The Story of Grace Coxe Le Ray de Chaumont

"MADAME, YOU WILL THANK ME LATER" 

With words to that effect Gouverneur Morris ended his last letter to Mrs. Le Ray de Chaumont on February 27, 1807. Although the exact words Morris used were “some Years hence you will thank me” --more in the style of the early 19^th century-- it suggests something unpleasant had been decided, and even though she could not see that yet, it would all be for the best. 

Morris, this goes without saying, knew better. In fact, he was certain he knew best. He went on to inform her husband, James Le Ray de Chaumont (Morris’s business partner and friend, who was in Paris at that time) of the latest commotion involving his wife Grace (who resided in Philadelphia), telling him she would probably "call me a cross old Devil and feel much hurt.”

What was going on? Why would Morris reprimand his friend’s wife? It is time for some further investigation.

James Le Ray de Chaumont (1760-1840)

From Morris’s Letterbooks, that contain copies of the thousands of letters he sent out during his lifetime, we can tell that (business-) correspondence with Le Ray took place on a regular basis. About one letter every fortnight went back and forth during the times the men were not at the same location. From the period 1799-1816 (when GM lived at Morrisania near New York City), we have 136 letters to James Le Ray. 

And, surprisingly, there are also eight letters to Grace Coxe Le Ray.  These date from the period December 1805 to February 1807. This is in itself exceptional, because Morris would not have a reason to write to her personally, except in special cases.

However, by the end of 1805, a special case had arisen. 

SOME BACKGROUND ON GRACE COXE.

The Coxes were one of the prominent families in Philadelphia. At the age of 27, in 1789, Grace married James Le Ray. The young Frenchman had come to America in 1785 to resolve some financial matters concerning his father, who had made large loans to the Continental Congress during the American War of Independence. The loans had been repaid in devalued paper money, causing an enormous loss for the family.

We learn a little more about their courtship (or rather, lack of courtship) from a letter Morris wrote to Le Ray in August 1807:

“... your conjugal Union arose from a Sense of Honor and Delicacy in you. That you accused yourself of having undesignedly, by Attentions which in your own Country pass for Nothing, and of Course make no Impression, interested her Feelings in such Way as (from her Account) to impair her Happiness thro Life. That you offered your Hand, provided your Parents would consent. That the same Sentiment of Honor had induced them to shut their Eyes also to Considerations of Fortune and splendid Connection.”

 Apparently Morris seemed to think Le Ray had made a mistake in marrying her, but had done the honorable thing in doing so. Regardless, their wedding took place on July 14, 1789. Le Quartorze Juillet, but of course no one in Philadelphia had any idea yet of the important role this specific day was to play as the start of the French Revolution. News from overseas took several weeks to reach America.

Fall of the Bastille in 1789

Morris on the other hand, was in Paris at that time and witnessed how events spun out of control. By the time the young couple left for France in the spring of 1790, they would have known things were in turmoil overseas, but they went anyway and soon afterwards their oldest son Vincent was born.

Gouverneur Morris’s diary first mentions meeting Grace in Paris at her sister-in-law’s house in January 1791. It sounds as if he met her then for the first time; he described her as “looking like a fool,” but what he meant with his remark remains unexplained. Was she not particularly bright, or perhaps not as fashionable or well-spoken as the other ladies in the elegant circles Morris was by then accustomed to?

By the way, two years before, in May 1789, Morris described a meeting in Paris with “Madame Chaumont,” who talked to him “very serious, considering that she is said to be crazy.” The editor of the Paris-part of the diary, the erudite and otherwise very accurate Beatrice C. Davenport, misidentified her as Grace instead of Le Ray de Chaumont’s mother, who was by then estranged from her husband. She lived off and on with her married daughters in Paris.

Back to Grace’s story.

While Morris met Le Ray frequently during the next few years in Paris, he only mentions Grace four times, offering no additional information on her. When the situation in Paris became too dangerous after the fall of the Louis XVI, the Le Ray family took leave in September 1792, but Morris stayed behind (he was by now the American minister). After his successor had arrived by mid-1794, Morris left France to meet the Le Rays in Switzerland. It is evident that Grace was with her husband, for Morris stood as godfather to their newborn daughter Thérèse in a church in Lausanne in November.

No word on Grace for three and a half years, until 1798 when we learn that the family had traveled to Frankfurt, Germany, where Morris waited to meet them. Together they went north to Hamburg; from there they would take a boat back to the United States. Grace, James, toddler Thérèse and baby Alexander (born between 1795 and 1798), traveled together in their carriage(s), Morris in his own. There is no indication that 8-year old Vincent accompanied them; it could well have been that he was already enrolled in a school in Lausanne or Paris.

A three-masted schooner.

In the meantime it had become possible for James to return to France and he decided he would go to Paris for a while. He would try to convince potential French settlers of the advantages of living in the wilderness of upstate New York, while Morris would take care of the American side of the business.

Morris, who had already delayed his departure from Europe for more than a year, was eager to go home, but then young Alexander Le Ray became dangerously ill with smallpox, and the journey was again delayed. As soon as the boy had recovered by September 1798, they could search for a suitable ship that would take them and their considerable luggage, including Morris’s two horses, to New York.

At the time of departure on the ship Ocean, Grace had to be distracted in order not to upset her too much with the upcoming separation from her husband. Morris wrote: “The Ship gets under Way and we part with our friend Leray which is after all Preparation a painful Thing for his Wife. We deceive her therefore and he is off before she knows a Word of the Matter.” They finally left, rather late in the season, on October 4, 1798.

Arrival of a ship at Battery Park, New York c. 1800

Morris accompanied Grace and her two young children on a horrendous voyage across the Atlantic, but during the eleven-week ordeal he mentions their presence on the same ship only once, when he commented on having to take care of “Poupon” (baby) during a storm in which the water flowed into the nurse’s bed. Both his horses died at sea. A man fell overboard and drowned. They almost ran out of food. They almost shipwrecked near Rhode Island. They finished the last stretch of the journey on another ship. Finally, they reached New York on December 23, 1798, where Grace’s brother Richard welcomed her home.  

GRACE COXE IN AMERICA, 1799-1810.

After arriving in the United States, Grace Coxe Le Ray, alone with the two youngest children but of course with the help of a nurse and footman and probably other servants, spent five months in New York City. By late spring 1799 she found herself in Sidney, New Jersey, where her parents lived, and in January 1800 she had settled in Burlington, NJ. There she socialized with French émigrés, the elite that had fled the violence in their country. One of them was the later King Louis -Philippe I of France.

King Louis-Philippe I de Bourbon, 1830.
He spent some years in exile in America, meeting
Morris again at the end of 1799/early 1800.

In August 1802, her husband finally came back from France, leaving their son behind in Paris. Vincent was twelve years old now and ready for higher education at the Ecole Polytechnique. James was in charge of the affairs of the French investors in land in upstate New York and Pennsylvania, a job that kept him on his toes. But unfortunately, fairly soon afterwards in 1804, he had to go to France again: his father had passed away and he was needed to take care of the inheritance. 

Again, he would stay away a long time, three years this time, until July 1807. During his absence, Morris was given power of attorney to deal with business affairs in America. He also was to give Grace a monthly allowance of 200 dollars. To put this in perspective: a laborer’s wage was 10-20 dollars a month. So, 200 does not sound bad at all, one would think.

During the periods Le Ray resided in France, the correspondence between the two men intensified; those letters mostly concern the business of their landholdings, but sometimes they touch on political or personal aspects. As mentioned before, we also have a few letters in our files from Morris to Grace in the period 1805-07; from reading through them, it becomes clear that Morris was getting more and more annoyed with her about her spending habits.

TROUBLE BREWING, 1804-1807.

Sans Souci Hotel in Ballston Spa c.1850.

As soon as Le Ray had left in July 1804, Grace took off to the hot springs in northern New York taking 6 to 7-year old Alexander with her. Whether this was merely vacationing or for health reasons is not clear. It is likely that 10-year old Thérèse was left behind at Madame Grelaud’s school in Philadelphia (but that remains to be confirmed through more research of archival material). 

The first sign of trouble surfaced after Grace stopped by at Morrisania in October 1804 on her way home to Philadelphia (where she and James had recently moved to) from Ballston Spa, New York. It was then that she submitted some unexpected bills. 

On November 15, 1804, an alarmed Morris wrote to Le Ray in Paris:

                 “I think her Expenditures besides travelling Charges will rather exceed $200 per Month. Her Board and that of Alex^r. who was with her at Ballstown and may perhaps be with her at Phila[delphia]: $15 per Week--four Servants viz [= that is] Coachman, Footman, and two black Women $20—Two Horses $6—Add Cloaths, Washing, Wine, Tea, Fuel, Black Smith’s Bill, Footman’s Wages, &c^a.”

These expenses added up to much more than the two hundred dollars she received per month. Her allowance was supposed to cover her cost of living, the servants, and the cost of education for the children. She, however, spent it on other things like a $300 coach repair, and the expensive trip to the spa up north. Apparently, she did not spend any of the money on the children’s schools, and instead of boarding them out Grace tried to keep the children with her. On top of that, she quarreled with headmistress Madame Grelaud.

Morris was very annoyed with her behavior, “If you prefer keeping the Children with you, it will be an Injury to them.” He demanded she put Thérèse as a boarder in school in Philadelphia, and Alexander in a seminary in Baltimore, according to their father’s wishes. He thought “Ladies in general” were not equipped to handle money, so he decided he would pay the education costs for the children directly to their schools, thereby cutting Grace's allowance to 150 dollars per month per January 1807. If she still would not obey, it would go down to 100.

Morris wrote to congratulate Mrs. Le Ray after Vincent had won a prize at his school in Paris, and wished for similar success for her other children. Thérèse could win a prize too, he wrote sarcastically on New Year’s Day 1807, since she “excells all the young Ladies in Philadelphia in the Art of lying abed all the Morning.” 

This of course was all her mother’s bad influence.

Ballroom fashion anno 1807.

It looked like his threat had effect. Soon afterwards Thérèse was placed as a boarder at the renowned school of Mrs. Rivardi, therefore not allowed to go home during the nights, because “she goes late, comes away early, attends Balls, and wastes Time which can never be recalled.”  In March 1807 Morris wrote his last letter to Grace, which he ends with: “some Years hence you will thank me.”

In bringing Le Ray up to date about his family affairs, Morris wrote, “I shall get the Children placed as they ought to be. I suppose the good Lady will call me a cross old Devil and feel much hurt.” He genuinely thought she was being unreasonable. However, things only got worse.......

THE MARRIAGE CRISIS.

It seemed that Morris's strict approach to Mrs. Le Ray earlier in the year had not worked; she was even contemplating a divorce from her husband now. The first letter from Gouverneur Morris to James Le Ray de Chaumont after his return to the States mid-1807 is dedicated solely to the worrisome home situation of the Le Rays: “all was wrong: very wrong.”

Morris's letter to James Le Ray,  16 August 1807. 

In his letter, Morris analyzed the situation and advised accordingly. He suggested Le Ray limit the contact his wife was to have with the children. That it had been a mistake to marry her in the first place, due to cultural differences in American and French society. Sure, it had been the honorable thing to do to marry her, and Le Ray had been good to her, indulgent, even. 

But now, Morris insisted, time had come to put his foot down because it concerned the education of his children.

 “That on one only Subject you had found it a Duty to use the Authority of a Husband—to protect your Children. That their Education, on which must depend their future Respectability and Happiness, was too near your Heart to permit any Consideration whatever to deter you from superintending it. Then appeal to her Reason and Conscience. Desire her finally to consult with any Person in whom she has Confidence, since unfortunately she no longer confides in her best Friend [i.e. Le Ray himself]—Entreat her, above all Things, not to think of a Divorce the Consequence of which must be both injurious and disgraceful.”

Only to continue with revealing the underlying purpose of his advice:

“If I mistake not, this Course will lead her to insist more strongly on a Divorce. Then, when all is ripe, you will take an Opportunity to say very coolly; well Madam since you wish a Divorce, apply for it to the proper Authority—from this Moment, if you continue to be my Wife, you shall obey your Husband; and if (as I too clearly perceive) you are insensible to Reason, you shall be sensible to Correction. The Law gives me a Right to administer moderate Correction to a disobedient Wife, and at the first Moment you shall receive it from my Hand.”

Is he suggesting some domestic violence would help the situation here? 
Morris concludes, clearly satisfied with himself:

“This would I think change a vain foolish Woman into a decent well behaved Wife”.

The clever plan, however, did not work. Grace gave in, the children were placed solidly in boarding schools and she and James stayed married. The marital issue does not come up again in any of Morris's letters.

ALL WELL THAT ENDS WELL?

The following year the Le Rays made use of their newly built house in remote Leraysville (later Le Ray), in the relative wilderness of upstate New York. The couple (there is no evidence of the presence of the children in Morris's papers) only spent time there during late summer and fall in 1808 and 1809, winters were spent in Philadelphia. When Morris visited the last week of August 1808, and again from mid-October till mid-January 1809, he complained of the terrible cold, the snow, the impassible roads and the empty stores. He does not comment on the new house, nor does he mention seeing Grace there. 

The question is, did she even go there?

View of Utica in 1807, by Anne Hyde de Neuville.
A stop on the way to Leraysville in remote upstate New York, where Le Ray had built a house.

In the summer of 1810, James, Grace and Thérèse left for France; Alexander probably stayed in school in Baltimore and 20-year old Vincent certainly stayed behind in the US in charge of his father’s landholdings. Morris kept up a correspondence with Vincent as well: 45 letters went to him in Leraysville right up to Morris’s death in 1816. 

Grace died in 1812 in (French occupied) Switzerland. As far as we know, she was never mentioned again in Morris’s diary or letters. Rumor has it her health had never been good, but we have not found evidence for that in Morris’s papers.

WHAT HAPPENED TO THE REST OF THE FAMILY?

Vincent Le Ray de Chaumont (1790-1875)

Vincent married Cornelia Jumel in 1821 and was widowed by 1823; after the land business in New York failed in c.1836, he also went to France. He remarried there and died in 1875.

Thérèse married Hippolyte, marquis de Gouvello de Kériaval in 1816, and they both joined James Le Ray on his return to the States in 1816. Their first born child is buried on the property at Leraysville (now military territory of Fort Drum). The text on her grave reads: "CLOTILDE de GOUVELLO died Sept 20th 1818 aged 1 year and 3 months. She was endeared to her Parents and relatives and beloved by all who witnessed her fifteen months of suffering  life. Strew flowers on her grave." The young people went back to France and had at least one son there, in 1821.

Alexander was with his father and sister in 1816, when they visited Morris. It is not clear yet whether Alexander moved back to France at some point. He was still alive in 1830.

James Le Ray worked with Vincent on the upstate New York land enterprise for many years, until 1832 when he made a short trip to France, and then again until 1836, when the business went bankrupt. He died in France in 1840; he never remarried.

-The cited letters are in Morris’s Letterbooks in the Gouverneur Morris Papers at the Library of Congress in Washington.

-For information on the Le Ray family, see Thomas J. Schaeper, France and America in the Revolutionary Era, the Life of Jacques-Donatien Leray de Chaumont, 1725-1803 (1995).

-For pictures and details on settling of upstate New York, see Franklin Benjamin Hough, A History of Jefferson County in the State of New York (1854).

-For Cornelia Jumel, see Peter M. Kenny et al., Honoré Lannuier, Cabinet Maker from Paris (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1998), 129.

-For family tree website with dates and their historic sources: Ancestry.com, e.g. http://wc.rootsweb.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?op=GET&db=selvage1&id=I27421 

Encounters with Rutledge in 1803: Hair-do & Caning

In July 1803 Morris was on the way to Boston with his friend and business partner James Le Ray de Chaumont, when they stopped for the night at Hezekiah Sabin’s tavern in Pomfret, Massachusetts. While there, John Rutledge, Jr., Federalist Representative from South Carolina, who was traveling in the opposite direction, came in. He sat down with Morris’s party and they discussed the bad condition of the roads lying ahead. Soon afterwards, Rutledge wrote to fellow Federalist Harrison Gray Otis in Boston about this encounter. 

He had arrived at the inn on that rainy night and "heard a chattering in French."  Inside he "found Gouv^re Morris with two french Valêts--a french travelling companion [Le Ray] and his hair buckled up in about one hundred Papilliottes. His wooden leg, papilliottes [curl papers], french attendants, and french conversation made his Host [...] with the whole family stare most prodigiously."

A day or so later, further along the road, in a village where Rutledge dined, the innkeeper had mistaken Morris for New York Governor George Clinton with his French son-in-law Genet, much to Rutledge's amusement. After he corrected him, the man was very embarrassed, "[…] made many apologies [&] was very eloquent in his eulogies upon Morris, & expressed very strongly his regrets that he had not stopped & given him an opportunity of conversing with the great Man who had made such great speeches in Congress [...]"
                                                                                         
On their return to New York, a few weeks later, Le Ray and Morris stopped for a short social visit at Rutledge’s in Wethersfield, Connecticut. Although Morris did not mention any details, we know that Rutledge was involved in a bit of a delicate situation at that time, and had temporarily retreated to Connecticut to lie low after a scandal in which he had been involved.

What was the matter?

There had been an ongoing conflict between him and Rhode Island Senator Christopher Ellery, who was of the anti-Federalist faction, supportive of President Jefferson. The issue was about two presumably forged letters written to Jefferson in August 1801. Those letters purportedly were intended to provoke an incriminating response from Jefferson by calling on him to dismiss Federalists from various offices.

Ellery had accused Rutledge of being the author of the letters and in 1802 Jefferson gave them to Ellery to publish, in a context implying that Rutledge was indeed the conniving true author. The conflict escalated in a pub near Washington on December 28, when Rutledge physically attacked the Rhode Island senator. He hit him with a cane……

Needless to say, Rutledge, damaged by the publicity, did not run for Congress again.

Similar fight, in Congress in 1798, over the Sedition Act  

*Some of this blog will appear in footnotes in our forthcoming edition of  Diaries of Gouverneur Morris: New York 1799-1816 (publication c. 2018).

Precious Sister - Letters from Euphemia

When Gouverneur Morris finally returned home after ten years abroad, it was much to his sister Euphemia's (1754-1818) relief. Her husband (also her cousin), Samuel Ogden (1746-1810), had not been well and was very worried about his financial interests in the land speculation he was involved in with Gouverneur and Robert Morris (not related) and others.

Over the years, the brothers-in-law had frequently written to each other about business, but Euphemia had also stayed in touch on a regular basis via mail while Gouverneur was in Europe. Some of Morris's letters are recorded in his letterbooks in the Library of Congress, and a few of her letters have survived in the Columbia University Rare Books and Manuscripts.

Writing Implements from the 19th Century

Euphemia wrote about the expansion of her family (they had at least twelve children), while Morris supplied her with some fashionable items from Europe. There is for example the letter written by Euphemia in December 1796, thanking him for the cloak and gloves he sent from London. A note of interest is the fact that Morris's wife, Nancy, after his death sarcastically wrote on this letter: "while He was in the Act of giving - They were in good humor."

Soon after Morris arrived in New York City in the last week of 1798, he became absorbed by the renovation of his ancestral home on the estate of Morrisania, which had been in disrepair for years. Much of his energy and money was poured into the extensive restoration of the mansion. However, seven weeks after his arrival, his sister, without her husband's knowledge, wrote Morris an urgent invitation to visit them in Newark, New Jersey. They needed help, that is: money.

"Pardon me my dear Brother for again entruding on your patience--my good husbands Situation obliges me to do what I hope you will forgive--it hath long been the Opinion of his physitions that his mind should be kept placid and Easy such hath been and still is his great anxiety to see you that his mind is continually on the Rush--the Consequence is his attacks are much more frequent and Violent--the last week he looked for you every day. I cannot express to you his disappointment--[...]"
In bold letters Nancy wrote on the last page of this letter: "precious Sister and Friend she wanted to shew her love by using his money."

Morris, apparently, was not too worried about Samuel's health because he did not drop everything he was working on to visit Newark. He stopped by a few months later, in April of 1799, on his way further south to Philadelphia, where his old friend and business partner Robert Morris was in debtor's prison.He stayed with the Ogdens from April 16-22 and then again on his return in May, from the 5th till the 13^th. There was a lot to discuss with Samuel, whose business had taken a bad turn. In his diary Morris recorded that he encouraged Samuel to pay back his debts and employ David Ford to manage his affairs. During that same week, Samuel wrote his will with Morris's assistance. 

A week after this visit, on May 21, Morris noted in his diary that he had received a letter from Ogden asking for money (although this letter has not been located). He  promptly advanced Ogden a thousand dollars. Half a year later, in November 1799, Euphemia sent a letter, delivered by her son David Bayard Ogden, to ask for help in settling the affairs with Robert Morris. And again, Nancy wrote a remark on the letter: "what a tender sister,"... implying, of course, she only was interested in her brother's money.  

If we compile the data from Morris's diary, we can see that there were regular visits back and forth between Morris and his sister. Typically, Morris visited the Ogdens in Newark on his way to or from Washington (where he served as Senator from 1800 to 1803), and in later years he combined visits to Newark with business trips in New Jersey. The Ogdens visited Morrisania every November for a few days. After Samuel died in 1810, Euphemia moved to New York City. For the next few years, the frequency of the visits increased: he visited her in town and she visited him and his young bride Nancy almost monthly. 

It all came to a sudden stop after November 1814. There had been a falling out between the two siblings because of a publicized letter by John Randolph of Roanoke to Nancy. A letter in which John accused her of murdering his brother, and of committing infanticide some twenty years ago in Virginia. It looks like John Randolph had been consumed with rage and bitterness and was out to break Nancy's reputation. Many ladies of New York City's 'society,' including Euphemia, started shunning Nancy. 

There is no more mention of Euphemia in the diary at all after that, and we do not know of any correspondence between them. What we do know is that nephew David B. Ogden had been inciting Randolph to blame Nancy and that he, at the same time, had defrauded Morris out of a fortune, bringing him to the verge of bankruptcy. 

The last two years of Morris's life were clouded not only by declining health, an ostracized social position for his wife, but with financial worries as well. His sister Euphemia had chosen to side with her son David and was blind to his unfortunate behavior. 

Nancy had good reason for her snide remarks on Euphemia's earlier letters, jotted down when she sorted through her late husband's papers. 

Happy Birthday, Gouverno!

Gouverneur Morris, Jr. (1813-1883).  
This portrait has often been mistaken as a painting of his father.  (Engraver John Rogers?)

It is two hundred years ago this week that Gouverneur Morris's son, Gouverneur Morris, Jr., affectionately nicknamed "Gouverno," was born. Tuesday the ninth of February, 1813, in the midst of the War of 1812-14, was the day that Ann Randolph Morris ("Nancy") gave birth to a son at Morrisania.

The birth must have been a widely anticipated event for not only his parents, but also other family members, who were going to lose their right to inherit when Morris would produce a legal heir. Rumor has it that one of the nephews, upon hearing of the birth of Gouverno, remarked something in the line of "His name should have been Cutusoff" (the name of a Russian marshal who defeated Napoleon). It soon turned out that they were not above instituting a smear campaign, implying Morris was not the father of the child.

However, they made two miscalculations: 1.The woman Morris married stood her ground and fought for her and her son's rights. 2. Morris's fortune had been significantly reduced, mainly due to foul play by nephew David B. Ogden. There was not as much left to inherit as they thought there was.

                                            

The new father was not young, 
Morris had just turned sixty-one, and must have been overwhelmed with the situation. Who would have thought he would ever have any children? He, who probably suffered from venereal disease (he mentions treating himself (and others) with mercury in diary entries of the 1790s without specifying the cause but mercury was a popular treatment of the period, and he mentions a few episodes with prostitutes). He, who, although he had many an occasion, had never procreated. It was, in short, a small miracle, that he was to be blessed with offspring. Morris asked his friend John Jay to be a godfather for the baby. To which Jay responded: "I thank you for informing me by your letter of the 15^th inst. that you had received "an heritage and gift," which doubtless filled your heart with joy and gratitude,"  but then politely declined the honor, because of his advanced age. 

One would think the upcoming birth of a child, so unexpected, would keep Morris's thoughts occupied in 1812-13. It probably did, but unfortunately he did not record anything of the kind. His health prevented him from writing in his diary after December 1812 and he only picked the habit up again in October 1813, thereby skipping the whole period of birth and early fatherhood. He had been confined to his bed due to the gout for long periods, and apparently was not feeling well at all.

The day after the birth, on February 10, he wrote a letter to nephew David B. Ogden which in a business-like tone informed David that " Your Aunt, after a long severe and dangerous Struggle, was delivered at half an Hour after Eight last Evening of a Son. He is large fat and strong. Her Condition is still critical; but we humbly trust in God that, keeping her very quiet, she may recover.” Morris then asked David to announce the birth in one of the newspapers and pay the midwife for her visit, even though she did not even make it to the delivery because of bad weather. We are kept in the dark as to who wás there to assist. The maids, perhaps? Two months later, in a letter to business partner Vincent Le Ray, Morris showed us a glimpse of family life by telling him his own health was slowly mending, and his wife's health after the birth "is as well as a Boy who lives entirely from what her Breasts supply, and who is uncommonly strong and voracious, will permit."

Little Gouverno's name appeared for the first time in the diary when he was 10 months old, on the occasion of his vaccination (against smallpox). His father mentioned him only nineteen times in the course of three years, ten of which had to do with the child being sick. Still, we can feel fatherly love and pride radiating in the few instances he does get mentioned. For example, at 28 months of age, Morris wrote that the "little fellow" frolicked around the house and went on a long walk with his parents. A little wine and milk had given him energy to run about for two hours straight, to the amazement of his father. 

Unfortunately, Morris could only enjoy his son for a mere three and a half years. Nancy wrote, after her husband's death, that Gouverno asked for his father for a long time, unable to comprehend that he had passed away.

     

              (From the digital collection of The New York Public Library)

It took Nancy many years of frugal management to consolidate the estate and secure an inheritance for her son. Nevertheless, Gouverno did well in life. He lived for seventy years (he died in 1883) and became a promoter of industrialization of the Bronx. Railroads, ports and housing projects were part of his legacy. In memory of his mother, he donated St. Ann's Church to the city in 1840, and subsequently re-buried his parents's remains there. He married one of his distant cousins and had five children; one of his daughters (Anne Cary Morris) even edited and published some of her grandfather's papers in 1888. 

Gouverneur, Sr., would have had every reason to be proud of his namesake.

                          

Home in the Bronx 1811

Anyone interested in Gouverneur Morris's life will necessarily encounter some of the history of the Bronx. We can get an introduction to the neighborhood by taking a closer look at a 1811 map of the area, made by John H. Eddy. This map is available online at the David Rumsey Collection:  link Eddy Map of NYC, 1811

Looking at this map online, we can zoom in on the Bronx and see that at that time it was still a region of individual houses in the middle of farmland and swamps.  In the eighteenth and early nineteenth century most of this area was known as the estate of "Morrisania," after the Morris family who owned the land, having acquired it in the late 1660s. The area stayed sparsely populated until the 1840s, when the land was sold to have the first railroads built. Industrialization, with all its progress and problems, took off, and the Bronx quickly developed into the densely-populated urban area we know today, a far cry from the "gentleman-farmer" region that it had been before. 

In 1811, there were actually only two villages that had a cluster of houses, Westchester and West Farms. The only church in the region was in Westchester and we see a few mills in the creeks. The names of the big homeowners are written on the map. On the tip of the land (nowadays 133^rd Street at St. Ann's Avenue in the south Bronx), overlooking the East River, was the splendid mansion owned by "G.Morris" (GM).

Old Morrisania, by Charles E. H. Bonwill. (The New York Public Library)

  

                             

North-west of Morris's mansion, across the Mill Creek and over some hills, was the house owned by GM's nephew Commodore (Richard) Valentine Morris. Another nephew, Colonel Lewis Morris IV, lived, as we know from GM's diary, in a house located just across Mill Creek, close to the Harlem bridge, but his residence is --surprisingly-- not depicted. On the east side was the house of yet another family member, GM's cousin John Graham. The "new road" that is projected over his and GM's land was an undertaking that caused much friction between the two neighbors.

Then we come to the house of wealthy merchant Joshua Waddington, who was married to GM's second cousin, Gertrude Ogden. It is funny to see that GM's diary records that they wed in November 1804, no further comment. But we happen to know an interesting detail from Jonathan Mason's diary (who visited GM around that time) that the bride was young, whereas the groom was sixty, "a little disparity, but balanced by a good house and  a plentiful fortune -- convenient things to a young lady at twenty-eight." Amen to that.  Mason went on to comment on GM's "chateau" as he called it, "... he lives like a real nobleman. You are continually attracted by a profusion of plate, gold, and mirror." (From: Edward J. Young, Clement Hugh Hill and Alexander McKenzie, eds., Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, 1885-1886 (Boston: Massachusetts Historical Society, 1886), 2:5, 7-8.)

Back to the map. Mr. A. Clapp owned a farm to the north adjacent to a swampy area; next to him is Dominique Lynch, who not only owned plenty of acres bordering the East River, but also had invested in a huge area in upstate New York. As had GM himself.

                   

Westchester County, pretty much still empty land. 

View from Valentine's Hill, Westchester County, N.Y., Throg's Neck in the Distance, by Duthie.
(The New York Public Library)

   Hunt's Point used to be home to the Hunt family, but by this time had been sold to others; there is an Isaac Clason and merchant Robert Gilchrist further to the east. Following the coastline, we encounter Nicolas Hoffman, also related through marriage to GM. Next to Mr.  A. Livingston there is Abijah Hammond, who around 1805 built a grand home on Throg's Neck, and, as there seem to have been plenty, was also married to a second cousin of Morris. Sister of Waddington's wife, in fact.

All these neighbors on the map (except Clason) appear in Gouverneur Morris's diary, and almost all of them have an interesting story to tell, too. Please look forward to the publication of the last part of GM's diaries, which cover the period 1799-1816 (publication is anticipated in 2018 by University of Virginia Press).