In 1775, my great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandfather came to America from France to help the colonists fight for independence from the British. He was 24 years old. Born in Marseilles to Lady Anne de la Lascour and Admiral Antoine Garoutte, Michel Antoine Garoutte was also born into the nobility of Provence in France, ruled at that time by Louis IV. He was educated to be a Catholic priest until the age of 15 when his older brother died in battle. Michel left the seminary and went to Military School and Officers School, the same schools as his friend, Lafayette.
Both Michel and Lafayette became convinced that the American settlers’ fight for liberty was a just cause. That it was better to have rules of law fashioned for the majority of citizens rather than laws made by edict, made by just one man. Michel was not looking for a new start on life; he was not looking to farm his own land; he was not fleeing persecution – he was fighting for a new concept of governance: democracy over monarchy.
Michel outfitted two ships at his own expense and sailed to the New York Colony. Even though he was from wealth and nobility, he became a pirate and a privateer, overtaking British vessels, seizing ammunition, artillery, and other goods to supply General George Washington’s army at Valley Forge through Little Egg Harbor, which privateers used as a home base.
At the Battle of Chestnut Neck near Little Egg Harbor in 1778, the British burned Michel’s boats and destroyed other supplies before they withdrew under threat of superior patriot forces arriving.
His named now Anglicized to Michael Garoutte, he served on the brig-of-war Enterprise and sloop-of-war Racehorse.
Shortly after the Battle of Chestnut Neck, he went ashore to help a friend hiding in an Inn that aided revolutionaries. Ambushed and bayoneted, he was left for dead. The innkeeper John Smith, a Quaker, found him and brought Michael to his inn, where he was tended to by the innkeeper’s daughter, Sophia. They married in 1778. He was 28. She was 19. They had 14 children together.
After the Revolutionary War Michael and Sophia started a tavern: the La Fayette Tavern in Pleasant Mills, New Jersey. La Fayette visited the tavern and stayed at its inn on his various trips to the newly-formed United States. Michael died at the age of 79 and is buried in the Pleasant Mills Cemetery in New Jersey. The tavern no longer stands. The gravestones at the cemetery are so eroded that his name can no longer be found.
An immigrant who owned castles and could have lived a life of extreme luxury became a commoner in the country whose founding laws he believed in. He fought for the rights of citizens in his adopted country. He didn’t go from rags to riches; he went from riches to just getting by because he did not believe that one man should rule all others; that citizens had the right to govern themselves. His life was like that of many immigrants — fighting for the country they believe in. And still believe it’s worth fighting for.
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