Collection consists of a single one page autograph manuscript letter from Madame de Staël to the firm LeRoy, Bayard & McEvers in New York City regarding a financial transaction of $20,000. The letter is dated 1814 October 12; a note on the back states that it was received in New York 1815 March 10. In the letter, de Staël writes that she is sending their partner in London, Mr. McEvers, a note for $20,000. She asks if they have received her letter of July 25 in which she asked them to transfer the $20,000 to her account with the firm Doxat & Divett, and reiterates this request in the event that they have not received it. The letter is signed Necker de Staël Holstein. At the time, Madame de Staël owned an estimated 30,000 acres of land in what is now upstate New York, (Sakolski) and it's likely that this transaction was related to her American property holdings. Madame de Staël's father purchased land in America for his daughter and her children with the thought of leaving unstable France and settling in America. Although she never lived there, de Staël increased her American land holdings and reportedly invested $20,000 in developing the property. -- Sakolski, The Great American Land Bubble (1932)
Madame de Staël (Anne Louise Germaine Necker de Staël-Holstein) was a French woman of letters who was active during the period of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic era. Her father, Jaques Necker, was a Swiss banker who served as the finance minister for Louis XVI, and her mother hosted a popluar Paris salon. de Staël was an independent woman of means who was very active in both the political and intellectual life of her times. She published novels and literary criticism, as well as political and philosophical essays. She was a vocal supporter of the French Revolution and an opponent of Napoleon, who consequently banished her from Paris. She was celebrated for her social and conversational abilities, and hosted long-running salons in both Paris and Switzerland. She is an important figure in the history of ideas who contributed to European Romanticism and to the transition from the Age of Enlightenment to the 19th century.
LeRoy, Bayard, & McEvers was a prominent New York City mercantile firm. They represented the Holland Land Company in the United States, which was formed so that Dutch investors could buy land in what is now upstate New York and western Pennsylvania in 1792-1793.
