Theophilus Cazenove

Theophilus Cazenove, or Theophile Cazenove (13 October 1740 – 6 March 1811), was a Dutch financier and one of the agents of the Holland Land Company.

Theophilus Cazenove was born in Amsterdam on 13 October 1740, as the son of Théophile Cazenove and Marie de Rapin-Thoyras, French/Swiss Huguenots. His father was a merchant and banker in Bordeaux, Saint Petersburg, Archangelsk, Stockholm and the West-Indies; in 1759 he lost four ships loaded with sugar and coffee, which were taken by a Bristol privateer. In 1760 the elder Théophile gave up his business and his sons Charles and Theophile assumed control of the company. In 1763, Theophile married Margaretha Helena van Jever, the daughter of a tradesman in Russia, and a member of the vroedschap. Cazenove spent his early career in commercial transactions in France and Russia, but went broke in 1770. In the same year, his portrait was painted by Jean-Baptiste Perronneau. After the death of his father-in-law he was involved in a plantation in Surinam. In 1788 he collaborated with Étienne Clavière and Jacques Pierre Brissot, who both traveled to the United States.

In November 1789 Cazenove was retained by Pieter Stadnitski to travel to the United States to act as an investment agent for Stadnitski and other Dutch investors (Nicolaas and Jacob Van Staphorst, Pieter & Christiaen Van Eeghen, and Ten Cate & Vollenhoven). Casenove settled in at Market Street in Philadelphia, where he dealt with financier Robert Morris; his fellow traveller Gerrit Boon later went north. Boon believed that harvesting maple syrup could be a year-round activity, so slavery on the sugarcane plantations could be avoided.

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