De Grasse, John V., 1826-1868
John van Salee de Grasse (sometimes written as DeGrasse) was born in 1826 in New York City. He had a sister, Serena, and older brother Isaac. Their mother was Maria Van Salee of New York, a free woman of color. (Her surname was sometimes recorded as Van Surly.) They were descendants through their mother's family of Jan Janszoon of Haarlem, Netherlands, and Margarita, a Moorish woman. That couple had four sons, who were mixed-race: two, Abraham Janszoon van Salee, and his brother Anthony, the better known, emigrated independently to New Netherlands from Amsterdam in the 1630s, settling in what became New York. Each had married European women. Their later generations of descendants, who continued to "marry white", are said to include "the Vanderbilts, the Whitneys, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and Humphrey Bogart." Abraham was said to have also had a son in New York by a black mistress, establishing a line that became predominately identified as African American, while also having considerable European ancestry.
Maria van Salee had married George de Grasse, who was born in Calcutta as Azar Le Guen; he was of mixed-race, Indian-French ancestry. It is likely that he was the natural son of François Joseph Paul de Grasse, a French naval officer, who was stationed on and off in India from 1762 to 1781. Based on census records, Azar was born about 1780 to an Indian woman. The senior de Grasse is known to have taken Azar as a child with him to Paris for his education and adopted him, naming him George de Grasse. The senior Grasse was long married to a French woman and had a total of five children from his marriage who survived to adulthood. His eldest son, known as Alexandre Auguste de Grasse, his title as Comte de Grasse after the father's death.
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2021-11-08 04:11:40 pm |
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2021-11-01 01:11:14 pm |
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2021-10-29 02:10:41 pm |
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2021-10-29 02:10:45 pm |
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2021-10-29 09:10:55 am |
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2021-10-29 09:10:54 am |
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