Was Peter Stewart Ney Napoleon's Marshal Ney? Records aren't clear, historian says
Peter Stewart Ney was an itinerant 19th century North Carolina schoolteacher who also designed the Davidson College seal. Was he also Field Marshal Michel Ney who helped lead French emperor Napoleon's army? Historian Gary Freeze explored "The Mystery of Peter Stewart Ney" in a talk to the Davidson Historical Society on Sept. 5.
On his deathbed, Ney himself claimed to be the French officer. Snippets of evidence support the claim. But other details don't add up. The mystery may never be solved, and remains a fascinating note in North Carolina and Piedmont history.
"This is a mysterious, interesting story that quite simply doesn't go away," Freeze told about 50 people at Davidson Town Hall.
Freeze is a retired Catawba College professor and historian who has researched Peter Stewart Ney and his possible connection to Field Marshal Ney.
As part of the program, Sara Swanson of Davidson College Archives & Special Collections brought a variety of Ney artifacts. They included his field writing desk, a flute, his eyeglasses, and a compass case. Most intriguing was a book Ney owned about the history of Napoleon, in which Ney hand-drew his own portrait of Marshal Ney, with a description reading: "Ney, by himself."
A signal? Perhaps.
ABOUT MARSHAL NEY
Who was Field Marshal Michel Ney?
Michel Ney was born in 1769 in Lorraine, on the French-German border. The son of a cooper, he gained an education and worked as a clerk early in his career, Freeze said. He joined the French army in 1787, just as Napoleon was gaining a name for himself.
Ney advanced quickly, rising from recruit to cavalry captain to general in just five years.
"Ney's rise to rank was one of the most phenomenal things to occur in the early Napoleonic period. He would, by the time Napoleon was creating his empire, be promoted to field marshal of France," Freeze said.
That's a rank above general.
Napoleon called Ney "the bravest of the brave,” for his reputation for throwing himself furiously into any fight. Ney, in turn, was a loyal follower of Napoleon. In 1815, a new French King accused Ney of treason, for helping Napoleon's effort to retake the throne. Ney was convicted and sentenced to death.
He was executed in Paris Dec. 7, 1815, and his body was put on display.
But was it Ney? Freeze said the body may have been someone else's and that Ney may actually have escaped on a ship to exile in South Carolina.
"He arrives, and according to Charleston port records, he said his name was Peter Stewart Ney," Freeze said.
"Within two years he had reinvented himself as a schoolteacher, who began his career in the area of Florence, South Carolina, but by 1820 had moved to the back country of North Carolina," Freeze said.
One contradiction in the story is that Marshal Ney spoke only French and German. If he was Peter Stewart Ney, how did he become fluent enough in English to teach school in such a short time?
Peter Stewart Ney taught in South Carolina, North Carolina, and Virginia from 1816 until 1846, when he died in Salisbury.
DAVIDSON COLLEGE SEAL
In the midst of that long career, he was commissioned to design the Davidson College seal and motto. Nobody knows how or why he was chosen for that task, Freeze said.
"There's no correspondence. They (Davidson's founders) would have known him,' Freeze said. "My suspicion is that he was such a notable figure that the planters and the other leading Presbyterians of the area had met him, or they had heard about him through families that sent children to Davidson. But how they picked him, to my knowledge, is not known. I wish I knew."
Ney died in 1846 near Salisbury and is buried in a Rowan County church cemetery.
On his deathbed, Ney proclaimed what many had been speculating: “I will not die with a lie on my lips! I am Marshal Ney of France!”
Ney's legend lived on long after his death.
In the 1930s, there was a local Ney Association, which donated a bust of Marshal Ney to Davidson College, Freeze said.
Over the years many people have speculated about Peter Stewart Ney's connection to Marshal Ney.
Freeze joined a 2022 exhumation of Ney’s Rowan County grave by a French documentary crew. Experts said later that the limited remains found suggested the person buried there was probably brown-eyed, rather blue-eyed, as Peter Stewart Ney.
FREEZE BELIEVES
Still, Freeze said he believes Ney's deathbed proclamation.
"I am mostly a believer, that he said who he was, which was the field marshal from France, and that he spent his life in hiding here and trying to tell people surreptitiously that he was the field marshal," Freeze said. But Freeze added that he would never put that in a history book.
In his talk, Freeze mentioned a long list of contradictory evidence and claims that make it hard to prove the mystery one way or another.
On the one hand was Peter Stewart Ney's resemblance to the Frenchman, his militaristic behavior, his sometimes-coded writings, and his own claims to be the marshal. Peter Stewart Ney also is said to have reacted emotionally to news of Napoleon’s death in 1821.
But other evidence includes theories that he may have been someone else - a Scotsman who emigrated to North Carolina or an American Revolutionary soldier who joined Napoleon's army then later returned to North Carolina. Freeze said there's also the hard-to-ignore grave of Marshal Ney in Paris. And purported letters and manuscripts that might have proven Ney's claim have never been found.
Even DNA testing is inconclusive. "There is no direct descendant to actually test anything, even if they could have tested it properly. So we're left with there is no smoking gun," Freeze said.
DAVIDSON ARCHIVES ARTIFACTS
Davidson College Archives and Special Collections owns a variety of artifacts related to Peter Stewart Ney.
Those include his flute, his eyeglasses, a trunk, a compass case, and a history of Napoleon that includes the hand drawing with the mysterious caption. There are also hand-written poems by Ney, including one dedicated to a woman named Martha.
"We also have his field desk, which was with him when he passed away. He said there was a letter in it that would startle the world, but that letter is gone, is lost," said archivist Sara Swanson.
Davidson has many of these items because Peter Stewart Ney designed the motto and the seal for the college," Swanson explained. "So in the 1930s and 1940s, there was a Ney Association, and they sort of gathered at Davidson. And folks donated these materials, and we've sort of kept them since then."
Davidson Historical Society is a nonprofit organization that promotes understanding and appreciation of the history of Davidson and the surrounding area. For more information, or to become a member, visit DavidsonHistoricalSociety.org
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