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14 A Model Colonist I now consider myself as nothing but an Ameri­ can farmer. . . . I am the first in this region to have shown the Ameri­ cans the fruit with which one makes the claret that they are rather fond of. . . . I willingly gave up the title of first farmer of the colony in order to always merit that of good payer on whom one can count. —Jacques Lajonie, Aigleville, June 24, 1820, August 15, 1820, January 2, 1821 The nature of the relations between the French colonists and those who shared their environment does not sufficiently explain the success of some and the failure of most.The Indians, pushed west of the Tombigbee, were peaceful, and the slaves docile. Some Anglo-­ Ameri­ can farmers were certainly unfriendly, taking advantage of the naïveté of the French, occupying their lands, defaulting on payments, but this was not the rule: as neighbors, they got along, struck up friendships, and inter­ married. Could the French colonists, for the most part Catholics, have lacked the famed “Protestant work ethic” of the English, German, and Swiss, which enabled them to carry out their agricultural or commercial ventures so successfully? Lajonie was a Catholic by baptism, a Huguenot at heart, and an atheist by conviction . Most of the Colonial Society members who went to Alabama abandoned their allotments shortly after settling on them, discouraged by obstacles and harsh natu­ ral conditions. During his twelve years in the colony, Lajonie was not spared. But pride, and his desire to return home with enough assets to start over, enabled him to succeed. He was a true Ameri­ can farmer, both in his own mind and in the minds of the colonists who saw him at work, admiring his exceptional strength of will and integrity. How many did as much as he for the sake of the colony? From Day to Day A pioneer planter supposedly had no time to write,1 but all evidence is to the contrary . Work, illness, and the countless vicissitudes of everyday life for the émigrés in Alabama never prevented them from communicating with each other in the United States or with people in France. A Model Colonist • 283 Correspondence Issues Lajonie’s correspondence and the evidence from other letter-­ writing exiles show that most of them frequently took up the pen: Victoire George writing to Stephen Girard, Desnoëttes to Clauzel, Mangon to Lajonie, the younger Lallemand to his wife, Pénières to his brother. . . . Between the two continents, the most difficult thing was not writing and sending mail but waiting for an answer,as the movement of letters was as long and uncertain in one direction as in the other—navigation on the Mobile and Tombigbee, transit through the St. Stephens post office and seaports , the ocean crossing, frequent losses necessitating duplicate and triplicate copies . From the banks of the Dordogne to the White Bluffs via Bordeaux, New Orleans , and Mobile, two and a half months was the minimum, and twice that time for return mail.2 It is understandable that in the solitude and isolation of wilderness , two hundred miles from Mobile, which was itself just beginning to develop and was periodically made even more isolated by deaths from yellow fever, maintaining contact, asking for material or moral support, and giving and receiving news was more important to the colonists than to their addressees in France or in other, less isolated parts of America. During the period before his wife arrived, Lajonie was constantly asking for news from France and complaining that he did not get enough. Before leaving the East Coast on his long journey to the South, he wrote to his family: “I should like to tell you that it is rare to see one of your letters completely filled.Tell me, is it for lack of subjects or for fear of boring me? . . . I want details down to the largest cabbage of your garden. . . . Everything around you interests me. As for me, I am eager to be in my new possessions. What descriptions will I not be able to give you!” (April–May 1817). Six letters from Philadelphia and Baltimore, announcing his departure for New Orleans, went unanswered: “I found consolation for the difficulties of my journey by persuading myself that several letters were awaiting me. . . . What was my fate at my arrival? No letters” (June 1817). This discrepancy between France and America was an endless source of dissatisfaction for Lajonie, ever hungry for...

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