Philip Mazzei

Filippo Mazzei ( Americanized: Philip Mazzei, born December 25, 1730 in Poggio a Caiano (Italy ), † March 19, 1816 in Pisa ) was an Italian- American diplomat.

Mazzei was born 1730 in Poggio- a- Caiano. Until 1755 he worked as a physician in the Ottoman Empire, then as a teacher of Italian and as a wine merchant in London. From 1773 he lived in Virginia ( USA), where he introduced the cultivation of grapes and olives and spread. He lived on a plantation east of Charlottesville, joined the circle around Thomas Jefferson and became a follower of the revolutionary movement in Virginia. Patrick Henry sent him to Europe in 1779 to collect Leihgelder for the Commonwealth of Virginia. In this matter, Mazzei was unsuccessful, but he amassed political and military information, which he passed to Jefferson. After his return to America in 1783 were dashed the hopes cherished by him on a job in Konsularsdienst the United States, therefore, he moved permanently to Europe in 1785 and was there from 1788 to 1791 in the service of the King of Poland (Poland was at that time part of the Russian Empire) in Paris, after that professor in Warsaw, and finally in Pisa. After 1802, he moved into a guest house of the Russian Tsar.