After his father was deposed and executed by his own subjects, Achille Murat went into exile in the Austrian Empire with his siblings and mother.

At the age of 21, Achille Murat emigrated to the United States and settled at St. Augustine, Florida, becoming a naturalized citizen sometime after July 1828 and dropping his European titles.

[2] After Napoleon was exiled for a second time in 1815 on Saint Helena island in the middle of the southern Atlantic Ocean, Joachim Murat was deposed and executed by his subjects.

Although he had renounced all his European titles[7] and citizenship, his wide social connections brought Murat to Washington, where he befriended Richard K. Call,[8] the delegate of the Florida Territory's at-large congressional district to the United States House of Representatives.

Murat purchased an extensive property of 2,800 acres (1,100 ha) and developed it into a plantation, utilizing slave labor to grow oranges, sugar cane, cotton, and tobacco.

Murat's Parthenope was located about 10 mi (16 km) south of St. Augustine, on the west side of the Matanzas River, at the mouth of Moses Creek.

Murat liked to go nude and made a submersible chair to escape the heat of the north Florida summers, using it to sit naked in the waters of Moses Creek with mosquito netting over his head.

Murat was known to have experimented with eating baked turkey buzzard,[14] boiled owl, roasted crow, stewed alligator,[15] lizards and rattlesnakes.

He had an aversion to baths, did not like to change his clothes, "washed his feet only after he wore out his shoes", and slept on a mattress stuffed with Spanish moss.

[24] Legend tells that the Marquis' agents arranged for a group of fifty or sixty Norman French farmers to settle on the land around 1831, but there is no documentation of this taking place.

[26] During the early phase of the Second Seminole War, and for the previous three years, Murat served as a lieutenant-colonel in the Florida Militia and aide-de-camp to Call.

[31] During his residence at his plantation near St. Augustine, Murat began to write his observations on American politics[32] and his daily life in Florida in fluent French, Italian and English.

[35] Following the July Revolution of 1830 in France, Murat returned to Europe, where he was assigned to the command of a regiment of the Belgian Legion.

Murat's maternal first cousin, Napoleon III of France, provided his widow with a cash sum of $40,000 and an annual stipend so that she could live the life to which she had become accustomed.