Editing Elizabeth Patterson Bonaparte (section)

=== Divorce and last years ===
[[File:Firmin Massot - Three-quarter-length portrait of Elizabeth Patterson Bonaparte (1785-1879).jpg|thumb|left|Portrait of Elizabeth Patterson Bonaparte by [[Firmin Massot]], 1823.]]
[[File:Elizabeth Patterson Bonaparte Gravestone Three Quarter View.jpg|thumb|right|Elizabeth Patterson Bonaparte's tombstone]]
[[File:Elizabeth_Patterson_Bonaparte_gravestone_front_detail.jpg|thumb|right|Front of her tombstone]]
In 1815, by special act of the Legislature of Maryland, Patterson secured a divorce. She returned to Europe again in 1819 with her son Bo, whom she enrolled in school in Geneva. She traveled to Rome during the winter of 1821–1822 at the behest of [[Pauline Bonaparte]], who had hinted at making a financial settlement upon Bo. This news was welcome for Elizabeth as Jerome refused to provide for her and their son. After a failed attempt by Elizabeth and the Bonaparte women to arrange a marriage between Bo and Joseph Bonaparte's youngest daughter [[Charlotte Bonaparte|Charlotte]], she left Rome and returned to Geneva. During a stop in Florence, she visited the [[Palazzo Pitti|Pitti Palace]], where she accidentally met Jerome and his second wife Catharina. The two did not speak, but witnesses confirmed that they saw each other and that Jerome was reported as telling Catharina that Elizabeth was his "American wife." Jerome quickly left Florence shortly after the encounter. The two never saw each other again.

Elizabeth split the following decades between Europe and Baltimore, then finally returned to Baltimore. The rifts that had been present between Elizabeth and her family all her life were exacerbated by her marriage and her choices to pursue celebrity in both America and Europe rather than to be an obedient daughter. Her father's rebuke of her in his will and a feud between her and her brothers over her father's estate caused her permanent ostracization from the Patterson family. Her family strife was compounded by her anger at Bo's choice of American heiress [[Susan May Williams]] for a wife, a rift that never was resolved.

In 1861, she filed an inheritance claim in the Tribunal of First Instance at Paris after her former husband, Prince Jérôme, died on June 24, 1860.<ref>[https://www.nytimes.com/1861/01/30/news/american-bonapartes-details-legal-trial-soon-come-concerning-american-bonapartes.html?pagewanted=all The American Bonapartes. Details of the Legal Trial soon to come on concerning the American Bonapartes. From the London Times.] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180126125708/https://www.nytimes.com/1861/01/30/news/american-bonapartes-details-legal-trial-soon-come-concerning-american-bonapartes.html?pagewanted=all |date=January 26, 2018 }}, ''The New York Times'', January 30, 1861.</ref> There was significant pushback against her from Jérôme's other  children, [[Mathilde Bonaparte|Mathilde]] and [[Prince Napoléon-Jérôme Bonaparte|Napoléon-Jérôme]], who regarded her line of the family as bastards.<ref>{{citeweb|url= https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18007502-wondrous-beauty|title=Wondrous Beauty: The Life and Adventures of Elizabeth Patterson Bonaparte|first= Carol|last= Berkin}}</ref> The Tribunal of the Seine eventually ruled that the "demands of Madame Elizabeth Patterson and her son, Jerome Bonaparte, are not admissible, and must be rejected."<ref name="1861Suit">{{cite news |title=The Bonaparte Family Suit |url=https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1861/03/08/78653694.pdf |access-date=2 June 2019 |work=[[The New York Times]] |date=March 3, 1861 |archive-date=June 2, 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230602102505/https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1861/03/08/78653694.pdf |url-status=live }}</ref>

Her last years were spent in Baltimore in the management of her estate, the value of which she increased to $1.5 million. She lived her last years in a Baltimore boarding house despite having enough money to have purchased a fine home. At the end of her life, she commented, "Once I had everything but money; now I have nothing but money."

Patterson died on April 4, 1879, in Baltimore in the midst of a court battle over whether the state of Maryland could tax her out-of-state bonds.<ref name=MD>Maryland State Archives. 2007.</ref> The case reached the Supreme Court (''Bonaparte v. Tax Court'', 104 U.S. 592). The court decided in favor of Maryland.<ref name=MD/> She was interred in [[Green Mount Cemetery]] in Baltimore. Her tomb bears an epitaph: "After life's fitful fever she sleeps well."<ref>Christopher T. George. [http://www.baltimoremd.com/monuments/bonapart.html ''Defeated by Napoleon: Fame (Sort Of) But No Titles for the Bonapartes of Baltimore.''] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130322134812/http://www.baltimoremd.com/monuments/bonapart.html |date=March 22, 2013 }}</ref>