Hector St. John de
Crevecoeur (1735-1813)
Biography
• French mapmaker who settled in New
York and married an American woman
• Left during the Revolution to tend to his
sick father
• 1782 published Letters from an American
Farmer
• Returned to NY in 1783 to find wife dead
and farm destroyed
Biography, cont.
• Stayed in New York City for most of 1780s
• Returned to France at the end of his life
Letters from an American
Farmer (1782)
• First literary success by American author
in Europe
• Described whole country, not just one
colony
• Shaped European understanding of
American identity
• Celebrated ingenuity, simplicity, diversity
of colonies
“What is an American?”
From Letters from an American
Farmer
General characteristics:
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no nobility
no factories
no luxury
smaller gap between rich and poor
subsistence farmers
“mild government”
industrious
General Characteristics (cont.)
• come from many countries: England,
Scotland, Ireland, France, the
Netherlands, Germany, Sweden
• have dignity, not poverty and oppression
• reap the benefits of their own labor (don’t
have to give it up to nobility or church)
• have little or no connection to their
countries of origin, which offered them
only poverty and oppression
Regional characteristics
Coastal
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eat a lot of seafood
bold and enterprising
interact with a lot of people
love traffic
want to transport goods
Regional characteristics
“Middle settlements”
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mostly farmers
little interference from government or religion
educated
litigious (like to bring lawsuits to protect their
own interests)
• proud and obstinate (stubborn)
• think for themselves
• politically active and freely express their
opinions
Regional characteristics
“great woods” (frontier)
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possibly greedy for land
discord, lack of friends
idleness
drunkenness
local officials behave no better than anyone else
at war with other people and/or nature
hunters, supplemented by some farming
as more settlers move in and make the area
more “respectable,” these people will be driven
further away
Religious characteristics:
• when people of same religion settle near one
another, they build churches and are involved
with religion
• much freedom to found new places of worship
• if isolated from others of same religion, then
influence and practice of religion is less
• people don’t tell others how to worship (usually)
• intermarriage is acceptable
• religion may be determined by what is in the
neighborhood, rather than how one was raised