Bodmer's watercolor sketch of the Bonaparte mansion shows it as it was in the summer of 1832. The following year the mansion burned, with a reported loss of many valuable pictures, furniture, and historic papers. In 1850 Henry Beckett, the British consul at Philadelphia, purchased the property and demolished what remained of the original house.

Maximilian left New York on July 16 and took passage by steamer to Amboy, New Jersey. Near Amboy he boarded a stagecoach for Philadelphia, and on July 18 he traveled to neighboring Bordentown, New Jersey. On July 19 he visited the va-cant estate of Joseph Bonaparte, Napoleon's older brother. On the evening of July 22, Bodmer arrived at the Bordentown tavern where Maximilian was staying. The next day on a walking tour with the Prince along the Delaware, he made two watercolor studies of the landscape in the vicinity of the Bonaparte estate.