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Few things are equally closely linked as the Bonapartes and France. Merely the famed emperor's family unit besides had stiff connections across the Atlantic. No fewer than five of Napoleon'due south vii siblings—and very almost the "Little Corporal" himself—either lived in the United States or had children who did. Generally sharing Napoleon'due south restless ambition, military prowess and knack for drama, these American Bonapartes even included a member of President Teddy Roosevelt'south cabinet.

Go to know the American branches of the Bonaparte family unit tree:

Jérôme Bonaparte. (Credit: Archiv Gerstenberg/ullstein bild via Getty Images)

Jérôme Bonaparte (1784-1860)

Jérôme, the youngest sibling of Napoleon, became the first Bonaparte to step pes in America, in 1803, the same year his brother nearly doubled the size of the United States past authorizing the Louisiana Purchase. At a party in Baltimore shortly subsequently his arrival, Jérôme danced with Betsy Patterson, the daughter of a prosperous local merchant. Sparks apparently flew when his naval uniform hooked onto her gown, and they wednesday that December, much to the chagrin of Napoleon, who annulled the marriage and refused to permit a pregnant Betsy disembark when the couple sailed dorsum to Europe in 1805.

Initial protests notwithstanding, Jérôme acquiesced to Napoleon's demands, dutifully marrying a princess and serving every bit king of Westphalia, in nowadays-twenty-four hours Germany. Betsy, meanwhile, returned to Baltimore with an almanac pension of 60,000 francs, a substantial sum at the time. Cut off from the Bonapartes, she nevertheless continued regarding herself as essentially royalty, even telling her son with Jérôme that he should "never dethrone himself by marrying an American."

Alas, their son did marry an American, and he had two children of his ain. The oldest, Jerome Napoleon Bonaparte II, served in both the U.S. and French militaries, whereas the youngest, Charles Joseph Bonaparte, a lawyer, joined the presidential cabinet of Teddy Roosevelt. As secretary of the Navy and so as chaser general, he gained a reputation as a trustbuster and supporter of African-American rights, and he likewise established a force of special agents that would become the FBI.

Jérôme and Betsy'due south line of American descendants would last for but ane more generation. Their sole great-grandson died childless in 1945 after fatally tripping over the leash of his wife's domestic dog in New York City'due south Fundamental Park. Their only great-granddaughter, on the other mitt, married a Danish count and purportedly raised her children overseas.

Joseph Bonaparte. (Credit: Heritage Images/Getty Images)

Joseph Bonaparte (1768-1844)

Napoleon's eldest sibling, Joseph, went incognito post-obit his brother'south downfall and escaped to the United States in summertime 1815. Later living briefly in Philadelphia, he bought Point Cakewalk, a massive estate on the banks of the Delaware River in Bordentown, New Jersey. Flush with cash, particularly once his secretary retrieved a box of buried treasure from Switzerland, he also purchased an fifty-fifty bigger belongings in upstate New York, with a lake at its center that is now chosen Lake Bonaparte.

At Point Breeze, Joseph housed an immense collection of artwork, furniture and books, too as majestic jewels from Kingdom of spain, where he had been male monarch from 1808 to 1813. "His library was the largest library in the UsaA.," says Munro Price, a professor of international history at Bradford University in England and author of Napoleon: The Stop of Celebrity. "It was 8,000 volumes, and the Library of Congress, at that point, was vi,500 volumes."

Charming and refined, Joseph purportedly got along well with the local townspeople, who helped save his valuables when a burn down rushed through the estate in 1820. At the same time, he hosted a steady stream of Napoleonic exiles and dignitaries, such every bit Revolutionary War hero the Marquis de Lafayette and hereafter First Lady Louisa Adams. Some testify suggests Joseph may have even declined an offer to sit on the throne of United mexican states, which was then seeking independence from Spain.

After Napoleon'due south death, in 1821, the allied European powers loosened travel restrictions on the Bonaparte family, prompting several members to gear up off for the United states of america, with Point Breeze as the usual first point of call. Joseph's two daughters—though not his wife—arrived in 1821 and 1823, and he presently had American-born grandchildren running effectually the manor. Various nephews came every bit well.

Despite being embraced by the populace and surrounded by family, Joseph'south individual messages show he never felt completely at dwelling house in America. "He liked the Americans, he thought they were nice people," says Shannon Selin, writer of Napoleon in America, a work of historical fiction. "But he found it culturally underdeveloped." Within a few years, his daughters had returned to Europe, and in 1832, Joseph joined the exodus. He twice went back to Indicate Breeze but left for practiced in 1839.

His genes, however, lived on in the United States. With his wife overseas, Joseph acquired an American mistress, Annette Roughshod, who bore him two daughters. The offset died young in a tragic garden accident. But the second produced 5 offspring with an unsuccessful businessman, who was then enthralled to exist marrying a Bonaparte that he reportedly took to imitating Napoleon's mannerisms.

Lucien Bonaparte. (Credit: Fine art Images/Heritage Images/Getty Images)

Curlicue to Go on

Lucien Bonaparte (1775-1840)

As with Jérôme, Napoleon strongly disapproved of his younger sibling Lucien's pick of a bride. But unlike Jérôme, Lucien stuck with his wife, preferring to live with her in self-imposed exile than become a monarch similar his brothers. In 1810, Lucien and his family set sheet for the United States, only to exist intercepted past a British warship and brought to England, where he was forced to remain until Napoleon's beginning abdication. Afterward Waterloo, Lucien tried once again to accomplish the United States, but the European powers refused to grant him the necessary passports.

Lucien concluded up living out his days in present-solar day Italian republic. Although he never made it to America, at to the lowest degree two of his children did. 1 son, Charles-Lucien, married Joseph's daughter Zénaïde, and the couple spent about five years at Signal Breeze. Considered one of the premier ornithologists of the 19th century, Charles-Lucien published a four-book piece of work on American birds and befriended John James Audubon, a beau American of French descent. Another of Lucien'south sons, Pierre, also visited Point Breeze, too as New York City, where he gained a reputation for rowdiness and once reportedly stabbed a domestic dog. Pierre would later shoot a journalist to death in Paris.

Louis Bonaparte. (Credit: DeAgostini/Getty Images)

Louis Bonaparte (1778-1846)

Like his brother Lucien, Louis went to Italy post-Waterloo and never visited the United States. Louis' son, Louis-Napoleon, on the other hand, found himself there unintentionally. Wishing to reestablish the Napoleonic Empire, he had attempted a insurrection d'état in 1836 merely was quickly captured and shipped off to Norfolk, Virginia, by the French monarchy. He didn't particularly similar it, writing that the "United States believed themselves to be a nation…[but] were, and are still, only an independent colony." After just a couple of months in America, spent mostly in New York City, Louis-Napoleon returned to Europe to be with his dying mother, never to return to usa.

Another failed coup attempt followed in 1840. But in 1848, a revolution ushered in France's Second Republic, and Louis-Napoleon won the presidency in a landslide election. "He'd not been in France for years," Price says. "He was pretty well a foreigner. It just shows you how potent the [Bonaparte] proper name is." Louis-Napoleon later became emperor and ruled French republic until 1870 as Napoleon III.

Caroline Bonaparte. (Credit: Fine Fine art Images/Heritage Images/Getty Images)

Caroline Bonaparte (1782-1839)

Napoleon's youngest sis, Caroline, married one of his top cavalry officers, Joachim Murat. During the height of Napoleon'southward powers, the pair ruled as rex and queen of Naples, but they eventually broke with Napoleon in a futile attempt to keep their throne. After Waterloo, Murat was executed, and Caroline was exiled to Austria.

Both their sons, meanwhile, went to the The states. Arriving in 1823, Achille Murat would spend most of his adult life in Florida, where he fought in the 2d Seminole War, married George Washington'southward slap-up-grandniece, purchased dozens of slaves and engaged in a number of quixotic concern schemes. A hothead and an eccentric, he apparently hated bathing and once lost the tip of his finger in a duel.

His blood brother, Lucien Murat, by contrast, settled in Betoken Breeze and had four children there. Though he returned to France in 1848 after his cousin, the hereafter Napoleon Three, took power, Lucien Murat however has American descendants, including the actor René Auberjonois. "They grew up in palaces," Selin says of the second generation of Bonapartes, such every bit Achille and Lucien. "That was snatched away from them, but past then they were aristocratic in their interests and habits" and generally believed themselves entitled to "some kind of a political destiny."

Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821)

Afterward Waterloo, Napoleon's French base of back up evaporated, and foreign armies speedily closed in on Paris. Knowing that his enemies would kill or imprison him, the abdicated emperor himself turned his sights to America. "The Us was a safe haven, ideologically and practically," Cost says. "Information technology's clear he would have had a very positive reception."

In improver to applying for passports to the United states, Napoleon began studying the geography and ecology of the New World, and reputedly plotted to smuggle over millions of francs. He so fled to the French Atlantic declension, where ships awaited to take him to America. Later on dithering for days, however, Napoleon ultimately surrendered himself to the British, who were blockading the declension, rather than run a risk a humiliating capture. "It seems extraordinary that he'south so indecisive because there's no question he could have escaped," Price says. "Only he was not prepared to run the risk to his dignity."

Napoleon hoped the British would allow him a peaceful retirement. Later on all, as Selin points out, Britain was "the but one of the major Allies that he hadn't actually invaded." Alas, they instead shipped him to the island prison of Saint Helena, where he would die, six years later, of what was likely tummy cancer. During his exile, Napoleon occasionally imagined what could accept been. "My bully mistake was to plow to the English and to current of air upwards on Saint Helena," he told a friend. "If I were in America, everything would get well, whereas hither, everything goes desperately. It's all an error."

Napoleon's genes wound up in America anyway. The fallen emperor'southward illegitimate son Charles Léon Denuelle had a son who purportedly joined Buffalo Pecker's Wild West testify.

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Source: https://www.history.com/news/bonaparte-family-in-america-napoleon