J. Hector St. John de Crèvecœur


Michel Guillaume Jean de Crèvecœur, naturalized in New York as John Hector St. John, was a French-American writer. He was born in Caen, Normandy, France, to the Comte and Comtesse de Crèvecœur.

Biography

He was born December 31, 1735, to a family of minor nobility in Normandy. In 1755 he migrated to New France in North America. There, he served in the French and Indian War as a cartographer in the French Colonial Militia, rising to the rank of lieutenant. Following the British defeat of the French Army in 1759, he moved to the Province of New York, where he took out citizenship, adopted the English-American name of John Hector St. John, and in 1770 married an American woman, Mehitable Tippet, the daughter of a New York merchant. He bought a sizable farm in Orange County, New York, called "Pine Hill", where he prospered as a farmer. He also traveled about working as a surveyor. He started writing about life in the American colonies and the emergence of an American society.
In 1779, during the American Revolution, St. John tried to leave the country to return to France because of the faltering health of his father. Accompanied by his son, he crossed British-American lines to enter British-occupied New York City, where he was imprisoned as an American spy for three months without a hearing. Eventually, he was able to sail for Britain, and was shipwrecked off the coast of Ireland. From Britain, he sailed to France, where he was briefly reunited with his father. After spending some time recuperating at the family estate, he visited Paris and the salon of Sophie d'Houdetot.

Author

In 1782, in London, he published a volume of narrative essays entitled the Letters from an American Farmer. The book quickly became the first literary success by an American author in Europe and turned Crèvecœur into a celebrated figure. He was the first writer to describe to Europeans – employing many American English terms – the life on the American frontier and to explore the concept of the American Dream, portraying American society as characterized by the principles of equal opportunity and self-determination. His work provided useful information and understanding of the "New World" that helped to create an American identity in the minds of Europeans by describing an entire country rather than another regional colony. The writing celebrated American ingenuity and the uncomplicated lifestyle. It described the acceptance of religious diversity in a society being created from a variety of ethnic and cultural backgrounds. His application of the Latin maxim "Ubi panis ibi patria" to early American settlers also shows an interesting insight. He once praised the middle colonies for "fair cities, substantial villages, extensive fields...decent houses, good roads, orchards, meadows, and bridges, where an hundred years ago all was wild, woody, and uncultivated."
The original edition, published near the end of the American Revolutionary War, was rather selective in the letters that were included, omitting ones that were negative or critical. Norman A. Plotkin argues "it was intended to serve the English Whig cause by fostering an atmosphere conducive to reconciliation." The book excluded all but one of the letters written after the beginning of the war and also earlier ones that were more critical. Crèvecœur himself sympathized with the Whig cause. His wife's family remained loyal to the Crown and later fled to Nova Scotia. With regard to French politics, Crèvecœur was a liberal, a follower of the philosophes, and dedicated his book to Abbé Raynal, who he said "viewed these provinces of North America in their true light, as the asylum of freedom; as the cradle of future nations, and the refuge of distressed Europeans." Plotkin notes that "extremists in the American colonies who violated this principle, incurred Crèvecœur's harshest criticism, although the severest of these criticisms were considered unsuitable for publication at the time."
In 1883 his great grandson, Robert de Crèvecoeur, published a biography for which he used previously unpublished letters and manuscripts passed down by the family. Although it received little notice in France, its existence came to the attention of W. P. Trent of Columbia University, who in 1904 published a reprint of Letters of an American Farmer. In 1916, Crèvecœur's first American biographer, Julia Post Mitchell, who had access to all the manuscripts, was able to make a more balanced assessment, writing that Crèvecoeur addressed "problems in political economy which European governements were trying in vain to solve." He was "...illustrating his theories from American conditions," and was not just "...a garruluous apologist of American life." The additional manuscripts were published in 1925.

Diplomat

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

St. Peter's, New York

At that time, New York City was the national capital and most of the resident Catholics were connected to the diplomatic corps. Initially they met for services at the home of the Spanish consul. Their numbers increased with seafaring people, merchants, emigrants from the Spanish West Indies, and a few Acadians. They then rented space at Vauxhall Gardens, a garden and entertainment venue located along the North River on Greenwich Street between Warren and Chambers Streets. In 1785 Portuguese consul Jose Roiz Silva, Spanish consul Tomas Stoughton and others sought to rent the vacant Exchange building and deemed Crevecoeur the best one to make the approach.
Although Crevecoeur was relatively indifferent to religion, he was sympathetic to the idea of liberty of conscience, and a friend of Lafayette. When the proposal was rejected, Crevecoeur was insulted and became very active in working for the establishment of the first Catholic church in the city. He later served as president of the first Board of Trustees of St. Peter's Church on Barclay Street.

Later life

In 1784, he published a two-volume version of his Letters from an American Farmer, enlarged and completely rewritten in French. A three-volume version followed in 1787. Both his English and his French books were translated into several other European languages and widely disseminated throughout Europe. For many years, Crèvecœur was identified by European readers with his fictional narrator, James, the 'American farmer', and held in high esteem by readers and fellow-writers across Europe.
By the time he published another three-volume work in 1801, entitled Voyage dans la Haute-Pensylvanie et dans l'état de New-York, however, his fame had faded and the damages of the French Revolution and its aftermath had made people less interested in the United States. His book was ignored. An abbreviated German translation appeared the following year. An English translation was not published until 1964. Much of de Crevecoeur's best work has been published posthumously, most recently as More Letters from the American Farmer: An edition of the Essays in English Left Unpublished by Crèvecœur, edited by Dennis D. Moore.
Particularly concerned about the condition of slaves, he joined the Société des Amis des Noirs, founded in Paris.
In 1789, during a stay in France, he was trapped by the political upheaval that was quickly turning into the French Revolution. At risk as an aristocrat, he went into hiding, while secretly trying to gain passage to the United States. The necessary papers were finally delivered to him by the new American ambassador to France, James Monroe. At the end of his life Crèvecœur returned to France and settled permanently on land he inherited from his father. On November 12, 1813, he died in Sarcelles, Val d'Oise, France.
The town of St. Johnsbury, Vermont, is named after him, as suggested by Ethan Allen.

Primary works