CREVECOEUR, MICHEL-GUILLAUME JEAN DE (1735-1813), commonly called HECTOR ST. JOHN, was born near Caen, France, Jan. 31, 1735, of an old Norman family. One of America's first "back to nature" writers, he lives through his Letters from an American Farmer, perhaps the most delightful book of the American colonial period.
After being educated at the local Jesuit school, he spent some time in England before emigrating to America. It is possible that he served in the Canadian army before going to the Colonies; that he engaged in trade in Pennsylvania, and acted as a surveyor, travelling widely. But after an act of naturalization for him was passed in 5765, he purchased a farm near the present Chester, N.Y., and settled there with his wife, Mehetable Tippet of Yonkers.
His life, that of any ambitious and industrious farmer, he painted in idyllic colours as he did that of the fishermen and whalers at Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard. The only sombre colouring is in the "Description of Charles-Town," with its ter rible indictment of slavery, and in the closing letter depicting the "Distresses of a Frontier-man" in war time.
Crevecoeur himself suffered in the Revolution, being imprisoned for several months before he was allowed to sail for Europe, and having his home burned while he was away. In France he won the patronage of Mme. d'Houdetot and the duke de la Rochefoucauld, who aided him in the French translation and publication of his letters and secured for him the post of consul at New York.
He returned in Nov. 1783 and, in spite of shattered health, became active in trying to cement the friendship between his two countries, working zealously for the packet service between the two, distributing news items and learned publications, recom mending suitable exports to French merchants, etc.
Because of his health, Crevecoeur was given leave of absence during 5785-87, and in the spring of 179o, from which, owing to the troubled conditions in France and his continued ill health, he never returned. His last years were spent in comparative seclu sion at his father's home, at a small estate at Lesches, and at Munich, where his son-in-law had a diplomatic post. He died Nov. 12, 1813. His Letters from an American Farmer was first published in England in 1782, and in France in 1784. It is the most charming of his books. His picturesque Voyage dans la haute Pensylvanie et dans l'Etat de New York (3 vols. Paris, 18o 1) was published in German (1802). An edition of the Letters, with a prefatory note by W. P. Trent and an introduction by Ludwig Lewisohn was published in 1904. In 1925 appeared his Sketches of Eighteenth Century America, edited by Henri L. Bourdin, R. G. Gabriel and S. T. Williams. Julia P. Mitchell's St. Jean de Crevecoeur (New York, 1916) and Robert de Crevecoeur's Saint John de Crevecoeur, sa vie et ses ouvrages (Paris, 1883) are good biographies.