French Aristocrats/Refugees in the Adirondacks?

Among all of Schneider's talk about settlers struggling in the Adirondacks, his mention of Castorland, the exclusive community for French aristocrats, stuck out in bizarre juxtaposition to his previous descriptions. As Steph mentioned in her blog post, French aristocracy seems complete out of place in the Adirondacks, which is exactly why this passage surprised me. While this is not a really significant part of Adirondack history, it stuck out as an unusual instance in which people were not trying to necessarily make a living like other settlers in the Adirondacks but they were refugees from France, who were escaping imprisonment, and even death, during the French Revolution due to their aristocratic affiliation and status. In 1792, Pierre Chassanis, a French nobleman, purchased 600,000 acres to build this community on. The Castorland corporation planned to build two cities complete with houses, markets, churches, roads and bridges.

Up to this point, we've seen settlers mostly come from surrounding areas, drawn in by promises of fertile land and natural resources. However, it seems as if the primary concern for the French aristocracy wasn't for farming but rather for escaping potential execution. It seems hard to believe that there is a connection between the Adirondacks and the French Revolution, but there was, even if it was short lived. The Adirondacks have seen such a wide range of cultures, people, intentions, successes, and failures.

Although this community was ultimately a failure, the corporation entered the land with the same hope and optimism as so many other settlers. This is manifest in the commemorative coin that the corporation produced. On one side is Cybele "who personified the earth as inhabited or cultivated," (105) and on the flip side was the goddess of agriculture, Ceres. Ceres was a goddess first worshipped by the Ancient Greeks, but here we see her altered to include Adirondack imagery including a maple tree and a beaver. Through this imagery, we see the aspiration of the French corporation to make the Adirondacks as great as the civilizations of classical antiquity, and although the addition of local symbology to a pagan and classical goddess seems odd, it really expresses the romantic and utopian opportunity that the Adirondacks seemingly held to these refugees and to many other settlers.