This book, called "French Memories" is a "Register of French Sites in the United States", and destined for print and digital publication. It will be made available in electronic format to our Members in good standing, and available, we hope, in print, for sale to a wider public. Proceeds and possible royalties will go entirely to our association.

Think of it as a "Dictionnaire Amoureux", or, loosely translated, "Postcards of love compilation" paying tribute to all the explorers, soldiers, missionaries, entrepreneurs of French origin, whether illustrious or long-forgotten, who discovered and helped fashion our great Nation.

A special and warm word of Welcome to our first new Regional Delegates who have accepted to be our official representatives in the following regions:

• Inscription:

Photo: By CaptJayRuffins - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=99961736

• The Lafayette Memorial is a public memorial located in Brooklyn's Prospect Park in New York City at the Ninth Street entrance on the park's west side.

• Designed by sculptor Daniel Chester French (1850–1931) and architect Henry Bacon, it consists of a bas-relief of Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette alongside a groom (speculated by most historians to be James Armistead Lafayette) and a horse. The nearly ten-foot-high relief was a gift of Henry Harteau, a Brooklyn glass insurer (and NYC Parks Commissioner) of French ancestry, and was unveiled by French Marshall Joffre and former Prime Minister of France René Viviani, (1914-1915) who came to the States as members of the French War Commission (the oft-forgotten "Mission Viviani Joffre", from April 24, 1917 to May 14, 1917, which facilitated the creation of the modern American army and the entry into the war of the United States).

• The sculpture shows General Lafayette at center with stoic demeanor, while to his left the horse appears to nip at the groomsman who seems to recoil to avoid injury, giving humanity to the otherwise formal narrative. The bas-relief is based in part on a painting Lafayette at Yorktown by Jean-Baptiste Le Paon, as dictated in the bequest by Harteau. Some historians have speculated that the figure of the groomsman in Le Paon’s painting and other related engravings of the time is James Armistead.

• James Armistead (c. 1748 – 1830) was born into slavery in Virginia, taking his last name from his owner William Armistead. He volunteered for military service during the Revolution, and served Lafayette as a spy, posing as a runaway slave to gain information beyond enemy lines, which was instrumental in the successful Yorktown campaign. On January 7, 1787, in acknowledgement of his valor, Armistead was granted freedom by the Virginia legislature. In gratitude to the Marquis, who was a staunch abolitionist, he adopted Lafayette as his last name. He later became a prosperous farmer in Virginia, owning slaves himself.

Artist: Jean Baptiste Le Paon, 1738 - 1785; Sitter: Marquis de Lafayette, 6 Sep 1757 - 20 May 1834: James Lafayette, c. 1748 - 9 Aug 1830 Lafayette College Art Collection, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=43910499

Luzerne County, Pennsylvania 

Dome mural inside Luzerne County Courthouse 

Anne-César de La Luzerne (15 July 1741 – 14 September 1791) was an 18th-century French soldier and diplomat who had an influential role to the Continental Congress and new government of the United States of America after it gained independence from Great Britain.

• Anne-César de La Luzerne joined the French Royal Army in 1754. He commanded the Grenadiers royaux de France, reaching the rank of Major-General in 1762.

• He entered diplomatic service as French Minister Plenipotentiary, first to Bavaria (1777–1778), and then in the United States.

• During his time in Philadelphia, established as a base for the Continental Congress, when the British occupied New York City, he never failed to show his sympathy for the young Republic.

• King Louis XVI made him a Marquis in 1785. 

At Point State Park in downtown Pittsburgh, bricks mark the outline of the former site of Fort Duquesne

Photo: Kevin Myers at the English-language Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0 <hpp://crealvecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/>, via Wikimedia Commons 

• Fort Duquesne, originally called Fort Du Quesne, was a fort established by the French in 1754, at the confluence of the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers.

• As the area was within the drainage basin of the Mississippi River, the French had claimed it as theirs. They controlled New France (Quebec), the Illinois Country along the Mississippi, and La Louisiane (the ports of New Orleans and Mobile, Alabama, and environs).

• In the early 1750s, the French began construction of a line of forts, starting with Fort Presque Isle on Lake Erie followed by Fort Le Boeuf, near Waterford, PA, and Fort Machault, near Franklin, PA. Built on marshy lands and vulnerable due to surrounding highlands, Fort Duquesne was destroyed by the French, prior to British conquest during the Seven Years' War, known as the French and Indian War on the North American front. It was rebuilt under the name Fort Pitt, hence ”Pittsburgh”.

Pierre Samuel du Pont de Nemours (1739-1817), By Unknown author - Hagley Museum and Library, Wilmington, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=111801128

• Pierre Samuel du Pont de Nemours (14 December 1739 – 7 August 1817) was a French-American writer, economist, publisher and government official.

• He helped negotiate the treaty of 1783 on France’s side consecrating American Independence as well as the Treaty of Commerce between France and England of 1786. He was the president of the National Constituent Assembly in the early days of the French Revolution and was a close friend of Thomas Jefferson.

• He, his two sons and their families immigrated to the United States.

His son Éleuthère Irénée du Pont who studied chemistry in Paris under Lavoisier, founded with Major Louis de Tousard (later general in the US Army, and instrumental in the creation of the Military Academy of West Point), a gunpowder manufacturing plant, E. I. du Pont de Nemours and Company.

• He was the patriarch and progenitor of one of the United States' most successful and wealthiest business dynasties of the 19th and 20th centuries. 

“Jean-Jules Jusserand, Ambassador of France“ 

Jean Jules Jusserand, French Ambassador to the United States from 1902 to 1925

• Inscription:

“The granite bench before you commemorates the scholarship, wisdom and skilled diplomacy of Jean Jules Jusserand, French Ambassador to the United States from 1902 to 1925.

"The memorial's inscription, "Personal Tribute of Esteem and Affection" reflects the admiration felt for him locally, nationally and internationally. Jusserand loved Rock Creek Park and frequently walked here with family and friends."

"Jusserand's writings earned him recognition at home and abroad. He won the first Pulitzer Prize in History for With Americans of Past and Present Days, a book recounting the key contributions of many Frenchmen to the history of the United States, including Pierre Charles l'Enfant, designer of the city of Washington."

"Almost we can say--that he was a great American as well as a great Frenchman. We shall link Mr. Jusserand's name forever with the names of Lafayette and Rochambeau and De Grasse and the other valiant Frenchmen whose services in this country entitle them for all time to the grateful remembrance of all Americans." —Franklin Delano Roosevelt at the Jusserand Memorial dedication, November 7, 1936.

"Erected by: The City of Lyon; The American Society of the French Legion of Honor; The Touraine Litteraire, Inc.; Rock Creek Park, National Park Service, U.S. Department of the Interior"

Note: Jules Jusserand was also instrumental in the creation of the Alliance Française in 1884, which is today the largest non-governmental cultural institution in the world with 1000 establishments in 136 countries.

• Inscription:

• Antoine de la Mothe, sieur de Cadillac (March 5, 1658 – October 16, 1730), born Antoine Laumet, was a French explorer and adventurer in New France, which stretched from Eastern Canada to Louisiana on the Gulf of Mexico.

• He rose from a modest beginning in Acadia in 1683 as an explorer, trapper, and a trader of alcohol and furs, achieving various positions of political importance in the colony.

• In 1701, he founded Fort Pontchartrain du Détroit (which became the city of Detroit); he was commandant of the fort until 1710. Between 1710 and 1716, he was the governor of Louisiana, although he did not arrive in that territory until 1713.

• His knowledge of the coasts of New England and the Great Lakes area was appreciated by Frontenac, governor of New France, and Pontchartrain, Secretary of State for the Navy. This earned him various favors, including the Order of Saint Louis from King Louis XIV. The Jesuits in Canada, however, accused him of perverting the Indians with his alcohol trading, and he was imprisoned for a few months in Quebec in 1704, and again in the Bastille on his return to France in 1717.

• William H. Murphy and Henry M. Leland founded the Cadillac auto company and paid homage to him by using his name for their company and his armorial bearings as its logo in 1902.

• Various places bear his name in America, in particular Cadillac Mountain in Maine and the town of Cadillac, Michigan. 

Photo of Cadillac motor car logo, c.1950s, being the coat of arms of Antoine Laumet de La Mothe, sieur de Cadillac;  by JOHN LLOYD from Concrete, Washington, United States - Cadillac, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=66346291

• Inscription:

• In order to thank King Louis XVI for his actions to help the United States become an independent nation, the Virginia legislature named a Virginia settlement in his honor. The town of Louisville was officially chartered by the Virginia Legislature in 1780, and became part of Kentucky upon the commonwealth’s statehood in 1797.

• The statue is 12 feet tall and weighs 9 tons. This marble representation of Louisville’s namesake was commissioned by the king’s daughter, Marie-Therese, and originally unveiled in the 1820’s in Montpellier, France, 36 years after his beheading. Louisville and Montpellier had become sister cities in 1956, and the then-138-year-old Achille-Joseph Valois sculpture was presented to Louisville Mayor Kenneth Schmied as a gift of friendship between the two cities.

• King Louis XVI holds a special place in the memories of patriotic Americans. His portrait hangs in the dining room of Mount Vernon, the home of George Washington, who also decreed that a mass would be said every year in perpetuity to thank France, and its King, for their help during the War of Independence.

• Inscription of the marker:

• Jacques-Timothée Boucher, Sieur de Montbrun (March 23, 1747 – 1826), anglicized as Timothy Demonbreun, was a French-Canadian fur trader, a Lieutenant in the American Revolution, and Lieutenant-Governor of the Illinois Territory.

• Born in Québec, Demonbreun traveled extensively, became a successful trader with many employees, and managed two careers and two families. He fulfilled his duties as lieutenant governor of the Illinois Territory and maintained a family in Kaskaskia, Illinois.

• Demonbreun had five children by his wife, Therese Archange Gibault, in Illinois. During his time in Nashville, he took a mistress named Elizabeth Bennett and had three children by her.

• He entertained the Duke of Orleans (later King Louis Philippe) when he visited Nashville in 1798.

• When he died in 1826, Demonbreun divided his substantial fortune among his children.

.• Inscription 1st marker:

• Inscription 2nd marker:

• Doctor Odet Philippe, considered the founding father of Safety Harbor, Florida, near current-day Tampa.

• Widely acknowledged as the first non-native person to permanently settle in Pinellas County, Philippe is credited with introducing grapefruit to Florida and is recognized as the first cigar maker in Tampa.

• At his plantation, located in what is now Philippe Park, he cultivated citrus groves and developed new methods of budding and grafting.

• Today, he is considered responsible for the growth of Florida’s citrus industry.

• Inscription:

Marker located at 499 North State Street, Saint Ignace MI 49781

• Jacques Marquette, French Jesuit missionary and explorer, was born in Laon, France, on June 1, 1637. After years of preparatory study and teaching, he arrived in Quebec in 1666, and studied Indian language and culture.

• Marquette established Michigan's earliest European settlements at Sault Ste. Marie and St. Ignace near Mackinac Island in 1668 and 1671. He lived among the Great Lakes Indians from 1666 to his death in 1675. Father Marquette mastered several native languages and joined Louis Jolliet in his expedition to explore and map a navigable route to the Pacific Ocean, which resulted in the French discovery of the Mississippi River.

• Dozens of places and monuments are named after him, and his statue is placed in the National Statuary Hall of the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C.

• Jacques Marquette is a statue by Gaetano Trentanove of Jacques Marquette, the best-known version being the 1896 marble one installed in the National Statuary Hall Collection in the US Capitol. It is one of two donated by the state of Wisconsin. The work was accepted into the senate in 1896. Another version of the statue is the 1897 bronze casting located in Pere Marquette Park, Marquette, Michigan. In 1909, a third version was dedicated in Marquette Park on Mackinac Island, Michigan. A plaster version of the statue is located at the State Historical Society of Wisconsin

• Inscription:

Presented to the city by William Wrigley Jr. 1928

Erected 1928 by William Wrigley Jr.

The Discoverers by James Earle Fraser, 1928. This sculpture adorns the wall of the north eastern bridge tender's house on DuSable bridge in Chicago, Illinois. By User:JeremyA - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=11743388

• The bridge is situated in a historically significant area. The northern end of the bridge covers part of the Jean Baptiste Point Du Sable Homesite, which is commemorated by a National Historic plaque in Pioneer Court. In 1928, sculptures depicting scenes from Chicago's history were added to the outward-facing walls of the four bridge houses.

• “This relief portrays French explorers Louis Joliet and Jacques Marquette, who determined in 1678 that Chicago was the site of the passage between the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River system, and Rene Robert Cavelier - Sieur de La Salle, and his lieutenant, Henri de Tonti, who explored the entire Mississippi River area between 1679 and 1682. Although Marquette was a Jesuit priest, he is depicted in the robes of a Franciscan monk. There is a profile of a kneeling Indian in the foreground. An allegorical female figure floats above the more boldly carved, Beaux-Arts figure group” (Smithsonian Institution Research)

• Henri de Tonti, mentioned in the inscription, is known as "The Father of Arkansas" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henri_de_Tonti)

• The name Chicago is derived from a French rendering of the indigenous Miami-Illinois word shikaakwa for a local variety of the onion. The first known reference to the site of the current city of Chicago as "Checagou" was by Robert de la Salle around 1679 in a memoir.

• The first known non-indigenous permanent settler in Chicago was trader Jean Baptiste Point du Sable. Du Sable was of African descent, perhaps born in the French colony of Saint-Domingue (Haiti), and established the settlement in the 1780s. He is commonly known as the "Founder of Chicago”.

• Point du Sable married a Potawatomi woman named Kitihawa (Christianized to Catherine) on 27 October 1788, in a Catholic ceremony in Cahokia in the Illinois Country, a longtime French colonial settlement on the east side of the Mississippi River. They had a son named Jean and a daughter named Susanne.

• A bust and marker in his honor is located nearby on Pioneer Court by the river (41.889217, -87.623833)

Jean-Baptiste Benard de la Harpe made an extensive tour of eastern Oklahoma in 1718-1719. The Caddo guided the la Harpe Expedition to a Wichita village along the "Alcansas" river near present-day Tulsa, Oklahoma. Along the way the explorer noted the bounty of flora and fauna. La Harpe established a formal relationship with both the Caddo and the Wichita that would ensure decades of trade. Moreover, he sent geographer Gaston du Rivage 180 miles up the Red River and established a thriving trade and successful alliance with the tribes on the upper Red River.” 

Map of the new part of western French Louisiana / made ​​on the observations and findings of Mr. Benard de La Harpe one of the commanders of. Countries; Copied by Jean-Baptiste d'Anville. By Jean Baptiste Bourguignon d'Anville - Bibliothèque nationale de France, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=40961582

• Jean-Baptiste Bénard de la Harpe (1683 in Saint-Malo –1765) was a French officer, trader and explorer who is credited with the discovery of Little Rock, Arkansas. He was also the first known French explorer to set foot in the future state of Oklahoma.

• In 1718, La Harpe left France, along with 40 men, and established a trading post in April 1719 on the Red River near what is now Texarkana, Texas. after 23 days of traveling, La Harpe and his party reached a large settlement 13 miles south of Tulsa, OK.

• The importance of La Harpe's exploration is that it was one of the two first-known French contacts with the Wichita and Apache Indians and the first known French expedition to set foot in the future state of Oklahoma.

• In 1722, La Harpe ascended the Arkansas River and found two distinct rock formations on the Arkansas River, the smaller one the South bank he named Le petit rocher and the larger on the North bank le rocher francais.

• Later in 1722, he presided over the transfer of Pensacola, Florida to the Spanish. In 1723 he returned to France and never came back to the Americas.

• Inscription:

(side 2)

"Erected 1936 by State of Texas"

• Robert Cavelier was born on November 22, 1643, into well-off family in Rouen. He became a jesuit and sailed for New France in the spring of 1666 but was soon released from the Society of Jesus after citing "moral weaknesses”.

• He received the title Sieur de La Salle with his seigneurial purchase of Lachine near Montréal and soon learned several native languages, such as the Iroquois and Seneca.

• He began to plan for expeditions to find a western passage to China. He built ships such as the Griffon to navigate the Great Lakes and build forts such as Fort Conti and Fort Miami.

• In 1679, with a party of 40 men, he went on to explore the Mississipi River, taking him to today’s Peoria, IL, (Fort Crevecoeur) Memphis, TN, (Fort Prudhomme), reaching the Gulf of Mexico in 1682 where he named the basin Louisiana in honor of King Louis XIV. In 1684 he went on an ill-fated mission to Texas (see further down the expedition of La Belle shipwreck) and after wandering for two years lost in the marshes of the Mississipi delta, he was killed during a mutiny near Navasota, TX on March 19, 1687.

• Dozens of sites throughout the United States bear the name of La Salle, with monuments and markers in several States.

• Inscription:

• Jean-François de Galaup de La Pérouse (August 23, 1741 - 1788?) was born near Albi in Southwest France.

• Having enlisted in the French Navy at the age of 15, he had a successful naval career and in 1785, was appointed to lead a scientific expedition around the world. His ships stopped in Chile, Hawaii, Alaska, California, Macau, Japan, Russia, and Australia, before wrecking on the reefs of Vanikoro in the Solomon Islands.

• He first distinguished himself during the Revolutionary War of Independence, commanding the frigate Amazone.

• La Pérouse and his ships were the first non-Spanish European visitors to this region of Alta California. On 15th September 1786 the Boussole and the Astrolabe dropped anchor in the Bay and were given an enthusiastic reception. The fort of Monterey fired a seven-gun salute in welcome. During their ten-day visit, the French visitors received generous offers of supplies for their voyage. There is a memorial plaque commemorating La Pérouse's visit at the entrance to the present-day San Carlos de Borromeo church in Carmel, presented by the French government in 1948.

• La Perouse Bay in Maui, Hawaii, is named after him, (he was the first to set foot on Maui) as well as dozens of sites from Alaska to Australia.

•Excerpt from “Voyage around the world” de La Pérouse:

« Although the French are the first to have stepped onto the island of Mowee in recent times, I did not take possession of it in the King’s name. This European practice is too utterly ridiculous, and philosophers must reflect with some sadness that, because one has muskets and canons, one looks upon 60000 inhabitants as worth nothing, ignoring their rights over a land where for centuries their ancestors have been buried, which they have watered with their sweat, and whose fruits they pick to bring them as offerings to the so-called new landlords...Modern navigators have no other purpose when they describe the customs of newly discovered people than to complete the story of mankind. We would have felt ourselves well regarded from the great hardships this campaign has caused us if we had succeeded in eradicating the practice of human sacrifices that is common among most of the South Sea islanders.»

• This statue if a replica of the gilt bronze equestrian sculpture of Joan of Arc by sculptor Emmanuel Frémiet, Place des Pyramides, Paris.

The sculptor took as his model Aimée Girod (1856–1937), a young woman from Domrémy, Joan of Arc's village in Lorraine.

• Dr. Henry Waldo Coe, a prominent Republican and friend of Theodore Roosevelt who went on hunting trips with him in the years 1884-86, donated the statue to the city in 1924 in honor of the doughboys of World War I. (He gifted three other statues to the city, including one of Theodore Roosevelt, one of Abraham Lincoln, and one of George Washington, the latter removed during the street protests of 2020).

• His son unveiled her during a patriotic ceremony on Memorial Day, 1926, a day that was also the anniversary of her martyrdom (May 31, 1431). Joan of Arc was the patron saint of the Doughboys while they fought in Europe during World War I.

It is reported that the Doughboys would even sing Joan of Arc, They Are Calling You (http://www.idaillinois.org/digital/collection/p16614coll23/id/365) as they marched into battle.

• The statue was restored in 2005, thanks to The National Endowment for the Arts as well as Target Stores, who created made a 'Save Outdoor Sculpture' conservation award of $24,000 towards the work needed on the statue.

• It is one of 8 such replicas of this statue of Joan of Arc in the world: Paris, Nancy, Mircourt and Lille - all in France; and Melbourne, Australia; New Orleans, LA and Philadelphia, PA.

During "Black History Month" we paid tribute to Eugene Bullard, this long-forgotten American hero, who enrolled as a volunteer in the French Army,

In March we told the story of these two gallant French Navy Officers who died for the cause of Freedom in 1780.

In May we told the relatively unknown story of all the thousands of French Air Force cadets who came to train in US Air Force bases alongside British Royal Air Force pilots. 163 lost their lives during training and are buried in military cemeteries in Alabama and Michigan.

We continued the story in July with many anecdotes of the march through Connecticut and the junction with the Continental Army in Westchester County in New York.

In August we narrated the brilliant strategy of the combined French and American forces to bypass New York, deceive British general Clinton, and rush to Yorktown through New Jersey to confront Lord Cornwallis.

With the decisive Battle of the Capes off the coast of Virginia on September 5th, 1781, Admiral de Grasse ensured that the British army would be trapped in Yorktown and allowed the combined French and American forces to start the victorious siege the following month.

In October, we remembered the victorious siege in Yorktown of October 19, 1781 which paved the way for the Independence of the United States.

The play will be in French: it is lively and humorous....and not to be missed !

Limited seating. Please rsvp : francisdubois2005@yahoo.fr

Paul Claudel, one of France's most celebrated writer, novelist and playwright of the XXth Century, had also been Deputy-Consul General of France in New York in 1893, and Ambassador of France to Washington from 1928 to 1933.

Paul Claudel, Cover of Time Magazine (21 March 1927)

Make sure to watch on YouTube the newest episode of "Follow The Frenchmen" from the Washington Navy Yard!

Visit the captivating "Follow the Frenchmen" series and its latest episode presented by our friend Julien Icher, President of TheLafayetteTrail.org.

Please contact https://friendsoflafayette.wildapricot.org/ for membership and reservations information

Promoted maréchal de camp in 1780, Viomesnil served under Rochambeau in America during the Yorktown campaign.

• To preserve the memory of the French soldiers, sailors and airmen who gave their lives for freedom, and who are buried in the United States.

• To honor French Citizens who did great deeds in the United States, or with a strong connection with the United States, 

• To promote the appreciation for French culture and heritage in the United States, and the ideals that unite our two nations, in order to pass the torch of memory to younger generations.

• To strengthen the long-standing traditional bonds of friendship between the American and French peoples, and to this end: erect or maintain memorials and monuments and encourage historical research, public presentations and publications in the media. 

In the United States, the American Society of Le Souvenir Français (Souvenir Français USA) has been represented since the First World War by a General Delegate, among whom were Dr Jules Pierre, MM. Bruno Kaiser, Colonel Roger Cestac, Christian Bickert, Mathieu Petitjean, and Jean Lachaud. The association is presided since November 2020 by CC(H) Thierry Chaunu (H) Lt Cdr., French Navy.

AN EASY WAY TO GIVE

Did you know that a portion of every purchase you make on Amazon can benefit American Society of Le Souvenir Francais Inc, at no cost to you?

Simply go to: smile.amazon.com, designate American Society of Le Souvenir Francais Inc. as your beneficiary, and shop away!

Email: info@SouvenirFrancaisUSA.org Tel: (212) 328-0150