The Millstone Times March 2021

Joseph Bonaparte and Bordentown, NJ His Legacy Will Live On By Pam Teel

While Napoleon Bonaparte expanded his new French empire conquering a lot of Western Europe, he remained busy doling out important military positions to his friends and family. That included crowning his older brother Joseph, ‘King’ not once but twice. Once in Naples, and then later the King of Spain. Joseph didn’t have the drive and ambition to conquer the world like his brother. He was more mild mannered and followed in his father’s footsteps with a career in law. Almost as soon as he was crowned King of Spain, a popular revolt against French rule began. Joseph suffered a string of defeats as he and French forces engaged what was left of the Spanish regular army. He asked his brother if he could abdicate and return to Naples. Napoleon wouldn’t have it, and left Joseph to keep a tenuous grasp on his army. Unable to beat back the rebels and their English allies, Joseph abdicated his throne in 1813, having ruled for just over five years. After Napoleon’s defeat and forced exile from Europe, Joseph fled to the Unit- ed States under a different name. He brought along the crown jewels of Spain, which he stashed away in his suitcase. He first lived in New York City, then Philadelphia, and eventually he bought property by the Delaware River on the outskirts of Bordentown. Joseph took the

An entrance to one of seven tunnels that was used as an escape route from the Bonaparte home directly to the Delaware River where a boat was waiting.

title of Comte de Survilliers and went into a somewhat quiet, suburban exile. He knocked down the home that was on the land and built himself a large costly mansion instead. The estate was known as Point Breeze. The home was said to be the second largest home in America besides the White House. His wealth attracted many men in high positions. He also gained the love and trust of his neighbors who he was very generous too. His mansion became a social hub for not only his New Jersey neighbors, who liked to spend quiet afternoons browsing his library, but for American and European elites as well. Some distinguished guests who came through Point Breeze included, John Quincy Adams, Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, the Marquis de Lafayette, and Stephen Girard, a French banker who was then the richest man in the U.S. He filled his 38,000 square foot mansion with the finest treasures. Treasures that he most likely bought with the money from some of the crowned jewels he took with him from Spain. The estate housed an extensive wine cellar, brick bridges, stables, a gardener’s house, large indoor wall mirrors, elaborate crys- tal chandeliers, marble fireplaces, and grand staircases. His library held the largest collection of books in the country at the time. The property was highly landscaped featuring carriage paths, rare trees and plants, gazebos, gardens, fountains, sculptures, and an artificial lake stocked with imported European swans. He constructed a promontory up top that allowed him to see any hostile forces and perforated the grounds with hidden tunnels that lead to one of his daughter’s home on the estate and also allowed quick escape, if necessary, to a boat on Crosswicks Creek, and from there to the Delaware River. Bonaparte’s wife did not accompany him to America. He did not see her for some twenty five years, but his mistress, Annette Savage, was a frequent guest at the mansion. They would go on to have two daughters. Bonaparte’s mansion caught fire and burned to the ground in 1820. His neighbors, out of love for the man, rushed into the burning house managing to save most of the silver and his priceless art collection. There was speculation that a local woman, an immigrant from Russia, set the fire as revenge for Na- poleon’s invasion of her homeland but it was never proved. Bonaparte rebuilt his mansion and remained in New Jersey for some time travelling back and forth to Philadelphia. He moved to London in 1832, re- turning briefly to Breeze Point. When he took ill, he returned to Europe in 1839 and back to his wife who forgave him for his affair. He died in 1844 in Italy. Point Breeze passed on to his grandson who sold it and most of its contents at auction three years later way under value. Some of the furnishings and paintings have ended up in the collections of the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. The Bonaparte’s had another American connection. Napoleon’s younger brother, Jérôme, visited the United States in 1803 and fell in love with Elisabeth Patterson, the daughter of a wealthy Baltimore merchant. They married that same year, but Napoleon did not approve and ordered his brother back to France. Jérôme went home, annulled his marriage, remarried, and became King of Westphalia. Elizabeth was already pregnant when Jérôme left the U.S. and she gave birth to another American Bonaparte. The stateside branch of the family tree produced some notable members—including Charles Patterson Bonaparte, Secretary of the Navy under Theodore Roosevelt—but petered out a few decades ago. Jerome-Napoleon Patterson Bonaparte, great-grandnephew of Napoleon I, was walking his dog in Central Park in 1943, when he tripped over the leash, cracked his skull open on the ground and died. ...continued on page 45

44 The Millstone Times

March 2021