Antoine Charles Cazenove

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Antoine Charles Cazenove
Swiss Consul to the United States for the District of Columbia and the Southern States
In office
July 1822 – 16 October 1852
Personal details
Born8 April 1775
Geneva, Switzerland
Died16 October 1852
SpouseAnn Hogan
Children3

Antoine Charles Cazenove (8 April 1775 – 16 October 1852) (born Antoine Charles de Cazenove) was a Swiss-American businessman and diplomat.

Biography[edit]

Antoine Charles Cazenove was born on 8 April 1775 to Paul Cazenove and Jeanne-Elisabeth Martin.[1] His ancestry traced to a Huguenot family of Nîmes, France which upon the declaration of the Edict of Nantes was forced to flee to Geneva, Republic of Geneva.[2] Cazenove attended military school in Colmar but, unsatisfied with soldier livelihood, convinced his father to let him drop out one year before completing his education and join banking relatives in London (his classmates who graduated later served as Louis XVI's guards during the 10 August Revolution in France). After three years of work he returned to Geneva to visit his parents. However, conflict spilled over from the French Revolution the city was briefly seized by Jacobins. Cazenove, his father, and his older brother were imprisoned with other local aristocrats in a granary. The brothers were brought to trial but were acquitted of any wrongdoing and released.[3]

Following the release of his father, Cazenove and his family traveled through Germany to Hamburg, where they took a ship to Britain, and then to Philadelphia, the United States, arriving in November 1794. Cazenove's family later went back to France.[2] He married a woman he met in Philadelphia, Ann Hogan,[3] and eventually had two sons and a daughter with her in America.[2] Originally planning to return to Geneva, Cazenove arranged for all of his children to have citizenship of the city.[4] He partnered with Albert Gallatin in establishing a glassworks plant in Uniontown, Pennsylvania (the first in the United States) and later erected several mills west of the Allegheny Mountains. John Jacob Astor offered him a job assisting in his burgeoning fur trade business, but he declined.[5]

In 1799 Cazenove moved to Alexandria, Virginia.[6] The following year he was hired as an agent by the E. I. du Pont de Nemours and Company and purchased several warehouses in the area on its behalf.[7] He later founded A.C. Cazenove & Company and served as director of the Bank of Alexandria.[8] By 1822, Cazenove had established himself as a successful wine and tobacco merchant in the city. In July, he was appointed by the Swiss Federal Diet to be one of the two first Swiss consuls in the United States. He performed his consular duties alongside his regular business activities in an honorary capacity until 1852, with his later service containing more formal diplomatic functions.[9] He also performed diplomatic duties for some of the smaller states of the German Confederation, such as the Grand Duchy of Mecklenburg.[10]

Citations[edit]

  1. ^ Burnet 1925, p. 401.
  2. ^ a b c Packard 1902, p. 163.
  3. ^ a b Graves 1891, p. 19.
  4. ^ Graves 1891, pp. 19–20.
  5. ^ Graves 1891, p. 20.
  6. ^ Brock 1886, p. xiii.
  7. ^ Riker 2009, p. 11.
  8. ^ Jarnagin 2014, p. 154.
  9. ^ Meier 1963, p. 16.
  10. ^ Meier 1963, p. 17.

References[edit]

  • Brock, Robert Alonzo (1886). Documents, Chiefly Unpublished, Relating to the Huguenot Emigration to Virginia and to the Settlement at Manakin-Town: With an Appendix of Genealogies, Presenting Data of the Fontaine, Maury, Dupuy, Trabue, Marye, Chastain, Cocke, and Other Families. Collections of the Virginia Historical Society. Vol. 5. Richmond, Virginia: Virginia Historical Society.
  • Burnet, Edouard Louis (1925). Le Premier Tribunal Revolutionnaire Genevois (in French). Librairie Droz. ISBN 9782600050104.
  • Graves, Gertrude Montague (1891). Reminiscences of the family of Captain John Fowle of Watertown, Massachusetts with genealogical notes of some of his ancestors, descendants and family connections. Boston: David Clapp & Son.
  • Jarnagin, Laura (2014). A Confluence of Transatlantic Networks: Elites, Capitalism, and Confederate Migration to Brazil (reprint ed.). University of Alabama Press. ISBN 9780817357788.
  • Meier, Heinz K. (1963). The United States and Switzerland in the Nineteenth Century. Studies in American History. Vol. I. The Hague: Mouton & Co. OCLC 460421554.
  • Packard, Joseph (1902). Packard, Thomas Jones (ed.). Recollections of a Long Life. Washington, D. C.: Byron S. Adams.
  • Riker, Diane (2009), The Warehouses of Lower King Street (PDF), Studies of the Old Waterfront, Alexandria, Virginia: Office of Historic Alexandria
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