The history of the French in Baltimore dates to the 18th century. The earliest wave of French immigration began in the mid-18th century, as many Acadian refugees from Canada's Maritime Provinces. The Acadians were expelled from Canada by the British, who were victorious in the French and Indian War, and in the Seven Years War in Europe. They took over French territory in North America east of the Mississippi River.
In the late 20th and 21st centuries, additional Creole and French speakers have immigrated to Baltimore and other US cities as refugees from Haiti. Their nation has struggled with violent political upheaval and severe natural disasters.
Demographics
In 1920, 626 foreign-born White people in Baltimore spoke the French language.[1]
In the same year Baltimore city's French population (excluding Basques) was 4,721, 0.7% of the city's population. There were also 824 French-Canadians, 0.1% of the population.[4]
In 2013, an estimated 5,383 French-Americans resided in Baltimore city, 0.9% of the population. An additional 1,007 people, 0.2% of the population, identified as being of French-Canadian descent.[5]
As of September 2014, immigrants from France were the forty-fifth largest foreign-born population in Baltimore. French (including Patois and Cajun) was the fourth most commonly spoken language after English. French Creole was the thirtieth most spoken language other than English.[6]
Most of the surviving exiled Acadians traveled to Louisiana, a French colony, where their descendants became known as Cajuns. Other refugees returned to France or resettled in Baltimore.
Ships carrying 913 Acadian refugees arrived in Maryland in November 1755. Shunned by a hostile, Francophobic population due to the war,[7] the Acadians had to rely upon themselves to better their conditions. Drawing on their skills as fishermen, many Acadian men became sailors and longshoremen.[8]
During the French Revolution (1789–1799), many French Catholics fled France to escape its religious persecution. Among the refugees who immigrated to Baltimore were the Sulpician Fathers, a Roman Catholic teaching order. Most of the earliest Catholic institutions in Baltimore were established by these French refugees.
She later moved to Emmitsburg and established the Sisters of Charity, the first American congregation for nuns. In the 1960s Seton's home was restored to its original appearance through the efforts of a committee, which continues to operate the home as a museum.[9] The original seminary buildings were demolished during the mid-1970s,[10] and the campus is now part of St. Mary's Park in the Seton Hill Historic District.
Settlement by Franco-Haitian refugees
During the time of the French Revolution, there was a related slave revolt on the French colony of Saint-Domingue, on Hispaniola in the Caribbean. Enslaved people gained independence, naming their republic as Haiti.
Many French-speakingBlack Catholic and whiteFrenchCatholic refugees from San Domingo left for Baltimore. In total, 1,500 Franco-Haitians fled the island.[11] The refugee population from Saint-Domingue was multiracial, including white Creoles and their enslaved African workers, as well as many free people of color. Some of the latter were also slaveowners.[12]
Along with the Sulpician Fathers, some of these refugees and their descendants founded St. Francis Xavier Church. The church is the oldest historically Black Catholic church in the United States.[13]
During the violent Haitian Revolution, the city of Baltimore passed an ordinance declaring that all enslaved persons imported by slaveholders from the West Indies, including Haiti, were "dangerous to the peace and welfare of the city". They ordered slaveowners to banish such enslaved people.[14]
In the 1750s, the French Acadian refugees from Nova Scotia established a community along South Charles Street near Lombard Street that was known as "French Town".[15] By the 1830s the Acadian presence in Baltimore had appeared to decline with assimilation or relocation; French Town also disappeared as an ethnic community.[7]
An annual French Fair is held in Seton Hill.[10] In 2014 it was on 11 October, from 12 to 5 in Saint Mary's Park. The Seton Hill Association hosts the fair to celebrate the neighborhood as Baltimore's former French Quarter. The Fair highlights city living and vendors of French themed food, and also presents several music performers. Other activities have included hula hooping on the central green, petanque in the park, a flea and craft market, Art on the Fence, and a kids' corner for building and entertainments.
Charles Joseph Bonaparte, a lawyer and politician who served in the Cabinet of President Theodore Roosevelt. He was the son of Jérôme Napoleon Bonaparte, from whom the American line of the Bonaparte family descended, and a grandson of Jérôme Bonaparte, the youngest brother of Emperor Napoleon I.
A line of the Bonaparte family has lived in Baltimore. Napoleon's brother Jérôme traveled to Baltimore to meet a man he had befriended in the French Navy. There he met his future wife, Elizabeth Patterson, also known as Betsy. They were married by the archbishop of Baltimore in the Baltimore Cathedral on Christmas Eve of 1803. Napoleon had the marriage annulled and Jérôme was forced to return to France. Betsy Bonaparte continued to live in Baltimore with their son, also named Jérôme.[17]
His son Charles Bonaparte was a lawyer and politician who served as Secretary of the Navy and later the Attorney General of the United States. During his tenure as Attorney General, he oversaw the creation of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.[18]
