The Strange Legend of King Louis’ Doctor

Dr. Jean Gerome Prosper Formy-Duval

By Jack E. Fryar, Jr.

“Please help them.” Dr. Jean Gerome Formy-Duval still heard the woman’s plea in his ears, even though the words had been uttered days before. Morning sunlight lit the cobble streets on the outskirts of Paris, and the scarlet tendrils announcing the new day washed the scene from his window in blood hues. Fitting, given the times.

King Louis XVI

Marie Antoinette

Paris was a city gripped in revolutionary fever. The excesses of the French court of Louis XVI and his wife, Marie Antoinette, had tweaked the noses of the great-unwashed French masses until violent change had become inevitable. Revolutionaries, encouraged by the fledgling United States’ success at throwing off the yoke of royal oppression, fanned the fires of independence in the streets and inns of the French capitol. Citizens Committees, ostensibly dedicated to liberty and equality, pledged to root out those loyal to the monarchy and redistribute the wealth from the haves to the have-nots. If in the process a few lingering grudges were settled, well, what goes around certainly comes around.

Dr. Formy-Duval was not a revolutionary, just a physician assigned to the royal court from his native region near Rouen, in the north. The fact that he was a healer made him useful to both sides of the growing argument, but didn’t raise him totally above the suspicions of the committees. His assignment to the royal court assured that. No one tainted by royal contact or favor could escape the ever-emboldened proletariat seizing control of the country. Nevertheless, Dr. Formy-Duval was a healer, a man pledged to save lives. It was his reputation as such which caused his immediate discomfort.

As unrest began to turn into open defiance and revolution in 1789, those with royalist sentiment were being targeted for execution, sometimes for real offenses against the people. In other instances people were targeted to settle old scores or to clear the way for new, more republican-thinking owners to claim the property of those executed for their purported ties to royalty. One such group accused and found guilty of loyalty to King Louis was scheduled to be executed for their real or imagined sins. The doctor knew the people to be shot, and knew that whatever their crimes, they did not rise to a level that called for their deaths. Dr. Formy-Duval came to a risky conclusion that was the only one his sense of honor would let him make.

For all their zeal, few among the revolutionary rank and file knew anything about law or the protocols of government. When the educated and distinguished Dr. Formy-Duval offered his services as examining doctor for the executions, the Citizens Committee accepted, thinking his participation would lend an air of legitimacy to their proceedings. Having a physician of the royal court volunteering in the service of the revolution would also be a coup that they could point to as an example of the broad range of people backing their efforts for change. Dr. Formy-Duval was accepted gladly.

Now the sun had risen high enough that the doctor could make out the pockmarked wall that had served as backdrop for other killings in the name of liberty. Each gouge in its brick face represented a blow struck on behalf of the masses, and each dark stain underneath marked where another life had been lost to the revolutionary tide sweeping the country. Dr. Formy-Duval could not in good conscience let his friends become another notch in that wall, or see their blood soak into those rust-colored cobblestones. Making his way downstairs, he approached the corporal of the guard in charge of the execution detail. He was a young man, with the cockade of the revolutionaries his only insignia of rank. Though he had a grave responsibility, Dr. Formy-Duval detected no malice in the boy. He was simply a soldier doing a job, the right or wrong of which was a debate for those ranked above him. It was a simple matter to convince the novice executioner that as examining doctor, Formy-Duval was responsible for inspecting and loading the weapons to be used by the firing squad.

French revolutionary firing squad.

A short while later the condemned were led from a nearby building and arranged against the wall. Tearful family members sobbed off to one side. Dr. Formy-Duval forced himself not to look them in the eye, afraid it might give him away. The air seemed to stand still, and around them the sounds of a city waking up for a new day seemed to stop as the corporal’s first command to the firing squad rang out in the morning air. The file of soldiers clumsily raised their muskets and took aim at the men standing blindfolded thirty feet away. When the command to fire came, a volley of flame leapt from the gun muzzles, and black-gray smoke obscured the wall. When it cleared the condemned were all laying on the ground, arms and legs akimbo, some staring sightlessly into space. Dr. Formy-Duval knelt beside each body, using a stethoscope and mirror to be certain each was dead. Satisfied, he looked to the corporal and nodded, then motioned for the waiting family members to come and claim their fathers and sons for burial. The corporal of the guard gathered the death certificates signed by Dr. Formy-Duval and marched his citizen soldiers away.

At their homes, grieving families carried their burdens inside to prepare the bodies for burial. At the gravesides, weeping children lamented the loss of their dearly departed. At the citizen’s court, satisfaction was taken that enemies of the people had finally gotten their comeuppance. And in secret rooms and barns, the men who were supposed to be filling those graves gathered their belongings and escaped into the countryside, away from Paris and its prying eyes, to rendezvous with their families after things had died down. Each and every one of them said a silent prayer of thanks for their friend, Dr. Jean Gerome Formy-Duval, a man who had put his own life at risk to save theirs.

The subterfuge would have worked perfectly, and the Citizens Committees would never have learned the truth – that Dr. Formy-Duval had loaded the muskets of the firing squad with blanks, then pretended the executions were successful – had one of the supposed dead men not been captured later on. Curious as to how a man who had been shot weeks before had managed to be caught walking around in good health, the committees began investigating. The corporal of the guard recalled that Dr. Formy-Duval had inspected the muskets prior to the executions, and sheepishly admitted he hadn’t actually check the bodies himself after the firing squad did their job. The investigators put two and two together, and suddenly Dr. Formy-Duval was a wanted man.

Word reached the doctor that there was an arrest warrant with his name on it being issued by the Citizens Committee, and he wasted no time fleeing the city. Paris was no longer a safe place for him. He headed north, hiding by day and traveling at night until he came to the lands near LeHavre, a short distance from where his friends and family lived in Rouen. Some family members say the doctor hid in the swamps, using a bullwhip to hunt birds for his dinner. However he sustained himself, his main goal now was finding a way out of France for himself and his kin. Sitting in the green darkness of his swampy shelter, he thought of his wife, known to descendants only as “The Princess,” possibly because of some kinship to the king and queen. One good thing in the doctor’s favor was that he and his wife were childless. Spiriting just the two of them out of the country would be a much simpler task than if they had to figure children into the equation, too. King Louis XVI had granted Formy-Duval lands in Haiti, half a world away. If he could secure passage there, it might just be far enough out of reach of the Citizens Committees that he could live life as something other than a marked man.

With the revocation of the Treaty of Nantes, French Huguenots began leaving the country in droves.

LeHavre is a coastal city long noted as a major port, with merchantmen calling there to drop off and pick up cargo from all over the globe. It was the perfect place for Formy-Duval to find a fast ship away from his troubles. Always careful to remain at arms length, aware that the committees had eyes even among the wharves and docks of the coastal city, the doctor sought a captain who could provide him and his wife a berth. He eventually found such a man and ship, sailing for Haiti on the next tide. Dr. Formy-Duval and his wife gathered together only their most precious possessions and made their way to the ship under the cover of night. The captain whispered orders, and the two fugitives were brought aboard and hidden in a dark corner of the cargo-laden hold. The Princess paid for their passage with gold pieces from a sock of coins she kept on a leather thong that dipped between her breasts. The couple held their breath as they waited for the ship to get under way, worried that someone may have seen them climbing aboard the ship in the dead of the night, or that someone in the ships company might betray them. The Formy-Duvals gave a sigh of relief when they felt the deck cant over as wind filled the sails and the ship began making for open water. They didn’t dare venture out onto the deck for a last look at their homeland. Whatever memories of France they carried in their minds would have to suffice. Home was now some unseen land beyond the horizon.

For weeks the fugitive couple had time to consider the future, the days taken up by speculation as to what lay ahead and daydreaming while the ship skipped over the ocean swells. Finally a low green smudge on the horizon brought a cry of recognition from the lookout atop the ship’s main mast. The Formy-Duvals had made it safely to their new home. Once ashore the doctor and his wife set out for St. Domingue, where King Louis had granted him lands in the 1780’s. Some say he owned a sugar or coffee plantation there, though little is known about the time the Formy-Duvals spent in Haiti. The couple settled into a life as country planters, and not long afterwards the family grew with the birth of John Gerome Prospier Formy-Duval around 1789, and again around 1790 when Henrietta Formy-Duval was born. Alexander, the last of the children born to Dr. Formy-Duval and The Princess, was born in 1792.

St. Domingue, in Haiti.

For a blissful while it seemed the young family would finally be able to live a free and prosperous life, unencumbered by the lurking threat of the executioner, but the happiness was short-lived. Trouble seemed to follow Dr. Formy-Duval, and in Haiti he once again found himself surrounded by discontent and danger. Haiti in 1791 was an island with 30,000 whites ruling over more than a half million blacks whose simmering anger would erupt into violence in what became known as the Haitian Revolution. For fifteen years the violence raged, ultimately killing half the black and mulatto population. The white population became almost nonexistent, with half killed in the fighting and the other half fleeing the island violence for new homes in America, many of them settling in South Carolina.

The Haitian Revolution was the first successful revolt by slaves int he Western Hemisphere.

Dr. Formy-Duval tried to make a go of things in Haiti despite the violence. When Great Britain saw an opportunity to seize new territory in the confusion and disarray caused by the Haiti Revolution, the doctor may have seen a chance to rid himself of the death warrant hanging over his head once and for all. When British troops mustered near France’s colony of Jamaica with an eye towards seizing key real estate in southern Haiti, Jean Gerome Formy-Duval may have offered his services in the English cause. The memoirs of a British officer involved in the Haiti action mentions a “Monsieur Duval” who came to the redcoats in 1793 and offered to raise a body of men to help them take the southern seaports of Jeremie and Tiberon. The British accepted the offer, and then marched on the two towns. Monsieur Duval’s promised men never materialized, and the redcoats found themselves in a nasty fight, which they lost along with many men. The British were understandably displeased, and the officer’s papers say that the Duval in question later left the island for America.

Exactly how the Formy-Duvals came to America is something open to debate, with differing versions of the story depending on who is doing the telling. Family legend claims the doctor was warned that slaves on a rampage during the rebellion had targeted the French plantation owner, and that he and his family fled with a few trunks of belongings, including the doctor’s medical equipment, to a ship that took them to America. Another version points out that if the family had escaped just ahead of a lynch mob, they would hardly have had time to pack and transport several large trunks with family valuables. In this second version it’s claimed that Dr. Formy-Duval made arrangements with an American sea captain to transport his and a few other French families to America and away from the bloodshed in Haiti. Fearing reprisals from revolutionary French officials, the captain made the Formy-Duvals and the others meet him in a dory at sea, where he took them aboard two days later and transported them to the fledgling United States.

The ship finally dropped anchor at Georgetown, S.C., but the rice plantations and large numbers of black slaves were a discomforting reminder of the bad times in Haiti. Dr. Formy-Duval and his family reboarded the ship and took their search for a new home north. The ship made its way up to the Cape Fear, where the captain was scheduled to call on the port at Wilmington, N.C. Afraid to discharge his passengers at the town for fear they might be arrested and sent back to France, the captain put the fugitive Formy-Duvals ashore at the sleepy little village of Southport.

Once on dry land, Dr. Formy-Duval moved his brood up the river and settled for a while in Wilmington. Coming to the town by land avoided the awkward questions that an arrival by ship might have raised, and the family was able to settle in for a time and catch their breath. Still, Dr. Formy-Duval was uncomfortable in the port town, exposed to the prying eyes of curious neighbors. Every time a new ship dropped anchor along the bustling waterfront, Formy-Duval wondered if a passenger or crewmember might be someone who recognized him from France or Haiti. In 1798 the United States government passed the Alien and Sedition Act, aimed specifically at keeping French immigrants out of the country. It felt to the doctor as if his family’s newfound safety might be snatched away at any moment. Wilmington was just too crowded. Dr. Formy-Duval began looking for a more discreet place to set down his new roots.

South of Wilmington in what is modern Columbus County is Lake Waccamaw. Virginia patriot Patrick Henry owned land there once. After the war, the property was seized when its owner went into arrears for back taxes. Dr. Formy-Duval saw in the land a place where his family might finally settle down for good. He bought the 8,000 acres of property, much of it in the Green Swamp, and near Dupree Landing built a home. The Formy-Duvals had finally quit running.

Many residents of Crusoe Island in Columbus County claim to trace their lineage back to Dr. Formy-Duval, although he and the Princess never lived there themselves. By 1800 she had apparently died, and the doctor was remarried to Penelope Baldwin by 1802. Still a young teen when she became a bride, Penelope and the doctor had six more children. Dr. Jean Gerome Formy-Duval’s children would play prominent roles in the history of southeastern North Carolina and Florida, where two of his sons moved. One became a politician there, and another started growing orange groves. It may be that Duval County in Florida is named after one of them. Back in North Carolina, the doctor added another first to his name by becoming the first person to grow cotton in Columbus County, using Jonothan Price’s cider press to produce a bale in 1815.

Jean Gerome Formy-Duval died while attending a sick patient in Fair Bluff in 1821. Coming down with the plague on the way home, one story says he was buried where he fell beside the road, while another account has him being interred at Porter’s Swamp Baptist Church. The story goes on to say that whatever inheritance the doctor’s children had coming was lost to crooked lawyers, leaving the once wealthy family penniless save for what they owned in southeastern North Carolina.

How much of the story about the immigration of Dr. Jean Gerome Formy-Duval is true and how much has grown out of embellishment over the years is a matter of some debate. Descendents like Mike Formy-Duval have devoted a great deal of time and money over the years to uncovering the tantalizing details of how their ancestors first came to call North Carolina home. Regardless of how many of the details are true, at its heart is a fascinating story of how one courageous family braved uncertainty and possible death to reach a place where they could have a better life, here along the North Carolina coast.