Lieutenant de Verger came to America in the summer of 1780 with Rochambeau during the American Revolution. His personal collection of illustrations and diary entries provide us with a unique perspective of the American Revolution through the eyes of a French solider.
The illustrated diary of Jean Baptiste Antoine de Verger is considered one of the most valuable artifacts in the Anne S.K. Brown Military Collection. Mrs. Brown acquired de Verger’s diary in the early 1960s through a fascinating New York book dealer, Hans Peter Kraus. Kraus was twice imprisoned in Nazi concentration camps before fleeing Austria in 1939 purportedly with a copy of the Guttenberg bible but abandoning thousands of other rare books.
The de Verger diary is unique because of the illustrations including Native Americans, ships, tactical battle scenes, and one of the first images of a Black American soldier in a combat role. In the early 1970s Mrs. Brown collaborated with a Princeton academic to transcribe, translate, annotate, and publish de Verger’s and two other French officer diaries from the American Revolution.
de Verger was only 18 when he arrived in America and his diary outlines his experience with a focus on facts more than personal impressions. He had a keen eye for unusual action stories that he found particularly fascinating.
He relays the story of an enraged French Navy Captain who chains and then throws overboard two local pilots who had incompetently crashed his ship onto rocks during a raging storm. Another anecdote details a civilian Patriot who took shelter in an abandoned beaver dam then fought off a British patrol from this unusual “fort”.
I have always been interested in de Verger’s iconic and high-profile diary in the Collection but had never read it. During Covid I read the diary three times and was motivated to share it with outside audiences. I have now presented the de Verger illustrated diary to a range of interested groups including the Society of the Cincinnati, Friends of Lafayette, Lafayette Society, and the Army and Navy Club.
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