Jean-Guillaume Hyde de Neuville

Jean-Guillaume Hyde de Neuville’s diplomatic career grew out of royalist opposition to the French Revolution and Napoleon. Born at La Charité-sur-Loire in 1776, he defended royalist prisoners, worked for the Bourbon cause under assumed names, and spent periods in hiding. He was implicated in the plot against Napoleon involving the infernal machine, but the accusation was withdrawn. His wife Henriette’s efforts to obtain a settlement eventually secured permission for the couple to leave for America. ^{1, 2}

They arrived in 1807 and lived in New York and New Jersey for seven years. Together they founded the Economical School in New York, established in 1808 and incorporated in 1810, to educate impoverished children and emigrant families, including refugees from the French West Indies. Henriette drew the students reading, drawing, and doing practical work. ²

Hyde de Neuville returned to the United States as minister in 1816. On 24 June 1822 he signed a commercial convention with John Quincy Adams. President Monroe’s proclamation that day suspended discriminatory American charges on French shipping and French goods, subject to the convention’s remaining duties. The two men examined and signed bilingual originals with Charles de Menou and Daniel Brent. ^{3, 4}

The couple’s Washington household was also a meeting place. Henriette depicted Indigenous visitors and a delegation’s performance before Monroe in 1821, including her husband among those watching. According to curator Roberta Olson’s study of these drawings, the visitors subsequently performed at the Neuvilles’ residence. ²

After Washington, Hyde de Neuville became ambassador at Lisbon and supported King João VI during a palace revolt. In the Chamber of Deputies he opposed the Villèle ministry and later served as minister of the navy in Martignac’s government, from 1828 to 1829. Loyal to the elder Bourbon line during the July Revolution, he resigned his parliamentary seat in August 1830 rather than accept the political settlement. He retired to his estate near Sancerre and died in Paris in 1857. ¹