Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography/Bollman, Eric

BOLLMAN, Eric, physician, b. in Hoya, Hanover, in 1769; d. in Jamaica, W. I., 9 Dec., 1821. He studied medicine at Göttingen, and practised in Carlsruhe and in Paris, where he settled at the beginning of the French revolution. He accompanied Count Narbonne, who fled to England in 1792, and in London fell in with Lally-Tollendal, who induced him to go to Austria and endeavor to find out where Gen. Lafayette was kept in confinement. He established himself as a physician in Vienna. Learning that Lafayette was a prisoner at Olmütz, he formed a plan to rescue him with the assistance of Francis Kinlock Huger, a young American. Communicating with the prisoner through the prison surgeon, the two fell upon his guards while he was taking exercise in a carriage, and succeeded in getting him away on a horse; but he rode in the wrong direction and was recaptured. Dr. Bollman escaped to Prussia, but was handed over to the Austrian authorities, who kept him in prison for nearly a year, and then released him on condition that he should leave the country. He came to the United States and was well received; but in 1806 was implicated in Aaron Burr's conspiracy and was Burr's agent in New Orleans. In 1814 he returned to Europe, and, after another visit to the United States, took up his residence in London. He published “Paragraphs on Banks” (2d ed., Philadelphia, 1811); “Improved System of the Money Concerns of the Union” (1816); and “Strictures on the Theories of M. Ricardo.”