Author: Guerin, Bertrand
Biography:
GUERIN, Bertrand (fl 1808-17)
Guerin was a French emigré who left no other mark in American or French publication records than his participation in a literary feud. He was an occasional contributor of poems in French or English to local newspapers. Verses by him in French, published in a Baltimore newspaper, triggered a reaction from a French author living in Georgetown DC in the form of a poem, Le Satyre Américaine (1808). (The author used the rude pseudonym Edouard Je-M'en-Fiche but S&W identify him as John Lafitte.) Guerin was teaching French at Baltimore College at the time. By 1811 he was the Prefossor of French at Transylvania University in Lexington KY where he proposed to publish a prose work, "Remarks on the Catholic and Protestant Religions," which presumably did not attract enough subscribers and does not appear to have been printed. In July 1812 he married Frances Hickey in Lexington. Six years later he advertised another scheme that would have enabled him to move to New Orleans LA, a private academy under his supervision--but it depended on enrolments and there is no evidence that it ever came about. No reliable dates of birth or death have been found in public records. (ancestry.com 5 Sept. 2025; findmypast.com 5 Sept. 2025; Liberty Hall 9 Oct. 1811; Courrier de la Louisiane [New Orleans] 21 May 1817; S&W) HJ
Other Names:
- M. Guerin