever came for an American bishop before the Revolution. Afterwards, the American priests turned to the Scottish bishops to consecrate Rev. Samuel Seabury, the first American bishop of the Protestant Episcopal Church. This was always viewed as “almost proper.” Thus, perfection in this matter had to wait until things settled down in the post-Revolutionary era.

With all the political activity by Smith working for an American bishop on both sides of the Atlantic, the question obviously was why didn’t Smith become elevated to that station? The reports handed down were that Rev. Dr. Smith was “too fond of the grape” to be worthy of such consecration.

17 Penn’s Provost, William Smith, was recruited by Ezra Cornell’s role model, Benjamin Franklin:

 Benjamin Franklin (January 17 [O.S. January 6] 1706 – April 17, 1790) was one of the most important and influental Founding Fathers of the United States. He was a leading author, political theorist, politician, printer, scientist, inventor, civic activist, and diplomat. As a scientist he was a major figure in the history of physics for his discoveries and theories regarding electricity. As a political writer and activist he, more than anyone, invented the idea of an American nation, and as a diplomat during the American Revolution, he secured the French Harvard College alliance that helped to make independence possible.

The good Doctor Franklin educated himself, for the most part, and in response to the success of that endeavor, Harvard College granted him an honorary degree.

Franklin was famous for his curiosity, his writings (popular, political and scientific), his inventions, and his diversity of interests. As a leader of the Enlightenment, he gained the recognition of scientists and intellectuals across Europe. An agent in London before the Revolution, and Minister to France during the war, he, more than anyone else, defined the new nation in the minds of Europe. His success in securing French military and financial aid was a great contributor to the American victory over Britain. He invented the lightning rod, bifocals, the iron furnace stove (also known as the Franklin stove), a carriage odometer and a musical instrument known as the armonica. He was an early proponent of colonial unity. Many historians hail him as the "First American."

Born in Boston, Massachusetts, Franklin learned printing from his older brother and became a newspaper editor, printer, and merchant in Philadelphia, becoming very wealthy. In 1718, at the age of 12, Benjamin Franklin began in apprentice service to his half-brother, James, in the printing business and continued until he was twenty-one. In the printing business, he improved in spelling and punctuation. In his autobiography, he accounts that he schooled himself in composition because it was not taught in reading or writing schools at that time. Here he provides another piece of documentation that writing was defined as penmanship. Franklin attributed his improvement in composition to

18 writing down his arguments for friendly debates and his father’s suggestions to style, organization and insightfulness.

Another contributing factor toward improving his compositions proved to be comparing his notes, recreations, and reorganization to models of good writing. His successful approaches to self-instruction in compositions led him to design a school in Philadelphia in 1740 where he advocated that students write legibly, read the “best” writers, model their own writing after the “best” writers, form their own style by writing letters to others, write abstracts and retellings of what they read in their own words. In 1749, Franklin voiced his idea in his Proposals Relating to the Education of Youth where he stressed the importance of using writing as a tool for thinking, increasing comprehension through retelling, and communicating with others. This sounds familiar to what we stress today as goals in writing.

He spent many years in England and published the famous Poor Richard's Almanack and the Pennsylvania Gazette. He formed both the first public lending library and fire department in America as well as the Junto, a political discussion club. During this period he wrote in favor of paper money, against mercantilist policies such as the Iron Act of 1750, and also drafted, in 1754, the Albany Plan of Union, which would have created a continental legislature; demonstrating how early he conceived of the colonies as being naturally one political unit.

Franklin became a national hero in America when he spearheaded the effort to have Parliament repeal the unpopular Stamp Act. An accomplished diplomat, he was widely admired among the French as American minister to Paris and was a major figure in the development of positive Franco-American relations. From 1775 to 1776, Franklin was Postmaster General under the Continental Congress and from 1785 to 1788 was President of the Supreme Executive Council of Pennsylvania. Toward the end of his life, he became one of the most prominent abolitionists.

Franklin was interested in science and technology, carrying out his famous experiments in electricity. He also played a major role in establishing the University of Pennsylvania and Franklin & Marshall College. He was elected the first president of the American Philosophical Society, the oldest learned society in the United States, in 1769. He was fluent in six languages: English, French, Italian, Spanish, Latin, and German. Due to the diversity of his accomplishments, he is generally recognized as a polymath.

Franklin's father, Josiah Franklin, was born at Ecton, Northamptonshire, England on December 23, 1657, the son of Thomas Franklin, a blacksmith and farmer, and Jane White. His mother, Abiah Folger, was born in Nantucket, Massachusetts, on August 15, 1667, to Peter Folger, a miller and schoolteacher and his wife Mary Morrill, a former indentured servant. A descendant of the Folgers, J. A. Folger, founded Folgers Coffee in the 19th century.

19 Ben Franklin's great-great-grandmother was Alice Elmy from Diss on the Suffolk / Norfolk border in England.

Around 1677, Josiah married Anne Child at Ecton, and over the next few years had three children. These half-siblings of Benjamin Franklin included Elizabeth (March 2, 1678), Samuel (May 16, 1681), and Hannah (May 25, 1683).

Sometime during the second half of 1683, the Franklins left England for Boston, Massachusetts. They had several more children in Boston, including Josiah Jr. (August 23, 1685), Ann (January 5, 1687), Joseph (February 5, 1688), and Joseph (June 30, 1689) (the first Joseph died soon after birth).

Josiah's first wife, Anne, died in Boston on July 9, 1689. He was married to Abiah Folger on November 25, 1689 in the Old South Meeting House of Boston by Samuel Willard.

Josiah and Abiah had the following children: John (December 7, 1690), Peter (November 22, 1692), Mary (September 26, 1694), James (February 4, 1697), Sarah (July 9, 1699), Ebenezer (September 20, 1701), Thomas (December 7, 1703), Benjamin (January 17, 1706), Lydia (August 8, 1708), and Jane (March 27, 1712).

Benjamin Franklin was born on Milk Street in Boston on January 17, 1706[3] and baptized at Old South Meeting House. His father, Josiah Franklin, was a tallow chandler, a maker of candles and soap, whose second wife, Abiah Folger, was Benjamin's mother. Josiah's marriages produced 17 children; Benjamin was the fifteenth child and youngest son. Josiah wanted Ben to attend school with the clergy but only had enough money to send him to school for two years. He attended Boston Latin School but did not graduate; he continued his education through voracious reading.

Although "his parents talked of the church as a career" for Franklin, his schooling ended when he was ten. He then worked for his father for a time and at 12 he became an apprentice to his brother James, a printer. When Ben was 15, James created the New England Courant, the first truly independent newspaper in the colonies. When denied the option to write to the paper, Franklin invented the pseudonym of Mrs. Silence Dogood, who was ostensibly a middle-aged widow. The letters were published in the paper and became a subject of conversation around town. Neither James nor the Courant's readers were aware of the ruse, and James was unhappy with Ben when he discovered the popular correspondent was his younger brother. Franklin left his apprenticeship without permission and in so doing became a fugitive.[4]

At age 17, Franklin ran away to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, seeking a new start in a new city. When he first arrived he worked in several printer shops around town. However, he was not satisfied by the immediate prospects. After a

20 few months, while working in a printing house, Franklin was convinced by Pennsylvania Governor Sir William Keith to go to London, ostensibly to acquire the equipment necessary for establishing another newspaper in Philadelphia. Finding Keith's promises of backing a newspaper to be empty, Franklin worked as a compositor in a printer's shop in what is now the Church of St Bartholomew-the-Great in the Smithfield area of London. Following this, he returned to Philadelphia in 1726 with the help of a merchant named Thomas Denham, who gave Franklin a position as clerk, shopkeeper, and bookkeeper in Denham's merchant business.

In 1727, Benjamin Franklin, 21, created the Junto, a group of "like minded aspiring artisans and tradesmen who hoped to improve themselves while they improved their community." The Junto was a discussion group for issues of the day; it subsequently gave rise to many organizations in Philadelphia.

Reading was a great pastime of the Junto, but books were rare and expensive. The members created a library, and initially pooled their own books together. This did not work, however, and Franklin initiated the idea of a subscription library, where the members pooled their monetary resources to buy books. This idea was the birth of the Library Company, with the charter of the Library Company of Philadelphia created in 1731 by Franklin.

Originally, the books were kept in the homes of the first librarians, but in 1739 the collection was moved to the second floor of the State House of Pennsylvania, now known as Independence Hall. In 1791, a new building was built specifically for the library. The Library Company flourished with no competition and gained many priceless collections from bibliophiles such as James Logan and his physician brother William. The Library Company is now a great scholarly and research library with 500,000 rare books, pamphlets, and broadsides, more than 160,000 manuscripts, and 75,000 graphic items.

Upon Denham's death, Franklin returned to his former trade. By 1730, Franklin had set up a printing house of his own and had contrived to become the publisher of a newspaper called The Pennsylvania Gazette. The Gazette gave Franklin a forum for agitation about a variety of local reforms and initiatives through printed essays and observations. Over time, his commentary, together with a great deal of savvy about cultivating a positive image of an industrious and intellectual young man, earned him a great deal of social respect; though even after Franklin had achieved fame as a scientist and statesman, he habitually signed his letters with the unpretentious 'B. Franklin, Printer.'

In 1731, Franklin was initiated into the local Freemason lodge, becoming a grand master in 1734, indicating his rapid rise to prominence in Pennsylvania. That same year, he edited and published the first Masonic book in the Americas, a reprint of James Anderson's Constitutions of the Free-Masons. Franklin remained a Freemason throughout the rest of his life.

21 In 1724, while a boarder in the Read home, Franklin had courted Deborah Read before going to London at Governor Keith's request. At that time, Miss Read's mother was wary of allowing her daughter to wed a seventeen-year old who was on his way to London. Her own husband having recently died, Mrs. Read declined Franklin's offer of marriage.[4]

While Franklin was in London, Deborah married a man named John Rodgers. This proved to be a regrettable decision. Rodgers shortly avoided his debts and prosecution by fleeing to Barbados, leaving Deborah behind. With Rodgers' fate unknown, and bigamy illegal, Deborah was not free to formally remarry.

In 1730, Franklin acknowledged an illegitimate son named William, who would eventually become the last Loyalist governor of New Jersey. While the identity of William's mother remains unknown, perhaps the responsibility of an infant child gave Franklin a reason to take up residence with Deborah Read. William was raised in the Franklin household but eventually broke with his father over the treatment of the colonies at the hands of the crown. However, he was not above using his father's fame to enhance his own standing.

Franklin established a common-law marriage with Deborah Read on September 1, 1730. In addition to raising William, Benjamin and Deborah Franklin had two children together. The first, Francis Folger Franklin, born October 1732, died of smallpox in 1736. Sarah Franklin, nicknamed Sally, was born in 1743. She eventually married Richard Bache, had seven children, and cared for her father in his old age. Deborah's fear of the sea meant that she never accompanied Franklin on any of his extended trips to Europe, despite his repeated requests.

In 1733, Franklin began to publish the famous Poor Richard's Almanack (with content both original and borrowed) under the name Richard Saunders, on which much of his popular reputation is based. Everybody who cared to know, knew it was Benjamin Franklin but it was a different name. So when he published as Poor Richard he could say things that he didn't want to say as Benjamin Franklin. It was as if this "other side" of Benjamin Franklin was just dying to speak his mind. "Poor Richard's Proverbs," adages from this almanac, such as "A penny saved is twopence dear" (often misquoted as "A penny saved is a penny earned"), "Fish and visitors stink in three days" remain common quotations in the modern world. Wisdom in folk society meant the ability to provide an apt adage for any occasion, and Franklin's readers became well prepared. He sold about ten thousand copies per year (a circulation equal to nearly three million today).

In 1758, the year in which he ceased writing for the Almanack, he printed Father Abraham's Sermon. Franklin's autobiography, published after his death, has become one of the classics of the genre.

22 Franklin was a prodigious inventor. Among his many creations were the lightning rod, the glass harmonica, the Franklin stove, bifocal glasses, and the flexible urinary catheter. Franklin never patented his inventions; in his autobiography he wrote, "[A]s we enjoy great advantages from the inventions of others, we should be glad of an opportunity to serve others by any invention of ours; and this we should do freely and generously." His inventions also included social innovations, such as paying forward.

As deputy postmaster, Franklin became interested in the North Atlantic Ocean circulation patterns which carried mail ships. Franklin worked with Timothy Folger, his cousin and experienced Nantucket whaler captain, and other experienced ship captains, learning enough to chart the Gulf Stream, giving it the name by which it's still known today. It took many years for British sea captains to follow Franklin's advice on navigating the current, but once they did, they were able to gain two weeks in sailing time.

In 1743, Franklin founded the American Philosophical Society to help scientific men discuss their discoveries and theories. He began the electrical research that, along with other scientific inquiries, would occupy him for the rest of his life, in between bouts of politics and moneymaking.

In 1748, he retired from printing and went into other businesses. He created a partnership with his foreman, David Hall, which provided Franklin with half of the shop's profits for 18 years. This lucrative business arrangement provided leisure time for study, and in a few years he had made discoveries that gave him a reputation with the educated throughout Europe and especially in France.

His discoveries included his investigations of electricity. Franklin proposed that "vitreous" and "resinous" electricity were not different types of "electrical fluid" (as electricity was called then), but the same electrical fluid under different pressures. He was the first to label them as positive and negative respectively, and he was the first to discover the principle of conservation of charge. In 1750, he published a proposal for an experiment to prove that lightning is electricity by flying a kite in a storm that appeared capable of becoming a lightning storm. On May 10, 1752, Thomas-François Dalibard of France conducted Franklin's experiment (using a 40-foot-tall iron rod instead of a kite) and extracted electrical sparks from a cloud.

On June 15, Franklin may have possibly conducted his famous kite experiment in Philadelphia and also successfully extracted sparks from a cloud, although there are theories that suggest he never performed the experiment. Franklin's experiment was not written up until Joseph Priestley's 1767 History and Present Status of Electricity; the evidence shows that Franklin was insulated (not in a conducting path, since he would have been in danger of electrocution in the event of a lightning strike). (Others, such as Prof. Georg Wilhelm Richmann

23 of Saint Petersburg, Russia, were electrocuted during the months following Franklin's experiment.) In his writings, Franklin indicates that he was aware of the dangers and offered alternative ways to demonstrate that lightning was electrical, as shown by his use of the concept of electrical ground. If Franklin did perform this experiment, he did not do it in the way that is often described, flying the kite and waiting to be struck by lightning, as it would have been fatal.[14] Instead, he used the kite to collect some electric charge from a storm cloud, which implied that lightning was electrical.

On October 19 in a letter to England explaining directions for repeating the experiment, Franklin wrote:

"When rain has wet the kite twine so that it can conduct the electric fire freely, you will find it streams out plentifully from the key at the approach of your knuckle, and with this key a phial, or Leiden jar, maybe charged: and from electric fire thus obtained spirits may be kindled, and all other electric experiments [may be] performed which are usually done by the help of a rubber glass globe or tube; and therefore the sameness of the electrical matter with that of lightening completely demonstrated."

Franklin's electrical experiments led to his invention of the lightning rod. He noted that conductors with a sharp rather than a smooth point were capable of discharging silently, and at a far greater distance. He surmised that this knowledge could be of use in protecting buildings from lightning, by attaching

"upright Rods of Iron, made sharp as a Needle and gilt to prevent Rusting, and from the Foot of those Rods a Wire down the outside of the Building into the Ground;...Would not these pointed Rods probably draw the Electrical Fire silently out of a Cloud before it came nigh enough to strike, and thereby secure us from that most sudden and terrible Mischief!"

Following a series of experiments on Franklin's own house, lightning rods were installed on the Academy of Philadelphia (later the University of Pennsylvania) and the Pennsylvania State House (later Independence Hall) in 1752.

In recognition of his work with electricity, Franklin received the Royal Society's Copley Medal in 1753, and in 1756 he became one of the few eighteenth century Americans to be elected as a Fellow of the Society. The cgs unit of electric charge has been named after him: one franklin (Fr) is equal to one statcoulomb.

On October 21, 1743, according to popular myth, a storm moving from the southwest denied Franklin the opportunity of witnessing a lunar eclipse. Franklin was said to have noted that the prevailing winds were actually from the

24 northeast, contrary to what he had expected. In correspondence with his brother, Franklin learned that the same storm had not reached Boston until after the eclipse, despite the fact that Boston is to the northeast of Philadelphia. He deduced that storms do not always travel in the direction of the prevailing wind, a concept which would have great influence in meteorology.

Franklin noted a principle of refrigeration by observing that on a very hot day, he stayed cooler in a wet shirt in a breeze than he did in a dry one. To understand this phenomenon more clearly Franklin conducted experiments. On one warm day in Cambridge, England, in 1758, Franklin and fellow scientist John Hadley experimented by continually wetting the ball of a mercury thermometer with ether and using bellows to evaporate the ether. With each subsequent evaporation, the thermometer read a lower temperature, eventually reaching 7 °F (-14 °C). Another thermometer showed the room temperature to be constant at 65 °F (18 °C). In his letter "Cooling by Evaporation," Franklin noted that “one may see the possibility of freezing a man to death on a warm summer’s day."

Franklin is known to have played the violin, the harp, and the guitar. He also composed music, notably a string quartet in early classical style, and invented a much-improved version of the glass harmonica, in which each glass was made to rotate on its own, with the player's fingers held steady, instead of the other way around; this version soon found its way to Europe.

In 1736, Franklin created the Union Fire Company, the first volunteer fire fighting company in America. In the same year, he printed a new currency for New Jersey based on innovative anti-counterfeiting techniques which he had devised.

As he matured, Franklin began to concern himself more with public affairs. In 1743, he set forth a scheme for The Academy and College of Philadelphia. He was appointed president of the academy in November 13, 1749, and it opened on August 13, 1751. At its first commencement, on May 17, 1757, seven men graduated; six with a Bachelor of Arts and one as Master of Arts. It was later merged with the University of the State of Pennsylvania to become the University of Pennsylvania.

In 1753, both Harvard and Yale awarded him honorary degrees.

In 1751, Franklin and Dr. Thomas Bond obtained a charter from the Pennsylvania legislature to establish a hospital. Pennsylvania Hospital was the first hospital in what was to become the United States of America.

Franklin became involved in Philadelphia politics and rapidly progressed. In October 1748, he was selected as a councilman, in June 1749 he became a Justice of the Peace for Philadelphia, and in 1751 he was elected to the Pennsylvania Assembly. On August 10, 1753, Franklin was appointed joint

25 deputy postmaster-general of North America. His most notable service in domestic politics was his reform of the postal system, but his fame as a statesman rests chiefly on his subsequent diplomatic services in connection with the relations of the colonies with Great Britain, and later with France.

In 1754, he headed the Pennsylvania delegation to the Albany Congress. This meeting of several colonies had been requested by the Board of Trade in England to improve relations with the Indians and defense against the French. Franklin proposed a broad Plan of Union for the colonies. While the plan was not adopted, elements of it found their way into the Articles of Confederation and the Constitution.

In 1757, he was sent to England by the Pennsylvania Assembly as a colonial agent to protest against the political influence of the Penn family, the proprietors of the colony. He remained there for five years, striving to end the proprietors' prerogative to overturn legislation from the elected Assembly, and their exemption from paying taxes on their land. His lack of influential allies in Whitehall led to the failure of this mission. In 1759, the University of St Andrews awarded him an Honorary Doctor of Laws degree. In 1762, Oxford University awarded Franklin an honorary doctorate for his scientific accomplishments and from then on he went by "Doctor Franklin." He also managed to secure a post for his illegitimate son, William Franklin, as Colonial Governor of New Jersey.

During his stay in London, Franklin became involved in radical politics. He was a member of the Club of Honest Whigs, alongside thinkers such as Richard Price.

In 1756, Franklin became a member of the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures & Commerce (now Royal Society of Arts or RSA, which had been founded in 1754), whose early meetings took place in coffee shops in London's Covent Garden district, close to Franklin's main residence in Craven Street (the only one of his residences to survive and which opened to the public as the Benjamin Franklin House museum on January 17, 2006). After his return to America, Franklin became the Society's Corresponding Member and remained closely connected with the Society. The RSA instituted a Benjamin Franklin Medal in 1956 to commemorate the 250th anniversary of Franklin's birth and the 200th anniversary of his membership of the RSA.

During his stays at Craven Street in London between 1757 and 1775, Franklin developed a close friendship with his landlady, Margaret Stevenson and her circle of friends and relations, in particular her daughter Mary, who was more often known as Polly.

In 1759, he visited Edinburgh with his son, and recalled his conversations there as "the densest happiness of my life."

26 He also joined the influential Birmingham based Lunar Society with whom he regularly corresponded and on occasion, visited in Birmingham in the West Midlands.

In 1763, soon after Franklin returned to Pennsylvania, the western frontier was engulfed in a bitter war known as Pontiac's Rebellion. The Paxton Boys, a group of settlers convinced that the Pennsylvania government was not doing enough to protect them from American Indian raids, murdered a group of peaceful Susquehannock Indians and then marched on Philadelphia. Franklin helped to organize the local militia in order to defend the capital against the mob, and then met with the Paxton leaders and persuaded them to disperse. Franklin wrote a scathing attack against the racial prejudice of the Paxton Boys. "If an Indian injures me," he asked, "does it follow that I may revenge that Injury on all Indians?"

Many of the Paxton Boys' supporters were Scotch-Irish Presbyterians and German Reformed or Lutherans from rural western Pennsylvania, leading to claims that Franklin was biased in favor of the urban Quaker elite of the East. Because of these accusations, and other attacks on his character, Franklin lost his seat in the 1764 Assembly elections. This defeat, however, allowed him the opportunity to return to London, where he sealed his reputation as a pro- American radical.

In 1764, Franklin was dispatched to England as an agent for the colony, this time to petition King George III to establish central British control of Pennsylvania, away from its hereditary "proprietors." During this visit he also became colonial agent for Georgia, New Jersey and Massachusetts. In London, he actively opposed the proposed Stamp Act, despite accusations by opponents in America that he had been complicit in its creation. His principled opposition to the Stamp Act, and later to the Townshend Acts of 1767, led to the end of his dream of a career in the British Government and his alliance with proponents of colonial independence. It also led to an irreconcilable break with his son William, who remained loyal to the British.

In September 1767, Franklin visited Paris with his usual traveling partner, Sir John Pringle. News of his electrical discoveries was widespread in France. His reputation meant that he was introduced to many influential scientists and politicians, and also to King Louis XV.

While living in London in 1768, he developed a phonetic alphabet in A Scheme for a new Alphabet and a Reformed Mode of Spelling. This reformed alphabet discarded six letters Franklin regarded as redundant (c, j, q, w, x and y), and substituted six new letters for sounds he felt lacked letters of their own. His new alphabet, however, never caught on and he eventually lost interest.

27 In 1771, Franklin traveled extensively around the British Isles staying with, among others, Joseph Priestley and David Hume. In Dublin, Franklin was invited to sit with the members of the Irish Parliament rather than in the gallery. He was the first American to be given this honor. While touring Ireland, he was moved by the level of poverty he saw. Ireland's economy was affected by the same trade regulations and laws of England which governed America. Franklin feared that America could suffer the same affects should Britain’s colonial exploitation continue.

In 1773, Franklin published two of his most celebrated pro-American satirical essays: Rules by Which a Great Empire May Be Reduced to a Small One, and An Edict by the King of Prussia. He also published an Abridgment of the Book of Common Prayer, anonymously with Francis Dashwood. Among the unusual features of this work is a funeral service reduced to six minutes in length, "to preserve the health and lives of the living."

Franklin obtained private letters of Massachusetts governor Thomas Hutchinson and lieutenant governor Andrew Oliver which proved they were encouraging London to crack down on the rights of the Bostonians. Franklin sent them to America where they escalated the tensions. Franklin now appeared to the British as the fomenter of serious trouble. Hopes for a peaceful solution ended as he was systematically ridiculed and humiliated by the Privy Council. He left London in March 1775.

By the time Franklin arrived in Philadelphia on May 5, the American Revolution had begun with fighting at Lexington and Concord. The New England militia had trapped the main British army in Boston. The Pennsylvania Assembly unanimously chose Franklin as their delegate to the Second Continental Congress. In 1776, he was a member of the Committee of Five that drafted the Declaration of Independence and made several small changes to Thomas Jefferson's draft.

At the signing, he is quoted as having replied to a comment by Hancock that they must all hang together: "Yes, we must, indeed, all hang together, or most assuredly we shall all hang separately."

In December 1776, Franklin was dispatched to France as commissioner for the United States. He lived in a home in the Parisian suburb of Passy, donated by Jacques-Donatien Le Ray de Chaumont who supported the United States. Franklin remained in France until 1785, and was such a favorite of French society that it became fashionable for wealthy French families to decorate their parlors with a painting of him. He was highly flirtatious in the French manner (but did not have any actual affairs). He conducted the affairs of his country towards the French nation with great success, which included securing a critical military alliance in 1778 and negotiating the Treaty of Paris (1783). During his

28 stay in France, Benjamin Franklin as a freemason was Grand Master of the Lodge Les Neuf Sœurs from 1779 until 1781.

When he finally returned home in 1785, Franklin occupied a position only second to that of George Washington as the champion of American independence. Le Ray honored him with a commissioned portrait painted by Joseph Duplessis that now hangs in the National Portrait Gallery of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. After his return, Franklin became an abolitionist, freeing both of his slaves. He eventually became president of Pennsylvania Abolition Society.

In 1787, Franklin served as a delegate to the Philadelphia Convention. He held an honorific position and seldom engaged in debate. He is the only Founding Father who is a signatory of all four of the major documents of the founding of the United States: the Declaration of Independence, the Treaty of Paris, the Treaty of Alliance with France, and the United States Constitution.

In 1787, a group of prominent ministers in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, proposed the foundation of a new college to be named in Franklin's honor. Franklin donated £200 towards the development of Franklin College, which is now called Franklin & Marshall College.

Between 1771 and 1788, he finished his autobiography. While it was at first addressed to his son, it was later completed for the benefit of mankind at the request of a friend.

In his later years, as Congress was forced to deal with the issue of slavery, Franklin wrote several essays that attempted to convince his readers of the importance of the abolition of slavery and of the integration of Africans into American society. These writings included:

 An Address to the Public, (1789)  A Plan for Improving the Condition of the Free Blacks (1789), and  Sidi Mehemet Ibrahim on the Slave Trade (1790).

In 1790, Quakers from New York and Pennsylvania presented their petition for abolition. Their argument against slavery was backed by the Pennsylvania Abolitionist Society and its president, Benjamin Franklin.

Special balloting conducted 18 November 1785 unanimously elected Franklin the sixth President of the Supreme Executive Council of Pennsylvania, replacing John Dickinson. The office of President of Pennsylvania was analogous to the modern position of Governor. It is not clear why Dickinson needed to be replaced with less than two weeks remaining before the regular election. Franklin held that office for slightly over three years, longer than any other, and served the Constitutional limit of three full terms. Shortly after his initial election he was re-

29 elected to a full term on 29 October 1785, and again in the fall of 1786 and on 31 October 1787. Officially, his term concluded on 5 November 1788, but there is some question regarding the de facto end of his term, suggesting that the aging Franklin may not have been actively involved in the day-to-day operation of the Council toward the end of his time in office.

Like the other advocates of republicanism, Franklin emphasized that the new republic could survive only if the people were virtuous in the sense of attention to civic duty and rejection of corruption. All his life he had been exploring the role of civic and personal virtue, as expressed in Poor Richard's aphorisms.

Although Franklin's parents had intended for him to have a career in the church, Franklin became disillusioned with organized religion after discovering Deism. "I soon became a thorough Deist." He went on to attack Christian principles of free will and morality in a 1725 pamphlet, A Dissertation on Liberty and Necessity, Pleasure and Pain. He consistently attacked religious dogma, arguing that morality was more dependent upon virtue and benevolent actions than on strict obedience to religious orthodoxy: "I think opinions should be judged by their influences and effects; and if a man holds none that tend to make him less virtuous or more vicious, it may be concluded that he holds none that are dangerous, which I hope is the case with me."

A few years later, Franklin repudiated his 1725 pamphlet as an embarrassing "erratum." In 1790, just about a month before he died, Franklin wrote the following in a letter to Ezra Stiles, president of Yale, who had asked him his views on religion:

“As to Jesus of Nazareth, my Opinion of whom you particularly desire, I think the System of Morals and his Religion, as he left them to us, the best the world ever saw or is likely to see; but I apprehend it has received various corrupt changes, and I have, with most of the present Dissenters in England, some Doubts as to his divinity; tho' it is a question I do not dogmatize upon, having never studied it, and I think it needless to busy myself with it now, when I expect soon an Opportunity of knowing the Truth with less Trouble . . . ”

Like most Enlightenment intellectuals, Franklin separated virtue, morality, and faith from organized religion, although he felt that if religion in general grew weaker, morality, virtue, and society in general would also decline. Thus he wrote Thomas Paine, "If men are so wicked with religion, what would they be if without it." According to David Morgan, Franklin was a proponent of all religions. He prayed to "Powerful Goodness" and referred to God as the "INFINITE." John Adams noted that Franklin was a mirror in which people saw their own religion: "The Catholics thought him almost a Catholic. The Church of England claimed

30 him as one of them. The Presbyterians thought him half a Presbyterian, and the Friends believed him a wet Quaker." Whatever else Benjamin Franklin was, concludes Morgan, "he was a true champion of generic religion." Ben Franklin was noted to be "the spirit of the Enlightenment."

Walter Isaacson argues that Franklin became uncomfortable with an unenhanced version of deism and came up with his own conception of the Creator. Franklin outlined his concept of deity in 1728, in his Articles of Belief and Acts of Religion. From this, Isaacson compares Franklin's conception of deity to that of strict deists and orthodox Christians. He concludes that unlike most pure deists, Franklin believed that a faith in God should inform our daily actions, but that, like other deists, his faith was devoid of sectarian dogma. Isaacson also discusses Franklin's conception that God had created beings who do interfere in wordly matters, a point that has led some commentators, most notably A. Owen Aldridge, to read Franklin as embracing some sort of polytheism, with a bevy of lesser gods overseeing various realms and planets.

On July 4, 1776, Congress appointed a committee that included Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and John Adams to design the Great Seal of the United States. Each member of the committee proposed a unique design: Franklin's proposal featured a design with the motto: "Rebellion to Tyrants is Obedience to God." This design was to portray a scene from the Book of Exodus, complete with Moses, the Israelites, the pillar of fire, and George III depicted as Pharaoh.

At the Constitutional Convention in 1787, when the convention seemed headed for disaster due to a vitoral debate, the elderly Franklin displayed his conviction that was intimately involved in human affairs by requesting that each day's session begin with prayers. Franklin recalled the days of the Revolutionary War, when the American leaders assembled in prayer daily, seeking "divine guidance" from the "Father of lights." He then rhetorically asked, "And have we now forgotten that powerful friend? Or do we imagine that we no longer need his assistance?"

Although Franklin may have financially supported one particular Presbyterian group in Philadelphia, it nevertheless appears that he never formally joined any particular Christian denomination or any other religion.

According to the epitaph Franklin wrote for himself at the age of 20, it is clear that he believed in a physical resurrection of the body some time after death. Whether this belief was held throughout his life is unclear.

Franklin consumed a mostly vegetarian diet, and he had a number of reasons for doing so. He opposed the practice of using animals as a food source, and he believed that a diet consisting of all vegetables was healthier than a diet of meat. Franklin also wanted to save money for the purchase of books, and

31 vegetables were cheaper than meat during the 1700s. However, Franklin occasionally ate meat or fish products and was not a perfect vegetarian.

Franklin sought to cultivate his character by a plan of thirteen virtues, which he developed at age 20 (in 1726) and continued to practice in some form for the rest of his life. His autobiography lists his thirteen virtues as:

1. "TEMPERANCE. Eat not to dullness; drink not to elevation." 2. "SILENCE. Speak not but what may benefit others or yourself; avoid trifling conversation." 3. "ORDER. Let all your things have their places; let each part of your business have its time." 4. "RESOLUTION. Resolve to perform what you ought; perform without fail what you resolve." 5. "FRUGALITY. Make no expense but to do good to others or yourself; i.e., waste nothing." 6. "INDUSTRY. Lose no time; be always employ'd in something useful; cut off all unnecessary actions." 7. "SINCERITY. Use no hurtful deceit; think innocently and justly, and, if you speak, speak accordingly." 8. "JUSTICE. Wrong none by doing injuries, or omitting the benefits that are your duty." 9. "MODERATION. Avoid extremes; forbear resenting injuries so much as you think they deserve." 10. "CLEANLINESS. Tolerate no uncleanliness in body, cloaths, or habitation." 11. "TRANQUILLITY. Be not disturbed at trifles, or at accidents common or unavoidable." 12. "CHASTITY. Rarely use venery but for health or offspring, never to dullness, weakness, or the injury of your own or another's peace or reputation." 13. "HUMILITY. Imitate Jesus and Socrates."

Franklin died on April 17, 1790, at age 84. His funeral was attended by approximately 20,000 people. He was interred in Christ Church Burial Ground in Philadelphia. In 1728, as a young man, Franklin wrote what he hoped would be his own epitaph:

"The Body of B. Franklin Printer; Like the Cover of an old Book, Its Contents torn out, And stript of its Lettering and Gilding, Lies here, Food for Worms. But the Work shall not be wholly lost: For it will, as

32 he believ'd, appear once more, In a new & more perfect Edition, Corrected and Amended By the Author. He was born on January 17, 1706. Died 17."

In 1773, when Franklin's work had moved from printing to science and politics, he corresponded with a French scientist on the subject of preserving the dead for later revival by more advanced scientific methods, writing:

"I should prefer to an ordinary death, being immersed with a few friends in a cask of Madeira, until that time, then to be recalled to life by the solar warmth of my dear country! But in all probability, we live in a century too little advanced, and too near the infancy of science, to see such an art brought in our time to its perfection." (Extended excerpt also online.)

Franklin's actual grave, however, as he specified in his final will, simply reads "Benjamin and Deborah Franklin."

His death is described in the book The Life of Benjamin Franklin:

"...when his pain and difficulty of breathing entirely left him, and his family were flattering themselves with the hopes of his recovery, when an imposthumations, which had formed itself in his lungs, suddenly burst, and discharged a great quantity of matter, which he continued to throw up while he had strength to do it; but, as that failed, the organ of inspiration became gradually oppressed; a calm lethargic state succeeded, and on the 17th of April, 1790, at eleven o'clock at night, he quietly expired, closing a long and useful life of eighty-four years and three months."

Franklin bequeathed £1,000 (about $4,400 at the time) each to the cities of Boston and Philadelphia, in trust to gather interest for 200 years. The trust began in 1785 when a French mathematician named Charles-Joseph Mathon de la Cour wrote a parody of Franklin's "Poor Richard's Almanack" called "Fortunate Richard." Mocking the unbearable spirit of American optimism represented by Franklin, the Frenchman wrote that Fortunate Richard left a small sum of money in his will to be used only after it had collected interest for 500 years. Franklin, who was 79 years old at the time, wrote to the Frenchman, thanking him for a great idea and telling him that he had decided to leave a bequest of 1,000 pounds each to his native Boston and his adopted Philadelphia.

As of 1990, more than $2,000,000 had accumulated in Franklin's Philadelphia trust, which had loaned the money to local residents. From 1940 to 1990, the money was used mostly for mortgage loans. When the trust came due, Philadelphia decided to spend it on scholarships for local high school students. Franklin's Boston trust fund accumulated almost $5,000,000 during that same

33 time, and was used to establish a trade school that became the Franklin Institute of Boston.

Franklin's likeness is ubiquitous. Since 1928, it has adorned American $100 bills, which are sometimes referred to in slang as "Benjamins" or "Franklins." From 1948 to 1964, Franklin's portrait was on the half dollar. He has appeared on a $50 bill and on several varieties of the $100 bill from 1914 and 1918. Franklin appears on the $1,000 Series EE Savings bond. The city of Philadelphia contains around 5,000 likenesses of Benjamin Franklin, about half of which are located on the University of Pennsylvania campus. Philadelphia's Benjamin Franklin Parkway (a major thoroughfare) and Benjamin Franklin Bridge (the first major bridge to connect Philadelphia with New Jersey) are named in his honor.

In 1976, as part of a bicentennial celebration, Congress dedicated a 20- foot (6 m) marble statue in Philadelphia's Franklin Institute as the Benjamin Franklin National Memorial. Many of Franklin's personal possessions are also on display at the Institute, one of the few national memorials located on private property.

In London, his house at 36 Craven Street was first marked with a blue plaque and has since been opened to the public as the Benjamin Franklin House. In 1998, workmen restoring the building dug up the remains of six children and four adults hidden below the home.

The Times reported on February 11, 1998:

Initial estimates are that the bones are about 200 years old and were buried at the time Franklin was living in the house, which was his home from 1757 to 1762 and from 1764 to 1775. Most of the bones show signs of having been dissected, sawn or cut. One skull has been drilled with several holes. Paul Knapman, the Westminster Coroner, said yesterday: "I cannot totally discount the possibility of a crime. There is still a possibility that I may have to hold an inquest."

The Friends of Benjamin Franklin House (the organization responsible for the restoration) note that the bones were likely placed there by William Hewson, who lived in the house for two years and who had built a small anatomy school at the back of the house. They note that while Franklin likely knew what Hewson was doing, he probably did not participate in any dissections because he was much more of a physicist than a medical man.

34 One of Benjamin Franklin confidantes and supporters while on the French mission was Jacques-Donatien Le Ray:

 Jacques-Donatien Le Ray (1726 – 1803) was a French "Father of the American Revolution", but later an opponent of the French Revolution. His son of the same name, known also in America as James Le Ray, eventually became a United States citizen and settled in the New York – New Jersey area. Born in the port city of Nantes in the Loire-Atlantique département of France in 1726, Jacques-Donatien Le Ray became one of the wealthiest and most powerful aristocrats in all of France. He made a fortune in shipping and, in 1750, he acquired the Chateau Chaumont as a country home where he established a glassmaking and Arms of Nantes, France earthenware factory.

In 1772, Le Ray signed a contract with the renowned Italian sculptor Jean- Baptiste Nini to oversee his factories and set up the production of portrait medallions: a sculpture in miniature done in terracotta usually for the very wealthy and European Royalty.

Jacques-Donatien Le Ray served King Louis XVI at the Court at Versailles as the Governor of Les Invalides in Paris and the Grand Master of Waters and Lands of Blois. Following the Declaration of Independence from Great Britain, by the American colonies on July 4, 1776, emissaries were dispatched to France by the new United States revolutionary government to seek assistance from the French king. Although anxious to see Great Britain weakened, Louis XVI had to walk a political tightrope. He understood that support for the rebellion in America was a contradiction of France's global colonization policies and could spark a revolt in any number of France's own colonies. As such, the American delegation could not be officially recognized at the French Court.

Sympathetic to the American cause for independence, Jacques Donatien Le Ray used his powerful position to act as intermediary between the King and the American representatives. But, Le Ray did much more than broker talks and exert influence. In addition to swaying the King and the powerful administrators of the French government, Le Ray provided, free of charge, a fully staffed mansion for the Americans in the upper class Parisian suburb of Passy.

35 In December of 1776, Benjamin Franklin was sent to Paris with the primary goal of obtaining French aid for the United States. He quickly developed a close relationship with Le Ray and his family and lived at Le Ray's estate in Passy for several years. On a number of occasions, Franklin spent time at Le Ray's luxurious castle in Chaumont in the Loire Valley. As a result of their friendship, Jacques-Donatien Le Ray obtained King Louis XVI's support for the American cause with both money and French armed forces.

Along with Benjamin Franklin, Jacques-Donatien Le Ray worked with John Adams, Silas Deane, the Marquis de Lafayette and the Comte de Vergennes to help with the American Revolution. For an aristocrat in that day and age, what Le Ray did for ordinary Americans was astonishing. At heart, he believed in the equality of all men and backed up his beliefs by providing massive amounts of his own money to purchase weapons, supplies and clothing for the fledgling American armed forces. Le Ray was asked by the American government to take charge of the equipment and management of the combined French and American naval fleet. Working closely with Admiral Charles-Hector Estaing, the Commander of the French Fleet, Le Ray's support for the American cause involved having his shipyards refit a merchant vessel into a warship that he then gifted to America under the name USS Bonhomme Richard for use by Captain John Paul Jones.

When the War ended with the treaty of 1783 signed in Paris, Jacques- Donatien Le Ray had a portrait medallion made of Benjamin Franklin by Jean- Baptiste Nini. Today, it is Franklin's most recognized profile. And, when Franklin was recalled to America in 1785, Le Ray honored him with a commissioned portrait painted by Joseph Siffred Duplessis that now hangs in the National Portrait Gallery of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC.

Jacques-Donatien Le Ray's son of the same name (1760-1840) went to America in 1785. There, he acquired a property in Otsego county, New York where he built the first saw-mill. Known in America as James, the English translation for Jacques, Le Ray Jr. also made large land purchases in the State and, in 1790, he married a girl from New Jersey and became an American citizen. The towns of Le Ray, New York and Chaumont, New York are named after him.

In the end, the political ideals that Jacques-Donatien Le Ray cherished came back to haunt him. The huge financial support he had elicited from King Louis XVI for the American Revolutionary War led to massive debts that would bankrupt the government of France. When a drought caused a deep famine in 1788, there was no money available from the French Treasury, as had been done in the past, to subsidize the cost of flour for bread to prevent mass starvation. As a result of France's generosity and Jacques-Donatien Le Ray's love of America, he inadvertently helped pave the way for the French Revolution, in 1789, that dramatically impacted on his own finances, resulting in the new

36 French Revolutionary government seizing his assets including his beloved Chateau at Chaumont-sur-Loire.

Le Ray’s family was from from Nantes in the Province of Brittany, on the Atlantic Coast. 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.

37 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

38 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 hire 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

39 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 sight 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

40 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.

41 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.

Regarding the influence of the Bonaparties, 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

42 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.

43 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.

44 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

45 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.

So 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

46 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.

47 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.

48 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.

This brings us to the North Country’s tradition of John 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.

49 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.

50 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.

In total, James LeRay de Chaumont purchased over 600,000 acres in northern New York in the late eighteenth century. His father, Jacques Donatien LeRay de Chaumont was a friend of Benjamin Franklin and key financial and political supporter of the American Revolution. It was LeRay's plan to subdivide and sell the land to new immigrants with the hope of rebuilding his family's fortune. The original house was destroyed by fire, and the current mansion was built from 1826-1827.

The LeRay property was designed as a combination of a formal estate with a model farm. The estate portion featured the Mansion, formal French gardens and park, household servants quarters, a chapel, and a land office. The model farm included quarters for the farm manager and a series of farm buildings including a substantial barn. Five of the original structures remain standing in the

51 Mansion district including the Mansion, servant's quarters, farm manager's house, land office, and possible ice house.

Archeological properties include foundation remains of at least five additional structures, remains of formal landscape features including laid stone walls for the brook and pond, an original wooden water pipe system, and the LeRay's wine bottle dump. James LeRay's grand-daughter, Sigit is buried near the formal pond. Daughter of Therese de Gouvello, the baby died at the age of fifteen months on the estate.

The Mansion, servant's quarters, and farm manager's house are used for Visiting Officer's Quarters and are managed by the Directorate of Community Activities (DCA). The Mansion is also used by protocol for formal military events and celebrations. DCA has provided the Mansion with period appropriate furnishings. DCA and Cultural Resources work together for the preservation and appreciation of Fort Drum's most valued historic resource.

52 Conclusion of the Nantes intellectual line

So what is the lesson of the Nantes line’s intellectual legacy within New York Alpha?

The Nantes intellectual line give us, simultaneously, ties to the birth of the American bar for lawyers and the tradition of American engineering as represented by Ezra Cornell’s mentor, Samuel F.B. Morse and Benjamin Franklin. Also within the line is Washington Irving’s great friend, William Allston, and the ties to the visual arts he provides. The Nantes line also reminds us of Andrew Dickson White’s charge to John Andrew Rea to found a Cornell student organization to extol the virtues of New York State’s native arts, letters and culture. The line ends with the Le Ray family, both supports of Benjamin Franklin and Bourbon pioneers of Upstate New York.

The Nantes intellectual line is part of New York Alpha’s local Chapter lore, first recorded by brother Cadwalader E. Linthicum (1885)(1889) and preserved by Walter Sheppard (’29)(’32) and Fred E. Hartzch (’28)(’31).

“To know the lore, is to tend the Tree.”

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