Samuel Clement

Samuel Clement (July 20, 1833) was a pioneering steamboat man of the United States, plantation owner, and Mississippi state senator. He wrote to an acquaintance back east that his political service was no proof of his notability: "That is a weak evidence of greatness, many noodles get into the Legislature." In 1827 he wrote a pamphlet entitled Truth Is No Slander, opposing the presidential candidacy of Andrew Jackson. Clement died in the cholera epidemic of 1833. His granddaughter, one of the first American dollar princesses, married the Duke of Manchester.

Early life Clement was likely of Quaker stock from Dutchess County, New York. He had at least one brother, Charles Clement, who also migrated to the lower Mississippi River valley, and eventually married Henrietta Desobry, the daughter of a family of White refugees from the Haitian Revolution on Saint-Domingue, who had escaped to Cuba and were then expelled again and settled in Louisiana. As told by an aged niece of Samuel Clement, in the early 20th century:

Captain Samuel Clement began life as a sailor before the mast on one of John Jacob Astor's boats. Mr. Astor's ventures in China were sometimes exceedingly fortunate. A fair profit of a voyage to China in that day was $30,000. Mr. Astor had been known to gain $70,000 and have his money in pocket before the end of the year. He was remarkably lucky in the War of 1812. All his ships escaped capture and arriving at a time when foreign commerce was almost annihilated and tea doubled in price, his gains were so immense that that a million or more lost in other enterprises did not give him a moment's inconvenience. From a sailor, Samuel Clement rapidly rose to the position of purser, and after a few years had saved sufficient money to establish a business in New York. When Livingston and Fulton needed someone to put in charge of their steamboat, which was to defy the currents of the Mississippi, they finally determined to put Samuel Clement in command." According to one account of the first days of steamboats, "Coal was unknown fuel, and the boatmen in those days went ashore in the wilderness, spending days cutting wood and hunting deer, turkeys, bears, squirrels, &c. for their provisions." The tonnage of the steamboat Vesuvius was "394 tons (Custom House measurement), and she carried over 1,300 bales of cotton, averaging 400 pounds each...Among those who commanded the Vesuvius, during her career, were Captain Frank Ogden, Capt. Clement, and Captains Robinson and John De Hart."

Battle of New Orleans Clement seems to been a key figure in piloting the Fulton and Livingston boats, and "At the time of the battle of New Orleans he commanded one of the transports which carried General Jackson's troops, and the story is told of a dispute which arose between the captain and the general owing to the delay of the captain's boat, which had to tie up because of a fog. The high-spirited sailor and steamboat man, himself accustomed to command, found the caustic remarks for which General Jackson was famous very little to his liking, and answered the general in a fashion that General Jackson was seldom obliged to listen to. The quarrel never came to a definite head, and shortly after this Captain Clement retired from the river and settled on a plantation, Ravenswood, in Concordia Parish, Louisiana."

Later life Clement was an early settler in the Pine Ridge section of Adams County, Mississippi. He represented Adams County in 1821 in the Mississippi State Senate. In 1824 Clement was a candidate for Mississippi state senator for Adams County against John B. Nevitt.

In December 1827, in anticipation of the upcoming 1828 U.S. presidential election, he published a "political pamphlet on the presidential question". A grand-nephew reviewed this document positively in 1958, writing "This remarkably well-written piece of campaign literature was not a flamboyant, bitter and scurrilous attack as were many of the broadsides and brochures issued at that time...Samuel Clement's pamphlet is sane, judicial, logical, and well-reasoned. It is quite a literary achievement, and shows him to have been an educated man. Captain Clement's booklet makes a study of Jackson's character and analyzes his achievements. For all students of Andrew Jackson and his time, I recommend this pamphlet as necessary reading." As summarized in Douglas McMurtie's index of early Mississippi imprints, "The author says that; General Jackson should receive no praise for his action at New Orleans, that he was a hindrance rather than a help to the victory there, that the six militia men were murdered by Jackson, and that he was a man unfit for the presidency."

Clement was invested in plantations at Lake St. John in Concordia Parish as early as 1825.

Clement died in July 1833 from the epidemic cholera that swept the South that year. The Natchez Free Trader reported that it had broken out on Clement's Louisiana plantation "and several of his slaves had died." Clement sickened while traveling on the river and "died within a few hours" upon arriving in Natchez, Mississippi. Clement's only child, born posthumously, was Ellen Marie Clement, afterwards Mrs. Antonio Yznaga de Valle. Ellen Clement Yznaga was the mother of four children, including businessman Fernando Yznaga and Consuelo Yznaga, who by her marriage to George Montagu, 8th Duke of Manchester in 1876, became Consuelo Montagu, Duchess of Manchester, and was one of the first American dollar princesses who married into European noble families. Consuelo Yznaga was the namesake of Consuelo Vanderbilt, who married the Duke of Marlborough in 1895.