MADAME ROSALIE BACLER de la VAL: A Character Sketch

 

Since March is Women’s History Month, and March 8 was International (Working) Women’s Day, I developed a character sketch on Madame Rosalie Bacler, a French émigré who came to the United States during the French Revolution, and who was a “working” woman, a “noble” who planned a French refugee colony in the Massachusetts Territory of Maine. Whenever I “introduce” this historical female to people, they become fascinated. Madame is the main character in the historical romance novel that I am attempting to write.

Frederick S. Allis, Jr.* suggests that Madame played a minor chapter in the larger story of the French Revolutionary War emigration from France to the United States. I contend she plays a major role, if not in land speculation and emigration, in the fact that Madame, within two months of arriving in the United States, and minimal knowledge of the English language, was dealing in land speculation with two of the major American land speculators, Henry Knox and William Duer. In less than two years, she was negotiating with William Bingham and Alexander Baring. Although her dreams were not realized, it was not due to her ineptitude in business and skill, but due to the financial over-extension and financial irresponsibility of both Henry Knox and Henry Jackson.

     Madame Rosalie Bacler de la Val, a French émigré who came to the United States to escape the atrocities of the French revolution, was an independent land speculator/settler in what is known today as Hancock County, Maine. In the 1790s, this region was the Maine Territory of the State of Massachusetts, part of the Penobscot Land Tract purchased from the State of Massachusetts by land speculators Henry Knox and William Duer.
     Only about ten percent of the post-American Revolution land speculators worked independently, outside a company. None, as far as I have encountered, were women—much less foreign émigrés. This identifies Madame as a strong and unique woman.
     The novel I am working on is historic romance. Madame the heroine in the first half of my work, will be placed in and developed through the context of actual historic documents. It is my task to demonstrate that her identity is not an extension of the men in her life, but is a result of both her gifts and her flaws.
     The truth be known, Madame was not “into” romance, needing neither marriage nor a relationship with any man to determine her identity. Men were simply a means to an end. However, in her culture, in her times, they were also necessary evil if a strong women wanted to achieve her goals.
     Whether she was married in France or simply had a relationship with the man identified on documents as “her husband” is unclear. What is clear is that she had a relationship with Jean Antoine Gontran Marzel de Leval, one that provided her with a power of attorney which enabled her to purchase land in the United States and may have provided her with an ultimately worthless deed for twelve hundred acres of Scioto (Ohio) land.
     He was also likely the father of her daughter, Saraphine.
     In the United States, the persons Madame connected with were necessarily male, since that was the gender of the land speculators. Within three months of arriving in the country, she had developed a relationship with William Duer, Henry Knox and Henry Jackson, all major players in the Scioto Land grant fiasco and the Penobscot Tract purchase. She was also involved with the Netherlands ambassadors to the United States, father Herre Van Berckle and his son and Franco Van Berckle.
     That she had plans to enter land speculation prior to her leaving France is implied by her intelligence, business acumen, and the speed with which she entered the playing field. After inspecting the land with her partner, Jean Baptiste de la Roche , she completed a contract to purchase land they had viewed from atop Schoodic Mountain, laid out the plans for a colony where French émigrés find refuge, and successfully sought settlers. All her actions awaited her receipt of the deeds. These actions were outside the images and ideas of what women were expected to be in the 1790s.
     Throughout the material available on Madame, little reference is made of her

From the Bastille to Cinderella

THE FALL OF THE BASTILLE, Paris: July 14, 1789

In writing my historic romance novel, circa 1790s, I struggled to determine a starting point. After doing much research, I realized that all the characters appearing in the beginning of the novel had witnessed the Fall of the Bastille in France on July 14, 1789. I decided to have them sharing their experiences several weeks later as they imbibed in chocolate coffee, a popular drink in Paris at that time.

     I researched eyewitness and news accounts of the event in preparation for writing their conversation. One comment intrigued me. It referred to the days of the warring as The Night and Orcus. What did this mean?

     I typed “Orcus” into the computer search engine and learned that Orcus is an alternative name for

The French Military in America During the American Revolution: Pt. II

 

French relations with women in America

de Verger Journal

Newport, Rhode Island, played an important part in the American Revolution by housing military personnel who arrived from France to help the Americans. Excerpts from three journals, kept by Jean Francois Louis Clermont-Crèvecœur, comte de; Jean Baptiste Antoine de Verger, and Louis Alexandre Berthier, provide material for this second post on Newport, Rhode Island and American women. To read Part 1, click on The French Military in America During The American Revolution: Pt. 1.

      In 1780 women in America were very pale and seemingly frail. The men were “tall and well-built,” although some were big, fat and lacked vigor.

     This was according to diarist Jean Francois Louis Clermont-Crevecœur, one three French military officers in M. le Comte de Rochambeau’s army who kept journals which extensively described their observations and thoughts about Revolutionary America. The army spent the winter of 1780 in Newport, Rhode Island. Along with the other two diarists, Jean Baptiste Antoine de Verger and Louis Alexandre Berthier, Clermont-Crevecoeur recorded his keen observations about Americans and their dating/marriage habits. Observations from two other diarists, Prince de Broglie (in 1782) and Comte de Segure, add to the word picture painted by Clermont-Crevecoeur, Verger and Berthier.

     Americans had a lifespan of sixty years, Clermont-Crevecoeur wrote. Some rare residents lived to be seventy, and occasionally even eighty, “…but it is exceedingly uncommon for them to reach that age. I knew one man who was ninety and still rode horseback with ease, was possessed of all his faculties, and enjoyed perfect health.” However, most American men “look as though they had grown while convalescing from an illness,”

~~~~~~~~~~~~

     The French journal-keepers recorded apt descriptions about Newport and/or American women. Clermont-Crevecoeur wrote that he must admit “that nowhere have I seen a more beautiful strain.” In spite of, or perhaps because of, the fact that the women had little color, nothing could “compare with the whiteness and texture of their skin.” They also had “charming figures, and in general one can say they are all pretty, even beautiful, in the regularity of their features and in what one can imagine to be a woman’s loveliest attribute.”

     Several of the names listed in Verger’s journal described particular belles whom the French greatly admired, including Mr. Champlin’s daughter. He was known for his wealth, “but even more so in our army for the lovely face of his daughter…,” who, when she appeared in the parlor, was examined “with attention, which was to treat her handsomely…” The French men observed that “she had beautiful

The French Military in America During The American Revolution: Pt. 1

 

NEWPORT, RHODE ISLAND, HOSTS
THE FRENCH MILITARY IN 1780

Newport, Rhode Island, played an important part in the American Revolution by housing military personnel who arrived from France to help the Americans. Excerpts from three journals, kept by Jean Francois Louis Clermont-Crèvecœur, comte de; Jean Baptiste Antoine de Verger, and Louis Alexandre Berthier, provide material for this post on Newport, Rhode Island. This is Part 1 of a continuing discussion of the French in Rhode Island. To read the next segment click on: The French Military in America During the American Revolution: Pt. II

     During the night of October 30/31, 1780, a snowfall blanketed the navy ships that were transporting M. le Comte de Rochambau’s army to their winter quarters in Newport, Rhode Island. On the morning of the 31st, a thick mist enveloped the ship’s sails. “There was great activity as they hoisted their anchors to proceed to moor broadside,” according to Verger’s journal. The harbor they entered to moor at Newport was “rather difficult to enter,” but was “one of the best in the world. Easily a hundred vessels can winter there. It extends all the way to Providence, which is accessible to frigates… At the harbor entrance there is a lighthouse.”
     To view photos click on:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/carolyncholland/3506481548/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/carolyncholland/3505671065/in/photostream/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/carolyncholland/3505670779/in/photostream/
     Verger noted that Newport was “situated on a small island (known today as Acquidneck Island) about 12 leagues long by 6 wide” which “lies between 41 degrees and 42 degrees north latitude and 72 and 73 degrees west longitude.” 
     Berthier, in contrast, described the island as being “4 leagues long and 1 ½ wide” and “traversed by 9 superb roads.”
     “Like the province to which it gave its name, it is called Rhode Island. It is the capital of the province,” Verger wrote, noting that it was “occupied by 6,000-7,000 inhabitants.”
     The province of Rhode Island had “the healthiest climate of North America.” While the winters were quite cold, the summers were very pleasant, since the “excessive heat common in America is cooled by the sea breezes.” The land is generally quite fertile, though stony; its normal crop is corn.
     Clermont-Crevecroeur wrote that the “town of Newport could pass for