Encyclopedia > Jean de Crèvecoeur

  Article Content

Jean de Crèvecoeur

Jean de Crévecoeur (1735-1813), French-American writer

Born Michel Guillaume Jean de Crévecoeur on December 31, 1735 in Caen, Normandie, France, in 1755 he emigrated to New France in North America. There, he served in the French and Indian War. Following the British defeat of the French Army in 1759 he moved to New York State where he took up farming and in 1770 married an American girl, Mehitable Tippet.

In 1792 he wrote the important story titled: Letters from an American Farmer[?]. This work provided useful information and understanding of the "New World" that helped to create an American identity in the minds of Europeans by describing an entire country rather than another regional colony. The writing celebrated American ingenuousness and its uncomplicated lifestyle and spelled out the acceptance of religious diversity in a melting pot being created from a variety of ethnic and cultural backgrounds. He was the first writer to explore the concept of the "American Dream."

In 1779 he returned to France where he stayed for a few years before coming back to New York City as the French Consul. There, he was elected to the American Philosophical Society.

In 1790, Jean de Crevecoeur left America permanently, returning to France. On November 12, 1813, he passed away in Sarcelles[?], Val d'Oise, France of a heart ailment that was discovered when he was arrested as an American spy.



All Wikipedia text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License

 
  Search Encyclopedia

Search over one million articles, find something about almost anything!
 
 
  
  Featured Article
Great River, New York

... the age of 18, 5.0% from 18 to 24, 29.0% from 25 to 44, 24.2% from 45 to 64, and 12.7% who are 65 years of age or older. The median age is 39 years. For every 100 females ...

 
 
 
This page was created in 34.7 ms