“[T]he number of French in this city it is difficult to ascertain,” the City Missionary wrote in 1850. “Some estimate it at five hundred, and others at not less than one thousand.” (Bokum, First Report, p.4)
French explorers were the first Europeans to enter what is now western Ohio and Indiana. In 1670 Robert de LaSalle discovered and named the Ohio River “La Belle Riviere.” Within a century France had lost her Louisiana Territory to the British in the aftermath of the French and Indian War/Thirty Years’ War (1762 Treaty of Fontainebleau; 1763 Treaty of Paris). Ten years later the British ceded the Ohio Country to the newly independent colonists in the Treaty of Paris (1783) that ended the American Revolution.
When Congress opened the Northwest Territory to officially sanctioned settlement in 1787 the first arrivals into the territory were drawn from states within the newly established nation. The first French colony in the Northwest Territory was settled in 1790 at Gallipolis by a band of émigrés fleeing the revolution that had erupted in their homeland with the storming of the Bastille a year earlier.
At the time of General Lafayette’s triumphal tour through the southern and western states in 1825 there were 19 of his fellow countrymen living in Cincinnati according to the 1825 Hall Cincinnati Directory. During the General’s visit to the city he met with Mr. Dorfeuille—listed as a native of Pennsylvania in Hall’s directory—proprietor of the Western Museum, founded in 1820 and located at Main and Second Street.
“Mr. Dorfeuille,” the Cincinnati Advertiser recorded, “paid the most marked attention to his illustrious visitor; explaining to him in his native language, the different objects in the museum.” “Such an exhibition,” the article continued, “in the western wilds, within thirty years the haunt of the bear, the panther, and the most ferocious aborigines, was calculated to draw forth the astonishment, as well as the admiration of the Hero.” (Quoted from Brandon, Pilgrimage of Liberty, p.332).
Other recent immigrants to Cincinnati joined Lafayette’s countrymen in welcoming the hero of two worlds to their adopted city. C.C. Febeger (or Febiger), son of Christian Febeger, a Dane who had served under Lafayette during the Virginia campaign, offered the hospitality of his elegant mansion. The Vevay Artillery, a company of Swiss from the canton of Vaud, marched from nearby Indiana to address the General and to offer “…wine of their vintage…[to] drink to the prosperity of their new country, and the improvement of their former one.” (Brandon, Pilgrimage of Liberty, p.341). According to Emil Klauprecht’s quite possibly spurious account (Deutsche Chronik), the General was surprised by the unexpected greeting of Frau Caroline Mundhenk, “…a plainly dressed, peasant-looking woman,” who had brought messages to Lafayette when he was imprisoned in Olmutz and who was now growing herbs in Cincinnati, where she lived on an alley between Wayne and St. Clair streets. (Park, “Reunion in Cincinnati”)
The émigré portraitist and genre painter, Auguste Hervieu, who accompanied Mrs. Trollope to Cincinnati in 1828, “…in the expectation of finding a good opening in the line of historical painting…” (Domestic Manners) immediately set about recreating General Lafayette’s Cincinnati visit on canvas.
Entering into partnership with a “…German, who taught drawing…” (Domestic Manners), Hervieu proposed to teach painting to the sons and daughters of Cincinnati’s more prosperous citizens. Like Mrs. Trollope’s own venture, the Academy was not successful. “…[T]he cause of its dissolution was too American to be omitted….” Mrs. Trollope noted. “…[T]he ‘sage called Discipline’ was not one of his assistants, and he remonstrated against the constant talking, and running from one part of the room to another, but in vain…” she wrote in her Domestic Manners, for which book Hervieu provided the illustrations.
When Alexis de Tocqueville visited Cincinnati in 1831 (December 1-4), he recorded no conversations with compatriots. About the city, Tocqueville’s impression was that “Cincinnati presents an odd spectacle. A town which seems to want to get built too quickly to have things done in order.” “Large buildings, huts, streets blocked by rubble, houses under construction;” he jotted in his notebook, “no names to the streets, no numbers on the houses, no external luxury, but a picture of industry and work that strikes one at every step.” (Tocqueville, Journey to America, p.265).
The principal industries and work in which the French in Cincinnati engaged during the nineteenth century included groceries, cabinetmaking, rope making, soap making, hat making, and candle making. Peter Cazelles was a silversmith and jeweler. Peter L’Horton and Jacob Paysant were confectioners. Julian L. Dennis taught French. Caspar Tranchant manufactured stockings.
At the closing decade of the nineteenth century the French born population in Cincinnati numbered 423 persons, out of a total foreign born population of 71,408 (Eleventh Decennial Census, vol. 1, table 34). According to the Report on Insurance Business in the United States, Pt.2: Life Insurance (Eleventh Decennial Census, vol. 11, Type C tables), the French had emulated the Germans by forming a societe Francais de Secours Mutuel, listed in Kenny’s Cincinnati Illustrated as the French Mutual Benefit Association.
By 1900 the French born population had increased both in numbers (743) and in percentage among Cincinnati’s total foreign born population of 57, 961 (Twelfth Decennial Census, vol. 1, table 35). French musicians assumed positions in the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra established in 1895 and heretofore almost exclusively Germanic. During the 1909/1910 season, 10% of the Orchestra’s 72 players were French, for the most part located in the woodwind section. At the time of the Symphony’s Jubilee Season, 1944-1945 there were 4 Frenchmen numbered among the orchestra’s 86 members. (Thomas, History of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra to 1931; Year Book, Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, 1944-1945).
French immigration to Cincinnati had slowed by the 1930s. Lieberson’s tables (Ethnic Patterns, p. 212) place 60.7% of Cincinnati’s French born population as having arrived in 1900 or earlier with 5.6% being males over the age of 21 whose status remained that of alien.
Quinn’s tables for 1930 (Population Characteristic, table 6) show 726 French individuals living in Cincinnati, of which 365 were males and 361 females. In terms of settlement patterns Quinn found that the French, like the English, were rather evenly distributed throughout Cincinnati’s tracts.
At the time of Cincinnati’s bicentennial 1,772 Cincinnatians had identified themselves in the 1980 decennial census as being of single French ancestry with 4,632 persons in Hamilton County making the same claim. Among those claiming French ancestry in combination with another ethnic group, 10,770 lived in Cincinnati and 33,053 in Hamilton County. (1980 Census of Population and Housing Census Tracts, table P-8). The decennial census further revealed that of the 358 French born persons in the population of the Cincinnati Standard Metropolitan Statistical Area (SMSA), 64 immigrated between 1975 and 1980; 29 between 1970 and 1974; 9 between 1965 and 1969; 30 between 1960 and 1964; 79 between 1950 and 1959; and 147 before 1950. Of these numbers, 208 were naturalized citizens while 150 remained in alien status in 1980. (1980 Detailed Population Characteristics, Ohio, table 198)
Like the English, little has been written about the French as a distinct ethnic group in Cincinnati.
General Information
See Cincinnati Historical Society Library Index to Local History Resources for information about the French in Cincinnati and individual persons of French descent.
See Cincinnati Newsdex Connect for information about the French and French culture in Cincinnati as well as information about individuals.
Conteur. “Prominent Families of French Descent in Cincinnati during the Preceding Century,” Cincinnati Enquirer, May 4, 1924. CHS; UC; PL
Also: Edwin Henderson, Historical Sketches of Early Cincinnati… CHS
General Lafayette’s Tour
See Historical Society Library Index to Local History Resources
See Cincinnati Newsdex Connect
Brandon, Edgar Ewing, comp. and ed. A Pilgrimage of Liberty: A Contemporary Account of the Triumphal Tour of General Lafayette… Athens, Ohio: The Lawhead Press, 1944. 487 pages CHS; UC; PL
____________________. Lafayette, Guest of the Nation… 3 vols. Oxford, Ohio: Oxford Historical Press, 1950-1957. CHS; PL
Butler, Frederick. Memoirs of the Marquis de La Fayette : major-general in the revolutionary army of the United States of America : together with his tour through ... Weathersfield [Conn.], 1825. 429pp.
A Complete history of the Marquis de Lafayette, major general in the army of the United States of America, in the war of the revolution : ... New-York, 1826. 503pp.
A Complete History of the Marquis de Lafayette, Major-General in the American Army… Columbus: J.& H. Miller, 1858. 504 pages Connect to resource online
Idzerda, Stanley J., et al. Lafayette, Hero of Two Worlds: The Art and Pageantry of His Farewell Tour of America, 1824-1825. Flushing, N.Y.: Queens Museum, 1989. 203 pages PL
Klamkin, Marian. The Return of Lafayette, 1824-1825. New York: Scribner, 1975. 212 pages PL
Miller, Marc H. Lafayette’s Farewell Tour of America, 1824-25: A Study of Pageantry and Public Portraiture. Thesis-Ph.D. New York University, 1979. 449 pages See WorldCat for holdings
Park, Clyde W. “Reunion in Cincinnati,” Historical and Philosophical Society of Ohio Bulletin, 18, no. 4 (1960), 278-279. CHS; UC; PL Connect to resource online
Retells Klaluprecht’s story from his Deutsche Chronik:
Klauprecht, Emil. Deutsche Chronik in der Geschichte des Ohio-Thales… Cincinnati: G. Hof & M.A. Jacobi, 1864. 198 pages CHS; PL
_____________. German Chronicle in the History of the Ohio Valley and its Capital City, Cincinnati, in Particular… Translated from German into English by Don Heinrich Tolzmann. Bowie, Md.: Heritage Books, 1992. 265 pages CHS; UC; PL
A biographical essay on the Marquis de Lafayette appears in:
American National Biography Connect
Articles about Lafayette’s American tour and visit to Cincinnati may be located in:
America: History & Life Connect
American Periodicals Series Connect (Contains many contemporary articles from Cincinnati sources)
JSTOR Connect
Nineteenth Century Masterfile Connect
Ohio History Connect
Alexis de Tocqueville
Tocqueville, Alexis de. Journey to America. Translated by George Lawrence and edited by J.P. Mayer. London: Faber and Faber, 1959. 394 pages UC
See also: Revised and augmented edition. New York: Doubleday, 1971. 424 pages UC
For editions of his Democracy in America consult individual library catalogs
A biographical essay about Alexis de Tocqueville may be read in:
American National Biography Connect
Articles about Alexis de Tocqueville’s views of the United States may be found using:
America: History & Life Connect
American Periodicals Series Connect
JSTOR Connect
Auguste Hervieu
“Joseph Dorfeuille,” Cincinnati Art Museum Bulletin, n.s. no.3 (August 1953), 4. UC
Reproduces Hervieu’s portrait.
McDermott, John Francis. Mrs. Trollope’s Illustrator: Auguste Hervieu in America, (1827-1831). "Extrait de la Gazette des Beaux-Arts." [s.]:s.n., 1970 See WorldCat for holdings.
Also: Gazette des Beaux-Arts, s6 v51 (Mar. 1958) p. 169-90 UC
Stewart, Robert G. “Auguste Hervieu, A Portrait Painter in Cincinnati,” Queen City Heritage, 47, no. 1 (Spring 1989), 23-31. CHS; UC; PL Connect to resource online
Young, M.S., “Europe and North America,” Apollo, 194, no.175 (September 1976), 176-181. UC
Reviews an exhibit, “European Vision of America,” that includes Hervieu’s frontispiece to Mrs. Trollope’s Domestic Manners.
A biographical sketch of Hervieu appears in:
Haverstock, Mary Sayre. Artists in Ohio, 1787-1900: A Biographical Dictionary. Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 2000. CHS; UC; PL
New York Historical Society. Dictionary of Artists in America, 1564-1860. George C. Groce and David H. Wallace. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1957. UC
Who Was Who in American Art, 1564-1975: 400 Years of Artists in America. Peter Hastings Falk, editor-in-chief. Newly revised and expanded. 3 vols Madison, CT.: Sound View Press, 1999. UC; PL
For additional material relating to Hervieu or images of his art see:
Academic Search Complete Connect
America: History and Life Connect
American Periodicals Series Connect
ARTstor Connect
Bibliography of the History of Art Connect
Cincinnati Newsdex Connect
JSTOR Connect
New York Times (Historical) Connect
NYPL Digital Gallery Connect
Ohio History Connect
Periodicals Archive Online Connect
Wilson Omni File Connect
Sally Moffitt
Office hours by appointment: Sally.Moffitt@uc.edu
401M Langsam Library
June 2008