The way I see it, Bonaparte started the confusion. This ruler of France, who had an Italian name, was not born in France but in Ajaccio, on the island of Corsica, which had been transferred from the Republic of Genoa to France in 1768. This was one year before Napoleon's birth so he may, also, have been somewhat confused as to where he was born.
The American portion of all this started with the city of New Orleans, Louisiana when France owned it as well as several million acres going west from there. It was land the Americans, especially President Thomas Jefferson, wanted and Napoleon put up for sale.
Prior to 1762 France gave all this property to Spain. So if you had been born just about anywhere on the Great American Plains after that date you were born in New Spain or Louisiana Territory even if, like myself, you'd been born in Nebraska. Then in 1800 Napoleon made Spain give it all back. Now if you were born right after 1800, say in Kansas like my father, you would have been born in either Louisiana or New France.
Napoleon had big plans for this property but England sunk his ideas when she swamped France's navy. Robert Livingston, the American minister to France, clued Bonaparte into the fact that he'd have a hard time holding territory in America while England controlled the seas. Livingston also hinted that America would be willing to relieve France of New Orleans. Then James Monroe showed up and offered the Emperor 10 million dollars for the deal, but Napoleon had a better idea.
For the paltry sum of 15 million dollars Bonaparte put up for sale the entire French-held American territory which included New Orleans and a big backyard that stretched all the way westward to the Rocky Mountains. So on April 30, 1803 America purchased from France some 885,000 square miles of mostly unexplored wilderness and called the deal the Louisiana Purchase. Now if you were born on the Great American Plains, Missouri all the way to the Rocky Mountains, after 1803 you were born in America. But where in America were you born?
If you'd asked my mother where she was born she would have said Missouri. Her brother would have claimed a Colorado homestead as his birthplace. But if their births had been right after 1803, which they weren't, they'd be wrong. Both would have been born in American's Louisiana Territory.
