Joe Bonaparte

Corsica is an island in the northern Mediterranean, and furthermore is the birthplace of Napoleon Bonaparte whom I will assume most readers will have heard of this gentleman.  However, it is also the birthplace of Joseph Bonaparte in 1768, the not-quite-so-well-known elder brother of Napoleon.  So, “What did Joseph ever do?” might be a fair question.

Joseph, a bit of a rogue, married and sired three daughters by 1802.  He also fathered two more children with another lady, not his wife, by 1808.  In 1806 Joseph’s brother Napoleon installed him as the military commander of Naples, and shortly thereafter made him King of Naples.  This lasted for two years at which time Napoleon gave that title to their sister’s husband while Joseph was entitled King of Spain.  Joseph tenuously held that position until 1813 at which time he abdicated the throne he never really held.  Taking the Spanish Crown Jewels with him, he next showed up in Switzerland before moving on to America from 1817 through 1832.  Here he became the father of two more daughters with his mistress Annette Savage.  He lived in New York City and Philadelphia before settling in Bordentown, New Jersey, located between the two former cities.

Along the way he acquired a fair amount of land in northern New York surrounding a large lake in Lewis County.  Joseph named the lake Diana after the goddess of the hunt, but it was known thereafter as Lake Bonaparte (mentioned in the previous post) as it is today.  He first built a rather modest home at a place called Natural Bridge some 20 miles west of the Lake, so named because the Indian River disappears underground at that point for a hundred yards or so leaving the natural bridge over its flow.

Using his Natural Bridge home as a base Joseph set about building a much more luxurious building on the lake shore.  This he named “The Hermitage.”  His and Annette’s eldest daughter had died, but the second daughter, Caroline, ultimately married  Zebulon Benton.  Benton was born and raised in a wee village named Oxbow, on a bend in the Oswegatchie River resembling the yoke used for oxen, only a few miles from Natural Bridge, even though eventually in a different county.

Joseph Bonaparte grew tired of living in the woods of northern New York and built a new home for Annette and himself back in New Jersey.  He left her there and returned to Italy where he died.  Annette ultimately married and moved to New York City.  Zebulon Benton went bankrupt, mostly squandering his wife’s legacy, in an attempt to smelt iron ore around Lake Bonaparte.  Caroline lived out her days as a teacher in northern New York.