Jérôme Napoleon Bonaparte

Jérôme Napoléon "Bo" Bonaparte (5 July 1805 – 17 June 1870) was a French-American farmer, chairman of the Maryland Agricultural Society, first president of the Maryland Club, and the son of Elizabeth Patterson and Jérôme Bonaparte, brother of Napoleon I.

Biography

He was born in 95 Camberwell Grove, Camberwell, London, but lived in the United States with his wealthy American mother. Jérôme's mother's marriage had been annulled by order of Jérôme's uncle, French Emperor Napoleon I. The annulment caused the rescission of his right to carry the Bonaparte name; though the ruling was later reversed by his cousin, Napoleon III.

It is speculated that Jérôme's prospective title is a reason the 11th Congress of the United States in 1810 proposed the Titles of Nobility Amendment to the U.S. Constitution that would strip an American of his citizenship if he accepted a title of nobility from a foreign nation. The amendment has never been approved, lacking the approval of only two state legislatures at that time.

He graduated from Mount St. Mary's College (now Mount St. Mary's University) in 1817 and later received a law degree from Harvard but did not practice the law. He was a founding member of the Maryland Club, serving as its first president

In November 1829, Jérôme Napoleon married Susan May Williams, an heiress from Baltimore, and it is from them that the American line of the Bonaparte family descended. They had two sons: Jerome Napoleon Bonaparte II (1830-1893), officer in the armies of both the United States and France; and Charles Joseph Bonaparte (1851-1921), United States Attorney General and Secretary of the Navy, no issue.

Jérôme Napoleon had refused to wait for an arranged marriage to a European princess, instead opting for the $200,000 fortune that Susan brought to the marriage. In an attempt to match the railroad heiress's dowry, the groom's maternal grandfather, William Patterson — one of the wealthiest men in Maryland — gave the couple Montrose Mansion as a wedding gift.

Jérôme Napoleon Bonaparte died in Baltimore, Maryland, and is buried in the Loudon Park Cemetery, Baltimore.