History of the French in Baltimore

The earliest wave of French immigration began in the mid-18th century, as many Acadian refugees from Canada's Maritime Provinces.

In the late 20th and 21st centuries, additional Creole and French speakers have immigrated to Baltimore and other US cities as refugees from Haiti.

French (including patois and Cajun) was the fourth most common language of people who spoke English "less than very well".

There was intense fighting between the troops of British America and the French inhabitants of Acadia, a colony of New France located in what are now the Canadian Maritime provinces and the U.S. state of Maine.

[9] The original seminary buildings were demolished during the mid-1970s,[10] and the campus is now part of St. Mary's Park in the Seton Hill Historic District.

[11] The refugee population from Saint-Domingue was multiracial, including white Creoles and their enslaved African workers, as well as many free people of color.

[15] By the 1830s the Acadian presence in Baltimore had appeared to decline with assimilation or relocation; French Town also disappeared as an ethnic community.

The Seton Hill Association hosts the fair to celebrate the neighborhood as Baltimore's former French Quarter.

The Fair highlights city living and vendors of French themed food, and also presents several music performers.

Other activities have included hula hooping on the central green, petanque in the park, a flea and craft market, Art on the Fence, and a kids' corner for building and entertainments.

Napoleon's brother Jérôme traveled to Baltimore to meet a man he had befriended in the French Navy.

[17] His son Charles Bonaparte was a lawyer and politician who served as Secretary of the Navy and later the Attorney General of the United States.