Count Charles Julius De Menou

Male

Unknown

Unknown

Baltimore, MD
Paris, France

Count Charles Julius DeMenou was one of the few foreign students to attend the Law School. His uncle was George Debrigny of Annapolis, MD and DeMenou entered St. John's at Annapolis, MD on July 31, 1796. He graduated from St. Mary's Seminary in Baltimore, MD in 1806 and then attended the Law School. DeMenou was admitted to the bar in Maryland on May 23, 1809. In 1843, DeMenou lived in Baltimore, MD and by 1856 he was residing in Paris, France. From a letter to Samuel Fisher from the French Ambassador's office in 1941, "Comte Charles de Menou was Charge d' Affaires of the French Kingdom to the United States from May 1822 to August 4, 1824 when he was replaced by Baron de Mareuil, who came as minister Plenipotentiary."

"I believe it is the wish of Mr. de Neuville that Count de Menou should remain here some time as chargé d’affaires, and perhaps eventually to succeed him. The Count desires it very much himself, and I believe no person more acceptable to the government could be sent. I understand that the President will write to you on this subject. I believe we are principally indebted for the commercial convention to the friendly disposition of Mr. de N. for this country. He has certainly had the arrangement of the difficulty much at heart, and I hope will continue to interpose his good offices to render permanent the provisional arrangement, with such modifications as experience may render necessary. If you can consistently with propriety further the views of those gentlemen upon this occasion, you will ...confer a particular obligation upon me."
CRAWFORD TO GALLATIN. - Albert Gallatin, The Writings of Albert Gallatin, vol. 2 [1879] accessed at http://oll.libertyfund.org/?option=com_staticxt&staticfile=show.php%3Ftitle=1952&chapter=121743&layout=html&Itemid=27
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Catharine Beecher "Reminiscences" Autobiog. of Lyman Beecher, vol. 1, p. 166 "When Mrs. Stowe was at Paris, she was repeatedly visited by an aged French gentleman, Count _____, who in youth had spent some years at Litchfield as a student at the law school. His family was exiled in the first Revolution, and he had been placed there to be educated at the bar. Although since his return he had moved in the highest circles, yet, in conversation with Mrs. Stowe, he dwelt with enthusiasm on the society of Litchfield, which he declared was the most charming in the world."

DeMenou was credited with returning the Charles WIlson Peale portrait of George Washington to the United States:

"The National Gallery owns the full-length portrait of Washington, by Charles Willson Peale, which ...hangs in the Capitol. It is one of the repetitions of Peale's original portrait of the president, painted for the Supreme Executive Council of Pennsylvania, from sittings in Philadelphia in 1778, and now in the possession of Mr. Thomas McKean. The canvas in the Capitol bears the date 1779, and the signature of the artist. Its early history has never been satisfactorily explained; but it was evidently sent to Europe to be sold, probably in the same year that it was painted. It was brought back to this country from France by Julius, Count de Menou, from whom it was purchased, in October, 1841, by Mr. Charles B. Calvert, of Prince George County, Maryland, for the sum of two hundred dollars. The latter placed it in the National Institute in Washington, and in 1862 it was turned over to the Smithsonian Institute. It was sent to Philadelphia in 1876 for the Centennial Exhibition ; and remained at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts until 1881, when it was recalled to the Smithsonian, and lent to the Corcoran Gallery of Art. A claim to ownership of the picture by Titian R. Peale, a son of Charles Willson Peale, was decided adversely by the Board of Regents in 1873; but in 1882 Congress appropriated $5,000 in settlement of the claim, and the portrait was transferred to the Capitol."
See http://www.oldandsold.com/articles34/art-treasures-15.shtml
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1808

Attended St. Mary's Seminary in Baltimore, MD in 1806.

Political Office

Litchfield County Court in 1809; Maryland on May 23, 1809

Secretary of Legation in Paris, France (France)
Charge d'Affaires in Paris, France (France) 822-1824, 1827-1830

Catalogue of the Litchfield Law School (Hartford, CT: Press of Case, Tiffany, and Company, 1849), 7.