Charles Bizet
Cite this Page
"Charles Bizet," White House Workers History Project, White House Historical Association, 2026, https://whha.whirlihost.com/Detail/workers/161.
- Position
- Gardener
- Years in President's House
- 1819 – 1825
- Legal Status
- Free Person
- Gender
- Male
- Race/Ethnicity
- White
- Presidency
- James Monroe
- Biography
- Charles Bizet was born in France at an unknown date, though recollections indicate that he and his wife (name unknown) fled to America during the French Revolution. (1) It appears that he did some work for James Monroe, and around 1810, he was hired by James Madison to design and maintain the gardens at Montpelier. (2) There, he would have worked alongside enslaved workers; according to the Madisons’ niece Mary Cutts, the Bizets “were great favorites with the negroes, some of whom they taught to speak french.” (3)
Charles Bizet joined James Monroe’s White House staff as “Gardener to the President of the U. States” in 1819 and remained in the role until just after President John Quincy Adams moved into the Executive Mansion in the summer of 1825. (4) He later continued his work for the Madisons and eventually returned to France. (5) - (1) The Queen of America: Mary Cutts’ Life of Dolley Madison, Ed. Catherine Allgor (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2012), pg. 159.
(2) “Annie duPont Formal Garden,” James Madison’s Montpelier, https://www.montpelier.org/learn/annie-dupont-formal-garden/. “From James Madison to James Monroe, 16 July 1810,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Madison/03-08-02-0541. [Original source: The Papers of James Madison, Presidential Series, vol. 8, July 1814–18 February 1815 and supplement December 1779–18 April 1814, ed. Angela Kreider, J. C. A. Stagg, Mary Parke Johnson, Anne Mandeville Colony, and Katherine E. Harbury. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2015, pp. 622–623.] See also “To James Madison from James Monroe, 25 July 1810,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Madison/03-02-02-0551. [Original source: The Papers of James Madison, Presidential Series, vol. 2, 1 October 1809–2 November 1810, ed. J. C. A. Stagg, Jeanne Kerr Cross, and Susan Holbrook Perdue. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1992, p. 437.]
(3) The Queen of America: Mary Cutts’ Life of Dolley Madison, Ed. Catherine Allgor (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2012), pg. 159.
(4) See Jonathan Pliska, “Historic American Landscapes Survey: White House Grounds”, National Park Service, 92-95.
(5) Ibid, 95. - Birthplace
- France