Alexandre Francois Auguste de Grasse, known as Auguste de Grasse and Comte de Grasse-Tilly (February 14, 1765 – June 10, 1845), was a French career army officer. He was assigned to the French colony of Saint-Domingue in 1789, where he married in Cap Français, and acquired a plantation and 200 slaves before the Haitian Revolution. Following the Royal Navy's defeat of the French fleet in Saint-Domingue in 1793, de Grasse was allowed to resign his commission and leave with his family and in-laws for Charleston, South Carolina. There he and several fellow French colonial refugees joined the Freemasons in Charleston, forming a French chapter. In 1796 de Grasse was made a Director Inspector General of Freemasonry in Charleston; in 1801 he was among the eleven founders there of the Supreme Council of the Scottish Rite. He was later chosen as Grand Marshal of the South Carolina Ancient Grand Lodge. De Grasse later returned to France after Napoleon came to power, and was able to resume his military career. He was also instrumental in founding new Scottish Rite councils in Paris and major European cities. In 1840 he published a biography of his father, Notice biographique sur l'amiral comte de Grasse d'après les documents inédits. It included reflections on his own life and experiences in Saint-Domingue and the United States. Life Alexandre Francois Auguste de Grasse, known as Auguste de Grasse, was baptized in St. Louis Parish, Versailles, France. He had a younger brother Maxime, who became a knight of Malta and died in 1773. He had four younger sisters: Amélie Rosalie Maxime, Adélaide, Mélanie Veronique Maxime, and Silvie de Grasse. His father, François Joseph Paul de Grasse, also known as Comte de Grasse, was a career naval officer who helped rebuild the navy after France's defeat in the Seven Years' War. Their mother Antoinette Rosalie Accaron died young, after the birth of her last child. Their father married again, to Catherine Pien, widow of M. de Villeneuve. After Catherine's death, their father married for a third time, to Marie Delphine Lazare de Cibon, who survived him. France committed naval forces and other resources to support the rebels in the American Revolutionary War. Commanding the French fleet in the Battle of the Chesapeake, Admiral de Grasse became a hero of the war. His forces surprised the English fleet and defeated it, leading to the surrender by Cornwallis at Yorktown in 1781.