Napoleon's Brother Off Exit 7

toward the blaze, rumors swirl like the ashes. They say that the frenchmen in their midst known as the Count of Cervier, is more than just a minor noble. They say that in order to outfit his eighteen hundred acre estate in central Jersey, they dug up a buried treasure chest in Switzerland. They say that that chest was filled

with diamonds. They say that this point breeze estate contains fine arts the likes of which the United States has never seen, including scandalous nudes and busts of the former French emperor Napoleon Bonaparte. They even say that the man surrounded by art and his mistresses in New Jersey is himself, a former European ruler, a former king of both Naples and Spain. They say, in fact that he is the

older brother of Napoleon Bonaparte himself. While listener, some rumors turn out to be true, and all of those were. Joseph Bonaparte lately of New Jersey was the older brother of the more famous Napoleon. Back when Napoleon was in power in France. Joseph was indeed the reluctant philosopher king of both Naples and Spain, and he did indeed flee

to the United States when his brother lost power. He was close with his more famous brother, but at the same time Joseph was always a little bit of a disappointment to Napoleon, more of an esthete than a political or military leader. In America, Joseph owned property in both Philadelphia and in Bordentown, New Jersey, where he lived on a sprawling eighteen hundred acres, half like an American Republican

and half like a former king. In the twenty six years he spent exiled in America, he never learned passable English. He amassed more books at Point Breeze, the name of the estate then the Library of Congress had at the time. He alternately adored his American neighbors and lamented that they couldn't understand European high art. That night, in January eighteen twenty, he watched as all he had collected in New Jersey

went up in flames. It's possible he looked with regret at the burning sum total of his life in America. It's possible that what crossed his mind was actually water instead of fire, that he was thinking about the ship that he had taken across the Atlantic years ago, away from his wife and two young daughters. By the light of the flames, he may have remembered the letters he had sent to his wife across the sea, speaking of the suitability of the home that he was building for

her and their children. He had been free here in America, but he had also been very alone. Now, as the night sky lit up with the flames of the Bonaparte History collection, Joseph's own future in America was in doubt. Without a home for his wife and children. Would he ever see them again? Or would the oldest Bonaparte, the former King of Naples and Spain, wind up alone in exile forever? I'm Danish forts, and this is noble blood. Joseph Buonaparte was born on January seventh, my birthday actually

seventeen sixty eight, on the Mediterranean island of Corsica. He was the eldest of the family's eight children, but it was his twenty month's younger brother, Napoleon, who would be destined to make a name for the family. In fact, that name was different from the one they were born with. It was Napoleon who changed the spelling of the family name from the Italian sounding Buonaparte to the French sounding Bonaparte,

the better to rule and fit in France. Joseph and Napoleon grew up very close with each other, but that didn't stop them from clashing over their very different personalities. Napoleon was more interested, as you can imagine, in the military and in power. Joseph was more interested in arts and culture. Napoleon called him quote an ornament on society, and throughout his life Joseph would kind of prove him right. He didn't love the law, though he did practice it.

He didn't love the military, though he did participate in it. He was a lover of republic more than monarchy. What Joseph did love was literature, gardening, fine arts, opera, high culture, not to mention the art of seduction, at which he excelled. Still, Joseph also loved his younger brother. When a young Joseph proposed to a woman named desire Clary, it turned out that Napoleon wanted her too. Napoleon suggested that Joseph proposed to Desiree's older sister instead, and, like the good brother

he always was, Joseph did. Joseph and Julie Clary got married in seventeen ninety four, when Joseph was twenty six and Julie was twenty two. The two had a happy early marriage. They had two daughters, Zenaide and Charlotte, in eighteen oh one and eighteen oh two. Joseph loved all of his girls and would have happily stayed in the countryside with them alongside his arts and literature. Some painted

nude maybe some mistresses, I mean, don't be mistaken. Of course, just because he loved his wife didn't mean that he was faithful to her. But Joseph was a guy whose younger brother was Napoleon Bonaparte, and Napoleon was not known to take the simple pleasures and preferences of other people into account. By seventeen ninety nine, five years into Joseph's married life, Napoleon had staged a successful coupdetat and become

first Consul of the French Republic. From then on, Napoleon appointed Joseph to a litany of ever more serious positions Army colonel and then Regent of France, Commander in chief of the Naples Army, King of Naples, and finally King of Spain. It was a lot of titles for a guy who basically just wanted to read books with his family in a pretty French garden somewhere in the country. How can I find happiness, Joseph once wrote, when my position is quite incompatible with my character. To be fair,

Joseph did find some happiness as a monarch. As King of Spain, he earned the nickname pepe boteas basically Joe Bottles, because of how much wine he went through. As King of Naples, he had an affair with a duchess who wrote him letters twice a day and bore his child, though tragically, the boy, Julio, died young. Heads up listeners Joseph's story will be littered with illegitimate children, but he did always come back to his deep love for his

two legitimate daughters. And though Napoleon kept pulling Joseph into political power games that he never really wanted to be a part of, Joseph always loved his little brother. After Napoleon's defeat at the famous Battle of Waterloo, it became dangerous to be a Bonaparte on the continent. Joseph actually offered to pretend to be Napoleon, sick in bed while Napoleon escaped to America. Napoleon refused the offer. By July eighteen fifteen, Napoleon was a prisoner of the British and

it was Joseph who took the opportunity to escape Europe. Joseph, as historian Patricia Tyson Stroud put it, got to quote live out his brother's idea of freedom in America. So, at the age of forty seven, Joseph Bonaparte boarded a ship headed to New York City. It was a great adventure, and it also likely saved his life, but it was also a sad and risky move. He was leaving behind his beloved wife and country, and his even more beloved young daughters. He had been married at this point to

Julie for twenty one years. As he sailed away to safety across the Atlantic, he had had no idea what fate had in store for him. He was hopefully sure, tragically sure, that his wife and daughters would soon join him in America. He sailed away, really believing that he would make a home and he would see them all again very soon. In eighteen fifteen. It was not a

simple thing to be a Buonaparte escaping to America. Americans, who had recently shaken off the shackles of British monarchy didn't tend to like the remnants of European monarchy or empire on their shores. Aboard the ship, Joseph told no one who he really was. He took on the name the Count de Servilliers, which was the least of his many grand titles. But it was not so easy for the former King of Naples in Spain to go undetected. Even across the Atlantic. In New York City, former Spanish

subjects kept stopping to kiss him on the hand. His pretense was flimsy to the point of completely falling apart. Worried that he would be extradited to England, where his brother was being held prisoner. Joseph tried to get to Washington, d C. But President James Madison didn't want to risk disturbing international diplomacy by interacting with the brother of the former Emperor of France, so he essentially told Joseph to

go ahead and live the American dream. It's a free country, Madison basically said, and you're free to no need for my protection. So that was the end of Joseph's attempts to get to d C. He rented a house that's still standing on Ninth Street in Philadelphia, but a city rental was never going to cut it in the long

run for the lavish former king of Spain. In July eighteen sixteen, just about one year after beginning his exile in America, Joseph bought the eighteen hundred acre estate of Point Breeze now Exit seven on the turnpike for Bordentown, New Jersey. Joseph immediately set about fulfilling his brother Napoleon's prediction that quote, he will be a bourgeois American and spend his fortune in making gardens in order to fund his estate. Joseph sent his personal secretary Louis Mayard back

to Europe. Mayard had only been twenty when he crossed the ocean with Joseph before now Joseph dispatched him back to Pranjin, Switzerland. It was a little escapade that actually could be its own swashbuckling adventure book. Mayard wound up being shipwrecked off the coast of Ireland, surviving and finally eventually digging up a buried treasure chest at Joseph's old chateau. The chest contained a handful of diamonds, letters from Napoleon, and rumor has it even the crowns from when Joseph

was King of Naples and Spain. Joseph used that money to turn Point Breeze into the idyllic, expensive center of the arts that he had always wanted. He filled the estate with paintings, lavish gardens, and a library of eight thousand books, as I mentioned, more than the Library of Congress had at the time. He also set up an elaborate tunnel system under the giant property. He entertained fellow

French exiles, and he barely spoke English. He baffled and amused his American neighbors who couldn't really understand the operas and painted nudes that they're strange, but welcoming new European neighbors seemed to love the whole time. Joseph was writing to his wife Julie. He expected and wanted her to come join him make the crossing in August. He told her, so that you can see the autumns in America. Bring

our daughters, whom I miss so dearly. It seemed to Joseph like Julie was going to come, but she missed one ship to America and then another. She was in ill health, she told my Art her doctors were advising her not to make the crossing. It didn't help that she was terrified of a wreck at sea, which my art himself had literally just experienced over in America. It slowly dawned on Joseph that he would not be seeing his wife again anytime soon. Send me one of our daughters.

In that case, he told his wife, it's only fair you keep one and send the other. Zenate the oldest, she's the strongest. I am alone in liberty, he wrote his wife. I am unhappy because I am isolated the hope of your arrival, the establishing of a house, the preparations to receive you have supported my existence. But today this hope is extinguished. I am disgusted with my establishment, even though it is beautiful, because I have not made

it for myself alone. Joseph was genuinely sorrow struck to be away from his family, but then again, he was also the ever charming Joseph Bonaparte, European sophisticate and seducer. Those tunnels he'd built under Point Breeze, maybe he'd plan to use them to escape the British if they ever came for him in the case of an emergency, Or maybe he just wanted to ferry his mistresses to and from his bed. Because by eighteen eighteen he had met a woman named Anna Savage in Philadelphia. Rumor had it

that she was a descendant of Pocahontas. It was not true, although her great ancestor, Thomas Savage, had been hostage to Poetan in the early sixteen hundreds. So Joseph, the French exile, who barely spoke English, began a year's long affair with Anna, descendant of one of the oldest English families in America. They would have two daughters together, one of whom would live to adulthood. When their first daughter was almost one year old, Joseph rented a house in Trenton for Anna

and his little illegitimate American family. He was in his carriage coming back from Trenton on the cold night of January fourth, eighteen twenty, when he returned to discover his beautiful estate in flames. His heart pounded as he rushed toward the fire. His first thought may have been to his wife back in France, and to his two daughters, who would never see the home that he had built in such ardent hopes that they would eventually join him here.

Or maybe he was thinking about his illegitimate family that he had just left in Trenton, who were thankfully safe as his estate burned. But if his first thoughts were to his women and daughters, then his second was surely to his possessions. His American neighbors could easily ransack the house in the chaos of the flames and the heath. They could have stolen his jewels, his art, his books, his gold medals, his letters to and from his brother Napoleon. Instead,

Joseph's neighbors in Bordentown endeared themselves to him forever. They formed an impromptu brigade to put ted his possessions. As the fire roared, Joseph's neighbors rescued almost all of his valuable possessions and returned them to him. This almost certainly included the famous painting of Napoleon crossing the Alps at the Great Saint Bernard by Jacques Louis d vide Listeners. Look it up, just google it and you'll surely recognize it. After the fire, Joseph wrote a letter that was published

in newspapers across the United States. His letter expressed his gratitude toward those upright Americans, the happiest people he'd ever known. Of course, people are people. Some of those very Americans were offended that he had even thought that they might be thieves in the first place. Still, probably encouraged by the goodness of his neighbors in New Jersey, Joseph didn't give up on Point Breeze after the fire. He started rebuilding almost immediately. It was later that same year that

Joseph finally got his long awaited reward. His daughter was coming to America at last, But it wasn't Zenaide. The older daughter whom Joseph had sent for It was his younger daughter, Charlotte. She had been only twelve years old when Joseph left France. Six and a half years later, when he finally saw her again in America, she was nineteen years old and a firecracker, right in the artistic

and romantic mold of her father. Princess Charlotte fell in love with the captain of her ship to America, and then she worked as a painter. Joseph was overjoyed to see his younger daughter again. The following year, her older sister, Zanade joined her, along with Zanede's husband, Charles Lucienne, and

Joseph had almost his whole family in America. He even had a new mistress at this point, Emil Lacosse, who would wind up having twins, but his wife Julie would still not come and the fullness of his family was short lived. Charlotte sailed back to Europe in eighteen twenty four, never to return to America. Zenaide followed her back to Europe a few years later. After that, there was less

and less for Joseph in America. His former mistresses kept asking for money and support if you can imagine that for his illegitimate children. He had financial troubles. He'd kept writing to his wife all those years, and now alone again, without the family he considered truly his own. The years passed in ever greater loneliness. Hosting the Marquis de Lafayette,

the famed Frenchman of the American Revolution, didn't help. Joseph longed for home for his family, So at last, in eighteen thirty six, he said goodbye to his fabulous, once burned, now rebuilt Point Breeze. He gave away much of his art and treasures to the American neighbors who had helped him so much back during the fire, and finally he set sail away from America for good. Joseph hoped that he would ultimately be allowed to travel back to France

to see his wife. After all, by this point, Napoleon had been dead for fifteen years. Joseph was an old man now, and he hoped France would consider the threat of the Bonapartes past. But it was not to be. France remained closed to the older brother of Napoleon. So Joseph went to England, and it was there in eighteen thirty nine that Joseph received the worst news of his life. His beloved daughter Charlotte had died in Italy at thirty

six years old. One year later, perhaps as a result of age and perhaps of the immense sorrow of losing his brilliant younger daughter, Joseph had a stroke in London which left him paralyzed on his right side, and one year after that, in eighteen forty one, he left England for a journey to Florence. At this point he was a seventy three year old man, infirm and hunched, and he looked up at a figure he had not seen since he was a young, charming forty seven year old.

There walking toward him in Italy was his wife, Julie. After twenty six years, the spouses were reunited at last. It's impossible to know what they each felt upon seeing each other again after a gap of a quarter century. They had exchanged letters all these years. Maybe Julie knew and simply bore the fact of Joseph's many extramarital affairs

and illegitimate children. Maybe Joseph felt embarrassed at the immensity of his physical decline, or maybe against all odds, they simply felt an immense continued love based in the remembrance of their time together as a young married couple, way back before Napoleon was ever Emperor of France, before it was a scourge to hold the last name Bonaparte on the continent. Joseph's health had been in decline for a long time by the time of the couple's reunion. It

wasn't long before he had a second stroke. Julie stuck by him the whole time. As Joseph sickened. They stayed together, and on July twenty eighth, eighteen forty four, Joseph Bonaparte lay in his wife's arms and breathed his last. At the tail end of their fifty year marriage, they were reunited again. For only three Joseph Bonaparte had seen his wife, but he would never see his beloved France again. But his remains did come to their final resting place in Paris.

He was interred eventually near his brother Napoleon. That's the story of Napoleon's brother Joseph Bonaparte, who wound up living in New Jersey, but stick around after a brief sponsor break to hear more about what happened to his massive estate Point Breeze. As for Joseph's magnificent estate Point Breeze, a Catholic mission called the Society of the Divine World bought the property in nineteen forty one and held it

for seventy years. In twenty twenty one, at last, a land preservation trust worked with both the state and the town of Bordentown to buy the property and make it open to the public. The Bordentown Historical Society website says that the Joseph Bonaparte exhibit is open at least two saturdays per month, and that in it you can see a lock of Joseph's hair. If you find yourself on exit seven of the New Jersey Turnpike, try and go,

and please report back. And if you feel some sorrow for the exiled King of Naples in Spain, waiting in vain for his wife and never to return to France, well you might be in good company. Joseph's daughters in Aid was married to a man named Charles Lucien, who became a famous early ornithologists. Charles Lucien named one bird species after his wife. That species is called the Zeneida Macrura. We know it better as the Mourning Dove. Noble Blood is a production of iHeart Radio and Grimm and Mild

from Aaron Mankey. Noble Blood is hosted by me Danish Forts, with additional writing and researching by Hannah Johnston, Hannah Zewick, Courtney Sender, Julia Milani, and Armand Cassam. The show is edited and produced by Noemy Griffin and rema Ill Kaali, with supervising producer Josh Thain and executive producers Aaron Mankey, Alex Williams and Matt Frederick. Four more podcasts from iHeartRadio. Visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite ches.