Quick Facts
Biography
Jerome-Napoleon Bonaparte II (1830-1893) was an American soldier who served in the French Army. He was the son of Jérôme Napoléon Bonaparte and Susan May Williams.
Biography
He was the grandson of Jérôme Bonaparte, King of Westphalia, and the grandnephew of Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte of France.
He entered the United States Military Academy at West Point in 1848 and graduated 11th in the Class of 1852. Upon graduation, he was commissioned as a second lieutenant and served in Texas with the Regiment of Mounted Riflemen. His letters from Fort Inge and Fort Ewell have been preserved by the Maryland Historical Society.
He resigned from the U.S. Army in August 1854 to serve in the army of his first cousin-once-removed, Napoleon III of France, and a few weeks later was commissioned as a lieutenant of dragoons in the French Army. He fought in the Crimean War, Algeria, the Italian campaign, and the Franco-Prussian War, rising to the rank of lieutenant colonel.
Following the Siege of Paris, he left the French Army and returned home to the United States where he married Caroline Le Roy Appleton Edgar, daughter of Samuel and Julia Webster Appleton, and widow of Newbold Edgar. They would have two children:
- Louise-Eugénie Bonaparte (1873–1923); married, in 1896, Count Adam Carl von Moltke-Huitfeld (1864–1944): they have numerous descendants.
- Jerome Napoleon Charles Bonaparte (1878–1945); married, in 1914, Blanche Pierce Stenbeigh, daughter of Edward and Emily Pierce of Newtonville, Massachusetts, and former wife of Harold Stenbeigh of Hewlett, New York; no issue.