The Forgotten Bonapartes: How Napoleon’s Family Helped Build the FBI

On this episode of Our American Stories, when Napoleon’s brother Jérôme Bonaparte met a young Baltimore woman named Elizabeth Patterson in 1803, it seemed like a love story that could never last. Their marriage was annulled by the emperor himself, but it sparked a family line that would take root in America and quietly reshape its future.

Their grandson, Charles J. Bonaparte, carried the ambition of his lineage in a different direction. Educated at Harvard and driven by public service, he became U.S. Attorney General under Theodore Roosevelt and went on to establish a small investigative office within the Justice Department, an office that would later evolve into the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

The History Guy traces how Napoleon Bonaparte’s legacy reached across oceans, blending old-world nobility with new-world purpose.

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