History Alexandria Virginia - Jean Michael van Havre

Jean Michael van Havre.  608 Cameron Street.  Jean Michael Anthony, Baron van Havre, who dined at Mount Vernon, bought this house in 1798.  His wife’s sister married Martha Washington’s daughter-in-law’s brother.  His family fled Belgium in 1794 as the army of Revolutionary France advanced on his native Antwerp.  Eventually, they returned to Belgium, where Jean Michael van Havre was part of a four-person delegation dispatched from Antwerp to congratulate Napoleon on the birth of his son in 1811.  For fans of Margaret Law Callcott’s Mistress of Riversdale: The Plantation Letters of Rosalie Stier Calvert (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991), van Havre was married to Rosalie’s older sister.

(Adapted from Robert Madison’s Walking with Washington, available in Alexandria museum gift shops.)