From Thomas Jefferson to Louis André Pichon, 5 January 1804
To Louis André Pichon
Jan. 5. 04.
Th: Jefferson presents his salutations to M. Pichon, who will recieve herewith a note asking the favor of Made. Pichon & himself to dine with him on Monday next. Th:J. has written an invitation to the same effect to M. & Made. Bonaparte, & their friends who are with them, he has used this phrase, as while it includes the Baron de Maupertuis & M. Sotin, it might also include mr Patterson & miss Spear who he understands are with Made. Bonaparte, or any other persons of whom he is uninformed and whose company would be agreeable to M. Bonaparte. he takes the liberty of mentioning this to M. Pichon in hopes he will have the goodness to give the explanation if necessary.
RC (facsimile in Charles Hamilton Galleries, Inc., Auction No. 98, 29 July 1976, item 152). Not recorded in SJL.
The newlyweds Jerome bonaparte and Elizabeth Patterson Bonaparte arrived in the national capital from Baltimore on 4 Jan. and quickly garnered attention in Washington social circles (Charlene M. Boyer Lewis, Elizabeth Patterson Bonaparte: An American Aristocrat in the Early Republic [Philadelphia, 2012], 17-18, 32-3; Margaret Bayard Smith, The First Forty Years of Washington Society, ed. Gaillard Hunt [New York, 1906], 46-7; New York Morning Chronicle, 5 and 11 Jan. 1804; Vol. 41:666-7, 668-9n).
baron de maupertuis was an acquaintance of Jerome Bonaparte from the West Indies and, according to Pichon, a relative of Bonaparte’s mother. He had been nominated French consul at Rotterdam but was awaiting his instructions when Jerome met him in New York and invited him to Baltimore as a guest (W. T. R. Saffell, The Bonaparte-Patterson Marriage in 1803, and the Secret Correspondence on the Subject Never Before Made Public [Philadelphia, 1873], 117, 125; Carrie Rebora Barratt and Ellen G. Miles, Gilbert Stuart [New Haven, 2004], 254).
Pierre Jean Marie sotin de la Coindière, the former minister of police in France in 1797, became French commissary for Georgia in 1802. The following autumn he transferred from Savannah to Baltimore, where he witnessed the Bonapartes’ Catholic marriage ceremony (Biographie universelle, 39:652-3; , 21:524-6; Madison, Papers, Sec. of State Ser., 2:468n; Charles Edwards Lester, Edwin Williams, and Frederick Greenwood, The Napoleon Dynasty [London, 1853], 419; New York Morning Chronicle, 16 Sep. 1803).
mr patterson: Elizabeth Bonaparte’s father, William Patterson, did not accompany the couple to Washington. She had several brothers, including one, John Patterson, who was a frequent visitor to Wilson Cary Nicholas’s household. Elizabeth’s maternal aunt was Anne (Nancy) spear (Helen Jean Burn, Betsy Bonaparte [Baltimore, 2010], 46, 58, 60, 119; Lewis, Elizabeth Patterson Bonaparte, 112, 188).
any other persons: according to Pichon’s report to Talleyrand about the dinner, TJ also invited the brothers Robert and Samuel Smith and their wives. Samuel Smith’s wife, Margaret Spear Smith, was the sister of Elizabeth Patterson Bonaparte’s mother (Pichon to Talleyrand, 5 Feb. 1804, quoted in Henry Adams, History of the United States During the First Administration of Thomas Jefferson, 2 vols. [New York, 1889], 2:374; Vol. 41:669n).