Theodore Canot, an adventurer and slave trader, born at Florence about 1807. He was the son of a captain and paymaster in the French army. After an ordinary school education he shipped as a seaman in the American ship Galatea, of Boston, from Leghorn to Calcutta. He made several voyages from Boston; was shipwrecked near Ostend, and again on the coast of Cuba. At Havana he shipped on a slaver, and made his first voyage to Africa in 1826, landing at the slave factory of Bangalang, on the river Pongo, Senegambia. After quelling a mutiny on board and helping to stow away 108 slaves, he entered the service of the owner of the factory, a mulatto named Ormond, but commonly called "Mongo John." In 1827 a friend in Havana consigned to him a slave schooner, which he loaded with 217 negroes, receiving $5,565 commission, while the Cuban owners realized a clear profit of $41,438. Ca-not then collected a stock of slaves for his newly established depot at Kambia near Ban-galang. Another vessel was sent out to him from Cuba; but the captain dying, he took command and sailed for Regla, but was soon captured by two British cruisers after a hard fight. He made his escape in a small boat with one companion, and reached the river Pongo. In May, 1828, his factory and goods were destroyed by fire.

He afterward purchased a vessel at Sierra Leone, in which with a cargo of slaves he sailed to Cuba. Three more expeditions soon followed; in the first he lost 300 slaves by smallpox; in the last he was taken by the French and condemned to 10 years' confinement in the prison of Brest, but a year after he was pardoned by Louis Philippe. He returned to Africa, and was the pioneer of the slave traffic at New Sestros, from which in 1840 he shipped to Cuba 749 slaves. Obtaining a grant of land at Cape Mount, he established in 1841 a trading and farming settlement under the name of New Florence. He made a trip to New York some time afterward. In March, 1847, New Florence was destroyed by the British, who suspected it to be a slave station, and Canot removed to South America, where he engaged in commerce. He resided for some time in Baltimore, and finally received from Napoleon III. an office in one of the French Colonies in Oceania. A narrative of his adventures from his own notes, by Brantz Mayer, was published in New York in 1854.