J. Hector St. John de Crèvecœur
Who was J. Hector St. John de Crèvecœur?
French writer (1735-1813)
Biographical data adapted from Wikipedia’s article on J. Hector St. John de Crèvecœur (CC BY-SA 4.0).
Biography
Michel Guillaume Jean de Crèvecœur, better known as J. Hector St. John de Crèvecœur, was born December 31, 1735, in Caen, Normandy, France. He was a French-American writer, diplomat, and farmer, who became a unique voice of the eighteenth-century Atlantic world, connecting European and American viewpoints when the idea of American identity was still being formed. He died November 12, 1813, in Sarcelles, France, after spending much of his life moving between Europe and America.
Crèvecœur studied at the University of Caen Normandy before moving to New France around 1755, serving as a cartographer and military officer during the last years of the French and Indian War. After New France fell to the British, he moved to the British colonies, eventually settling in New York where he became a citizen as John Hector St. John. He married Mehitable Tippet in 1769 and set up a farm in Orange County, New York, where he worked and observed colonial rural life.
His time as a farmer led to his literary fame. His most famous book, Letters from an American Farmer, was published in London in 1782. Written as a series of fictional letters from a Pennsylvania farmer named James, the book explored key questions about American society, the promise of America, and the experience of immigrants. In it, Crèvecœur posed the famous question, 'What is an American?', and explored the idea of the American environment transforming people from Europe into something new.
The American Revolution put Crèvecœur in a tough spot. He had loyalist sympathies, or at least was unsure, and was briefly jailed by the British in New York when he tried to return to France in 1779. After his release, he reached Europe and later served as the French consul to New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut from 1783 to 1790, working to strengthen ties between France and the new United States. During this time, he also tried to bring American plant species to France.
Crèvecœur permanently returned to France after 1790 and spent his final years there. A French edition of his works, Lettres d'un cultivateur américain, was expanded in 1784 and 1787, and his posthumously published Voyage dans la Haute Pensylvanie et dans l'état de New-York provided further insights on American life. Although he spent his last years in relative obscurity, his writings were rediscovered in the twentieth century, securing his place in early American literary and cultural history.
Before Fame
Born into a minor Norman noble family in Caen in 1735, Crèvecœur studied at the University of Caen Normandy before heading to England and then Canada in the mid-1750s. His early adult years lined up with the chaotic period of the Seven Years' War, and he learned surveying and cartography while serving with French colonial forces in New France. These experiences gave him an unusually broad geographic and cultural perspective for someone like him.
After the British took over Canada, Crèvecœur made his way through the Great Lakes region and eventually settled in the British American colonies. He worked as a surveyor and trader before becoming a farmer in New York. This winding path through military service, colonial life, and farming provided him with firsthand observations of North American society that would later shape his writing. His perspective as a European-born immigrant gave his accounts of American life a unique detached view that set them apart from those of native-born colonists.
Key Achievements
- Authored Letters from an American Farmer (1782), one of the foundational texts of early American literature and social thought.
- Posed the seminal question 'What is an American?', shaping discourse on immigrant identity and national character for generations.
- Served as French consul to New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut from 1783 to 1790, contributing to Franco-American diplomatic relations after the Revolution.
- Introduced American agricultural species, including alfalfa, to French farming through his consular and scientific activities.
- Produced detailed surveys and geographic observations of North America during the French colonial period, contributing to cartographic knowledge of the continent.
Did You Know?
- 01.Crèvecœur was imprisoned by the British in New York in 1779 on suspicion of being a spy when he attempted to sail for France, and he was held for nearly three years before being released.
- 02.His famous question 'What is an American?' from Letters from an American Farmer is one of the earliest and most quoted formulations of American national identity in print.
- 03.While serving as French consul in New York, Crèvecœur introduced the cultivation of alfalfa and other American crops to French agriculture.
- 04.He wrote most of his American observations in English, his second language, yet his prose was widely praised for its clarity and vividness by contemporary readers in Britain and France.
- 05.A cache of his unpublished English manuscripts was discovered by his descendants in the early twentieth century and published in 1925 under the title Sketches of Eighteenth Century America, revealing a much darker and more conflicted view of the Revolution than his published work suggested.