Philip Mazzei

Philip Mazzei (25 December 1730 – 19 March 1816), originally Filippo Mazzei , and sometimes erroneously cited as Philip Mazzie, was an Italian physician, philosopher, diplomat, winemaker, merchant, and author. A neighbor of Thomas Jefferson, he was a supporter of the American Revolution and the American colonies' war for independence from Britain.

Biography

Mazzei was born in Poggio a Caiano in the Grand Duchy of Tuscany as a son of Domenico and Elisabetta. After his studies in medicine between Prato and Florence, in 1752, following disagreements with his older brother Jacopo over the management of the family heritage, he settled in Pisa and then in Livorno, practicing as a doctor but after only two years he left the city and moved to Smyrna (then part of the Ottoman Empire) as a surgeon following a local doctor.

Mazzei practiced medicine in the Middle East for several years before moving to London in 1755 to take up a mercantile career as an importer.

In London, he worked as a teacher of Italian language. While in London he met the American Benjamin Franklin. While doing work for Franklin, Mazzei shared his idea of importing Tuscan products, wine and olive trees, to the New World. Here Filippo Mazzei will cultivate vineyards, olives, and other Mediterranean fruit with the help of Italians.

On 2 September 1773, Mazzei boarded a ship from Livorno to the Colony of Virginia, bringing with him plants, seeds, silkworms, and 10 farmers from Lucca. He was also joined by a widow, Maria Martin, whom he married in 1778, and his friend Carlo Bellini who between 1779 and 1803 would become the first teacher of Italian at an American university, the College of William & Mary in Virginia.

In 1779, following the emergence of the independent United States after the colonial victory in the American Revolutionary War, Mazzei returned to Italy as a secret agent for Virginia, tasked with securing a loan and purchasing military supplies in Italy.

After Poland was partitioned between Russia and Prussia in 1795, Mazzei, along with the rest of the Polish court, was given a pension by the Russian crown. He later spent more time in France, becoming active in the politics of the French Revolution under the Directorate. When Napoleon overthrew that government Mazzei returned definitively to Tuscany, settling in Pisa where in 1796 he married Antonina Tonini, with whom he had a daughter, Elisabetta, in 1798. After his death the remainder of his family returned to the United States at the urging of Jefferson. They settled in Massachusetts and Virginia.

He was buried at the Suburbano Cemetery in Pisa.

The friendship between Mazzei and Jefferson

The friendship between Thomas Jefferson and Filippo Mazzei is attested by the numerous letters they exchanged, an estimate that was confirmed in letters to third parties:

Many biographers believe Jefferson and George Washington had a falling out over a letter Jefferson sent to Mazzei in Italy, which called the Washington Administration "Anglican, monarchical, and aristocratical," and claimed that Washington had appointed as military officers "all timid men that prefer the calm of despotism to the boisterous sea of liberty ... t would give you a fever were I to name to you the apostates who have gone over to these heresies, men who were Samsons in the field and Solomons in the council, but who have had their heads shorn by the harlot England." The letter was eventually published overseas and then re-translated back into English by Noah Webster and published in the United States.

Colle and the vineyards in Virginia

Thanks to the friendship with Thomas Jefferson, he settled in Virginia since 1773 at Jefferson's invitation, he built Colle, an estate in Albemarle County, Virginia, near Monticello. The name, taken from Italian and meaning "hill". The original house, built around 1774, no longer stands; the present building, in the French Colonial Revival style, dates from 1940.

History In September 1773, Mazzei sailed from Livorno for Virginia, bringing Tuscan farmers, European grapevines, and other Mediterranean plants. In 1774, he purchased 281 acres, built a house there, and began clearing the land to plant vines. In January 1792, he reported that he had sold the property to a Mr. Thomas for £250, while warning of the buyer's uncertain solvency and describing the estate as being in "a ruinous state" that Mazzei "can have no conception of". That sale did not go through, and the property was ultimately sold in the spring of 1796 for a mere two dollars an acre. In April 1796, Jefferson was still handling "the balance which will remain for Colle after deducting the little matter due to me", and by 1800 acknowledged having let "the proceeds of Colle lie unsettled & but partly collected". In January 2023, the Thomas Jefferson Foundation acquired the property for $11.75 million. The building was demolished, and no visible remains of its original structure survive.

Mazzei's writings

In English Filippo Mazzei. My Life and Wanderings. Translated by S. Eugene Scalia. Edited by Margherita Marchione. Morristown, NJ: American Institute of Italian Studies, 1980. .

In French Filippo Mazzei: Recherches Historiques et Politiques sur les Etats-Unis de l'Amérique Septentrionale (Historical and Political Enquiries Concerning the United States of North America), 2019. Four Volumes. Filippo Mazzei, Stanisław August Poniatowski, Lettres de Philippe Mazzei et du roi Stanislas-Auguste de Pologne, Roma : Istituto storico italiano per l'età moderna e contemporanea, 1982

In Italian Filippo Mazzei: Memorie della vita e delle peregrinazioni del fiorentino Filippo Mazzei, edited by Gino Capponi, Lugano, Tip. della Svizzera Italiana, 1845–1846, 2 volumes Filippo Mazzei: Del commercio della seta fatto in Inghilterra dalla Compagnia delle Indie Orientali (manoscritto inedito di Filippo Mazzei – 1769), edited by Silvano Gelli, Poggio a Caiano, Comune di Poggio a Caiano, 2001.

Influence First edition front cover of A Nation of Immigrants by John F. Kennedy (1958)

John F. Kennedy, in his 1958 book A Nation of Immigrants, asserted that Philip Mazzei influenced the drafting of the US Declaration of Independence, stating that:

In 1980, a park at Mace and Paulding Avenues near Williamsbridge Road in the Bronx, New York, was renamed "Mazzei Playground" in honor of Philip Mazzei.

The World War II Liberty Ship was named in his honor.