The Remarkable Rise of Eliza Jumel (46 page)

When translating excerpts from Eliza's and Stephen's original letters in French, I did not attempt to reproduce their mistakes in spelling or grammar. Eliza made frequent errors when writing in French,
but most were minor: “rich” instead of “riche” for “wealthy”; “mouttons” rather than “moutons” for “sheep”; “collons” instead of “colonnes” for “columns.” Occasionally a misspelling hints at a mispronunciation: “beaucoup” becomes “beaucoupe,” suggesting that she may have pronounced the final, silent
p
. Other mistakes are evident only because she was writing rather than speaking. For instance, Eliza wrote “je ferais” (I was doing) when she meant “je ferai” (I will do), but the two verb forms are pronounced identically (the final
s
of “ferais” is silent). Often she omitted accent marks—but native speakers, including Stephen, were not meticulous about including them either. Every so often a common construction was scrambled. “I have been in Cherry Valley for three weeks” became “Me voici il y a trois semaines à Cherry Vally [
sic
]” (I have been three weeks ago in Cherry Valley). “Il même” replaces “lui-même” for “himself.” On occasion, a specialized French term escaped her, and she adapted an American one—for example, “une morgage” rather than “une hypothèque” for “a mortgage.”
¹
The end results, easy to interpret for a native English speaker with a working knowledge of French, would be more confusing for a Francophone reader. Yet it is impressive that she turned out three- and four-page letters in a language that she did not acquire until adulthood.

Stephen had his own quirks as a writer. Generally he completed the infinitive forms of regular verbs ending in
er
with the letters és instead: for example, “loués” rather than “louer” (to rent); “depansés” rather than “dépenser” (to spend); “menagés” rather than “ménager” (to economize on or use sparingly). He made other minor spelling errors—“j'ai” (I have) became “je” (which he must have pronounced “jé”); “quartier” (quarter) became “cartier.” In these and similar cases, he was writing phonetically. The sound of the words would have remained the same, in spite of the altered spelling. The biggest challenge in reading Stephen's letters is his handwriting, sometimes nearly illegible. He could write neatly, but often didn't take the time to do so.
²

A few of the letters Eliza wrote in French were available to me only in later translations. If more than one translation existed, I used
the wording that seemed to best reflect her typical writing style. Also used in translation were more than forty-five letters relating to Stephen, including letters between him and his French relatives, among his relatives, and between his relatives and others. Used as exhibits in the 1876 lawsuit filed by the French heirs, they were published in English, together with the bill of complaint, by a legal printer for use during the litigation.
³
I did not have access to the French originals, which would have been returned to their owners, but the translations provided crucial information on Stephen's life in France between 1815 and 1828 and his relatives' fights over his estate (first after his death and then after Eliza's).

Much of the information in this book comes from testimony and depositions given by witnesses in lawsuits. Some of these individuals lied outright, some shaded the truth, and almost all made inadvertent errors in recounting long-past events. The depositions of Nelson Chase in the lawsuits over the Jumel estate offer particularly rich detail on Eliza, but also hidden pitfalls. Nelson shaped his testimony to strengthen his and his children's claims to Eliza's fortune. In this worthy endeavor, he was not beyond telling fibs. Skeptical questions posed in cross-examinations helped me to identify at least some of his and others' evasions and lies. In drawing on depositions and other testimony, I have prioritized information that I could cross-check.

I drew heavily on manuscript records of court cases, especially those stored in the Department of Old Records of the New York County Clerk's Office. A given file may contain anything from a one-page judgment record to a rich history of a case, including bills of complaint, exhibits, and depositions. The abbreviations used in the endnotes referring to these records are as follows:

N.Y. Com. Pl., New York Court of Common Pleas

N.Y. Ct. Ch., New York Court of Chancery

N.Y. Mayor's Ct., New York Mayor's Court

N.Y. Sup. Ct., New York Supreme Court

N.Y. Super. Ct., New York Superior Court

Unless otherwise indicated, citations in this book using the foregoing abbreviations refer to courts located in New York County. Frequently cited cases are abbreviated as follows:

Most of the federal circuit court records used in researching this book make part of the collections of the National Archives and Records Administration—Northeast Region (New York City). They may be found in Record Group 21, Records of District Courts of the United States. A given box may contain hundreds of pages of documents. I have tried wherever possible to provide information that will help future researchers locate specific material within boxes. For example, some lengthy bills of complaint and answers to bills of complaint were published by legal printers for the convenience of the court. When I refer to such a document, I provide not only the box number that contains it, but also the title and publication data of the printed document. Frequently cited cases are abbreviated as follows:

1
. “Jumel,”
Commercial Advertiser
, February 8, 1873, 2.

2
. Greatorex, 243; “A personal sketch of Madame Jumel, wife of Aaron Burr,”
Pioneer and Democrat
[Washington Territory], November 14, 1856, [1]; Parton, 661.

3
.
New York Herald
, articles on the Jumel will case appearing between January 26 and March 17, 1872, especially February 8, 1872, 8 (for Eliza walking the streets of Providence as a girl) and March 16, 1872, 11 (summing up the claim that she had an illegitimate son); 1873 Transcript of Record, esp. 16–17; 1876 Bill of Complaint, 9–27.

4
. The widow of Aaron Burr,”
New York Observer and Chronicle
, July 20, 1865, 230.

5
. Richard Weiss,
The American myth of success: From Horatio Alger to Norman Vincent Peale
(1969; repr., Illini Books, 1988), 29.

6
. Stephan Thernstrom,
Property and progress: Social mobility in a nineteenth century city
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1964), 103–104, 107, 113; Edward Pessen,
Riches, class, and power before the Civil War
(Lexington, MA: D. C. Heath and Company, 1973), 52–58, 64–66; Jackson T. Main, “Social mobility in Revolutionary America,” in
Three centuries of social mobility in America
, ed. and with an introduction by Edward Pessen (Lexington, MA: D. C. Heath and Company, 1974), 50–51, 54.

7
. Elaine Foreman Crane,
Ebb tide in New England: Women, seaports, and social change 1630–1800
(Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1998), 106–107, 134; Ruth Wallis Herndon, “‘Proper' magistrates and masters: Binding out poor children in southern New England, 1720–1820,” in
Children bound to labor: The pauper apprentice system in early America
, ed. Ruth Wallis Herndon and John E. Murray (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2009), 51.

1
. TCMR 5:215.

2
. PTP, Mss 214, Sg. 1, ser. 1, vol. 6, item 2746.

3
. “New-York, October 19,”
Weekly Museum
, October 19, 1793, [3].

4
. Ibid.

5
. “An airing!”
New-York Journal, & Patriotic Register
, October 16, 1793, [3].

6
. “New-York, October 19.”

7
. “New-York. Wednesday, October 16,”
Daily Advertiser
, October 16, 1793, [2]; PTP, Mss 214, Sg. 1, ser. 1, vol. 6, item 2746.

8
. Pauline Maier,
From resistance to revolution: Colonial radicals and the development of American opposition to Britain
, 1765–1776 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1972), 4–5; Timothy J. Gilfoyle,
City of Eros: New York City, prostitution, and the commercialization of sex, 1790–1920
(New York and London: W. W. Norton & Company, 1992), 77–78.

9
. Gertrude Selwyn Kimball, ed.,
Pictures of Rhode Island in the past 1642–1833 by travelers and observers
(Providence, RI: Preston and Rounds Co., 1900), 55–56 (from Rev. Jacob Bailey's journal).

10
. Ibid.

11
. Lynne Withey,
Urban growth in colonial Rhode Island: Newport and Providence in the eighteenth century
(Albany: State University of New York Press, 1984), 78.

12
. Kimball,
Pictures of Rhode Island
, 104.

13
. Ibid., 82.

14
. Ruth Wallis Herndon,
Unwelcome Americans: Living on the margin in early New England
(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001), 14, 19.

15
. Ibid., 19, 178–79.

16
. PTP, Mss 214, Sg. 1, ser. 1, vol. 7, item 2916.

17
. TCMR 5:169–71.

18
. PTP, Mss 214, Sg. 1, ser. 1, vol. 6, item 2746.

19
. PTP, Mss 214, Sg. 1, ser. 1, vol. 6, item 2745.

20
. Ibid. My description of Elizabeth Gardner is based on Ruth Wallis Herndon's description of Sarah Gardner (
Unwelcome Americans
, 62–65, 146), who was almost certainly the person that the issuers of the warrant intended to summon, although they wrote Elizabeth instead of Sarah.

21
. PTP, Mss 214, Sg. 1, ser. 1, vol. 6, item 2745.

22
. Ibid.

23
. TCMR
5:215.

24
. The four prostitutes who had lived in the house in 1780 were women of color also (ibid., 169–71).