Guillaume Tell Poussin
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Guillaume Tell de La Vallée-Poussin | |
|---|---|
| Born | February 10, 1794 Poissy, Yvelines, France |
| Died | November 7, 1876 (aged 82) Paris, France |
| Occupations | Civil Engineer, diplomat |
| Known for | U.S. internal improvements; Ambassador to the United States (1848–1849) |
| Spouse | Louise Roux (m. 1850) |
| Children | 1 (Camille Emma Aline) |
| Awards | Chevalier of the Légion d'honneur |
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Guillaume Tell de La Vallée-Poussin (1794–1876) was a French engineer and diplomat. He served as a captain in the United States Army Corps of Engineers and aide-de-camp to General Simon Bernard, working under the War Department’s Board of Engineers for Internal Improvements (1824–1831) on multi-state road and canal surveys.[1] He later interpreted American internal improvements and railways for European readers and served as ambassador of the French Second Republic to the United States (1848–1849) before recall after a dispute with U.S. Secretary of State John M. Clayton.[2]
Poussin was born at Poissy (Yvelines) on 10 February 1794 and was named after the republican hero William Tell. His father, Jean Étienne de La Vallée dit Poussin (1735–1802), was a painter and decorator who had won the Prix de Rome in 1759; his mother was Élisabeth Félicité Gillet (born c. 1750).[3] In 1814 he registered as a student of architecture at the Académie des Beaux-Arts in Paris, but soon thereafter departed for the United States.[1]
Career
Poussin served as a captain in the United States Army Corps of Engineers, becoming aide-de-camp to General Simon Bernard under the War Department’s internal improvements program (often termed the Board of Engineers for Internal Improvements).[1] Representative surveys documented in his 1834 atlas include a general map of U.S. routes; plates on the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal; an early proposal for a Cape Cod Canal; a plan for a junction canal from the Mississippi to Lake Pontchartrain; and mapping of the Chesapeake & Delaware Canal.[4][5][6][7] He consolidated these efforts in Travaux d’améliorations intérieures (1834).[8]
After returning to France in 1831, he traveled in England, Belgium, and the Rhineland to observe railway development and published Chemins de fer américains (1836), an early French-language survey of U.S. railways and their administration.[9][1] From 1848 to 1849 he served as ambassador of the French Second Republic to the United States; he was recalled after a correspondence dispute with Secretary of State John M. Clayton arising from a salvage claim off Veracruz.[2] He was named Chevalier de la Légion d'honneur.[3] Poussin married Louise Roux in 1850; their daughter, Camille Emma Aline de La Vallée Poussin,[10] was born in 1853.[3] Poussin died in Paris (13 rue Say) on 7 November 1876 and was buried in the Père-Lachaise Cemetery.[3]
