The Société Agricole et Manufacturière Française was established in Philadelphia in the autumn of 1816 in order to promote the establishment of an agricultural colony of French expatriates somewhere in the western United States. Although it received a sizable concession of land in present-day Alabama from the national government early the following year, the resulting Vine and Olive Colony never prospered and had been largely abandoned by the 1830s (Rafe Blaufarb, Bonapartists in the Borderlands: French Exiles and Refugees on the Gulf Coast, 1815–1835 [2005], 44–9, 159–74).

Joseph Martin du Colombier (1761–1846), merchant and physician, was born on the island of Saint Domingue. The youngest son of a wealthy planter, he was educated in France and took part in the American Revolution, during which he spent time on a British prison ship. Martin returned to the West Indies following the conflict. The subsequent Haitian revolution found him serving as a captain of dragoons in the government forces. In the winter of 1792–93 Martin immigrated to the United States. Settling in Wilmington, Delaware, he became a successful trader and pro bono medical practitioner. Martin moved to Philadelphia in 1805, and in 1827 he relocated to and lived thereafter in the nearby suburb of Nicetown (Townsend Ward, “Germantown Road and Its Associations,” PMHB description begins Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, 1877–  description ends 5 [1881]: 122–5; Blaufarb, Bonapartists in the Borderlands, 45, 213; Philadelphia Public Ledger, 18 Nov. 1846; gravestone inscription in Laurel Hill Cemetery, Philadelphia; Weekly Notes of Cases argued and determined in the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, the County Courts of Philadelphia … 28 [Apr.–Nov. 1891]: 193–8).

Louis Marie Dirat (b. ca. 1774), soldier, public official, and journalist, was a native of Nérac, France. Condemned to death during the French Revolution, he won release from captivity in 1794 and joined the army as an aide-de-camp to his relative, General Catherine Dominique, marquis de Pérignon. Dirat was appointed subprefect of his hometown late in 1799, and he retained that position until 1813. In the latter year he moved to Paris to work as an accountant and edit a leftist political journal. On Napoleon’s return to power in March 1815, Dirat asked for and obtained his former office in Nérac. Perhaps in consequence, following the emperor’s defeat at Waterloo, Dirat’s name was added to the restored monarchy’s 24 July 1815 proscription list. Exiled from France, he sailed to America and by September 1816 was in Philadelphia, where he established a lace and millinery shop with his wife. Dirat received permission to return to France in 1819 and arrived there early the following year. His former political associates avoided him, however, suspecting that he had become a police informant (Galerie Historique des Contemporains, ou Nouvelle Biographie [2d ed., Brussels, 1822–23], 4:206; Petit Almanach de la Cour de France [Paris, 1813], 197; New-York Courier, 2 Feb. 1816; Kingston, N.Y., Ulster Plebeian, 21 May 1816; New London Connecticut Gazette, 25 Sept. 1816; Washington Daily National Intelligencer, 12 Nov. 1816; Blaufarb, Bonapartists in the Borderlands, 12, 198; Boston Repertory, 20 July 1819; Philadelphia Franklin Gazette, 29 Oct. 1819; Philadelphia Poulson’s American Daily Advertiser, 22 Mar. 1820; Le Livre Noir de Messieurs Delavau et Franchet, ou Répertoire Alphabetique de la Police Politique sous le Ministère Déplorable [1829], 2:265).

Nicholas Simon Parmantier (ca. 1776–1835), businessman and educator, was born in France and served in that nation’s army prior to his immigration to the United States during TJ’s second presidential administration. He had settled in Philadelphia by the time he obtained American citizenship in 1809, and he worked there as a distiller and as a manufacturer of spermaceti oil. A founder and early vice president of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, Parmantier fought on the American side during the War of 1812. Having moved with other settlers to the Vine and Olive Colony in 1817, he relocated four years later to Pensacola and served there as a notary public and justice of the peace. Parmantier migrated in about 1831 to Nashville, Tennessee, where he taught French language and literature at the local university from 1832 until his death (P. William Filby, ed., Philadelphia Naturalization Records [1982], 525; List of Patents description begins A List of Patents granted by the United States from April 10, 1790, to December 31, 1836, 1872 description ends , 70; J. Thomas Scharf and Thompson Westcott, History of Philadelphia. 1609–1884 [1884], 3:2280; James Robinson, The Philadelphia Directory, for 1811 [Philadelphia, 1811], 241; John A. Paxton, The Philadelphia Directory and Register, for 1813 [Philadelphia, 1813]; William S. W. Ruschenberger, A Notice of the Origin, Progress, and Present Condition of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia [1852], 51, 55, 77; Pennsylvania Archives, 6th ser. [1907], 9:142–3; Washington Daily National Intelligencer, 12 Nov. 1816; Blaufarb, Bonapartists in the Borderlands, 57, 216; Terr. Papers description begins Clarence E. Carter and John Porter Bloom, eds., The Territorial Papers of the United States, 1934–75, 28 vols. description ends , 22:308–10, 23:469, 778, 24:330; Lucius Salisbury Merriam, Higher Education in Tennessee [1893], 35; National Banner and Nashville Whig, 17 July 1835; gravestone inscription in Nashville City Cemetery).