Zénaïde Laetitia Julie Bonaparte, Princess of Canino and Musignano (8 July 1801 – 8 August 1854) was the elder daughter of

Joseph Bonaparte Joseph Bonaparte (born Giuseppe di Buonaparte, ; ; ; 7 January 176828 July 1844) was a French statesman, lawyer, diplomat and older brother of Napoleon Bonaparte. During the Napoleonic Wars, the latter made him King of Naples (1806–1808), an ...

and

Julie Clary Marie Julie Clary (26 December 1771 – 7 April 1845), also known as Julie Bonaparte, was Queen of Naples, then of Spain and the Indies, as the wife of Joseph Bonaparte, who was King of Naples from January 1806 to June 1808, and later King ...

, and thus the niece of

Napoleon Bonaparte Napoleon Bonaparte (born Napoleone di Buonaparte; 15 August 1769 – 5 May 1821), later known by his regnal name Napoleon I, was a French general and statesman who rose to prominence during the French Revolution and led Military career ...

, and the wife of naturalist

Charles Lucien Bonaparte Charles Lucien Jules Laurent Bonaparte, 2nd Prince of Canino and Musignano (24 May 1803 – 29 July 1857) was a French naturalist and ornithology, ornithologist, and a nephew of Napoleon. Lucien and his wife had twelve children, including Cardinal ...

, who was also her cousin. She joined her father in exile for several years in

Bordentown, New Jersey Bordentown is a City (New Jersey), city in Burlington County, New Jersey, Burlington County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey. As of the 2020 United States census, the city's population was 3,993, an increase of 69 (+1.8%) from the 2010 United ...

Biography

When she was 14, in 1815, Napoleon offered Zénaïde in marriage to

Ferdinand Ferdinand is a Germanic name composed of the elements "journey, travel", Proto-Germanic , abstract noun from root "to fare, travel" (PIE , "to lead, pass over"), and "courage" or "ready, prepared" related to Old High German "to risk, ventu ...

, the deposed king of Spain, but the offer was refused.Glover p. 295 After the fall of her uncle Emperor Napoleon in 1815, her father moved to America and purchased Point Breeze, an estate on the

Delaware River The Delaware River is a major river in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States and is the longest free-flowing (undammed) river in the Eastern United States. From the meeting of its branches in Hancock, New York, the river flows for a ...

. Zénaïde and her sister, however, stayed with their mother in Europe. They lived in Frankfurt and Brussels from 1815 to 1821, and then in Florence. On 29 June 1822, in Brussels, she married her cousin

, son of her uncle Lucien. Her father Joseph had suggested marriage to his wife when Zénaïde was only five; the idea was to carry on the Napoleonic succession (a return to power was always anticipated) by marrying his two daughters to sons of two of his brothers.Stroud, pp. 25–29 The wedding was met with surprisingly little fanfare, perhaps because Zénaïde's mother was outraged at the excessive sum of the dowry (730,000 francs, which was unreasonable considering that Lucien's villa in Rome had cost only 150,000), which had strained her resources. In 1823, after emigrating to the United States, she and her husband resided in the Lake House on her father's Point Breeze estate.Point Breeze

National Gallery of Art The National Gallery of Art is an art museum in Washington, D.C., United States, located on the National Mall, between 3rd and 9th Streets, at Constitution Avenue NW. Open to the public and free of charge, the museum was privately established in ...

. Accessed May 12, 2024. "In addition to the new mansion, Bonaparte built several other dwellings on the property. The largest of these was a three-story Lake House, erected near the new mansion probably in the spring of 1820. Bonaparte’s daughter Zénaïde (1801–1854) resided in the Lake House with her husband, the ornithologist Charles-Lucien Bonaparte (1803–1857), after they emigrated in 1823." Charles was an

ornithologist Ornithology, from Ancient Greek ὄρνις (''órnis''), meaning "bird", and -logy from λόγος (''lógos''), meaning "study", is a branch of zoology dedicated to the study of birds. Several aspects of ornithology differ from related discip ...

(who named the

Zenaida doves The zenaida doves make up a small genus (''Zenaida'') of Americas, American doves in the family Columbidae. The genus was introduced in 1838 by French naturalist Charles Lucien Bonaparte. The name commemorates his wife, Zénaïde Laetitia Julie ...

after her). They had twelve children, listed below.

Issue

Ancestry

References

Bibliography

*Glover, Michael, ''The Peninsular War 1807–1814.'' London: Penguin Books, 2001. *Stroud, Patricia Tyson. ''The Emperor of Nature: Charles-Lucien Bonaparte and His World''. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000. .

External links

{{DEFAULTSORT:Bonaparte, Zenaide Laetitia Julie 1801 births 1854 deaths Zenaide Laetitia Julie Bonaparte French expatriates in the United States People from Bordentown, New Jersey Zenaide Laetitia Julie Bonaparte Daughters of kings