To James Madison from Theophile Cazenove, 2 January 1805 (Abstract)
§ From Theophile Cazenove1
2 January 1805, Paris. Takes the liberty of introducing to JM the bearer, Maximilian Godefroy,2 a man of merit and honor, who will inform JM of the object of his visit to the United States. If Jefferson remembers Cazenove, asks that JM ask the president’s protection for Godefroy. Hopes JM will excuse him for thus recalling himself to JM’s memory.
RC (DLC). 1 p.; in French; docketed by JM.
1. Financier Theophile Cazenove (1740–1811) was born in Amsterdam of French Protestant parents and spent over two decades in business there. In 1790 he was sent to the United States to engage in land speculation in New York and Pennsylvania on behalf of what later became the Holland Land Company. He lived on a large scale in Philadelphia and became a U.S. citizen in 1794. He returned to Europe in 1799 and renewed an acquaintanceship with Talleyrand begun in the United States. The town of Cazenovia, New York, is named for him.
2. Maximilian Godefroy (1765–post February 1840), a French war veteran and architect, lived in the United States from 1805 to 1819, during which time he married an American woman, designed a number of buildings in Baltimore and Richmond, and worked with Benjamin Henry Latrobe (Dorothy Mackay Quynn, “Maximilian and Eliza Godefroy,” Maryland Historical Magazine 52 [1957]: 1–34).