| Described
as cheerful and sprightly, Dr. Antoine Francois
Saugrain was the son of Claude Marin Saugrain, a
French bookseller and publisher. He was born in
Versailles, France on 17 Feb 1763 and was well
educated in Paris, extensively studying
chemistry, mineralogy and physics at a time when
the study of science and its experiments were at
a new height in France. Comfortable in the wilderness and
knowledgeable in the sciences, he was appointed
by King Charles II of Spain to survey mineral
resources of Central and South America in 1783.
The following year he was sent as a mineralist
for Gilbert Antoine de St. Maxent at New Orleans,
and while there, was admitted to the practice of
surgery at the age of twenty on the 6th of June
that year. It is noted that during the voyage, he
held the position of surgeon major and was said
to have been held prisoner in Jamaica for seven
months.
In 1787 he was
sent to participate in another scientific
expedition. He had the good fortune of having
been schooled under Joseph Igance Guillotin who
had been chosen by the king as one of the four
doctors to serve on the commission to investigate
mesmerism - the technique developed by Franz
Freidrich Anton Mesmer, an Austrian physician and
theologian that had sent a buzz of interest in
Paris. Although the French Court and upper class
persons were taken and intrigued by Mesmer, King
Louis XVI was not and commissioned the French
Academy of Sciences to investigate the man and
his therapeutic claims.
Also serving on
the committee to investigate, was Dr. Antoine
Lavoisier, the founder of modern chemistry and
Dr. Benjamin Franklin, who was at that time
already as highly regarded by the European
intellectuals in his scientific works with the
lightening rod as he was respected as a
statesman.
At the age of
eighty-one, and in poor health, the experiments
and meetings regarding Mesmer were conducted at
his Franklin’s home in Passy a suburb of
Paris. Though the committee concluded the
investigation and found Mesmer’s techniques
to be without merit, the meetings had sparked
subsequent conversations over dinner between
Guillotin and Franklin about America. Coupled
with the intense unrest in France, Dr. Guillotin
became more and more interested in the idea of
moving to the new country and began to put
together an exploratory team to send to the Ohio
valley in search of a suitable location to
settle.
Knowing the young
doctor Antoine Saugrain who had studied under him
and whose sister he had married, Dr. Guillotin
was confident in Saugrain and wrote a formal
letter of introduction to Dr. Franklin had now
returned to Philadelphia. In the letter he
informed Franklin that Antoine had been schooled
not only under his observation in amphitheatres,
laboratories, but that he had received other
courses in anatomy, physics, surgery, chemistry
and natural history from those such as Messrs. A.
Pettit, Noux, D’ arcet, Buquet, Fourcroy,
Briffon, Charles and others; and that he had been
practicing surgery with great success at the
Hotel-Dieu. All this conclusively expressed that
Antoine had been educated by some of the most
outstanding minds of Paris.
Sailing from
France for the expedition was botanist J.N. Pique
and Antoine Saugrain, and M. Raguet. An American
by the name of Pierce had also joined up with the
three after meeting with Dr. Franklin in
Philadelphia, who was enough impressed with Dr.
Saugrain, that he wrote his old friend and
neighbor in Paris, Le Veillard. A portion of
Franklin’s letter of 17 Feb 1788 reads:
“My Dear
Friend — I received your kind letter of June
23d, by Mr. Saugrain, and it is the last of yours
that is come to my hands ... I find Mr. Saugrain
to answer well the good character you give of
him, and shall with pleasure render him any
services in my power. He is now gone down the
Ohio to reconnoitre that country ... and I remain
with ulalterable and great esteem and affection,
my dear friend, yours most sincerely, Benj.
Franklin."
The small group
left Philadelphia for Pittsburgh in the late
Summer and having anticipated possible
difficulties had carried a letter of introduction
from Franklin’s successor in Paris, Thomas
Jefferson, to George Rogers Clark who was on the
American frontier.
Jefferson’s
letter, which apparently never reached Clark,
explained that Doctor Saugrain was recommended by
a very good friend of his as “a
gentleman of skill in his profession, of general
science & merit, and that Monsieur Pique had
been associated with him in the “design of
procuring a considerable establishment in our new
country.” He further requested that they be
protected against “imposition in their
purchases to which as strangers they will be
exposed.”
Having reached
Pittsburgh in Ohio and finding the Ohio River too
low to travel, they wintered on an island below
Pittsburgh where they conducted a number of
experiments and examined several mines of lead,
iron, silver and copper. So not until about March
19th did they begin their descent of the Ohio
falls. They had been joined from Pittsburgh by a
former officer in Polasky’s legion named
Raguet, and Captain David Pierce from Virginia.
When they reached the mouth of the Big Miami
River, they were fired upon by a party of Indians
on the opposite shore.
A full account of
Doctor Saugrain’s account was translated by
Eugene F. Bliss in 1876, but one account states
that Pique immediately received a head wound and
that one of the horses killed, another which was
wounded, fell and crushed the forefinger of Doc
Saugrain. Jumping overboard their boat, they
attempted to escape the attack, but Pique, so
severely wounded, drowned in his attempt. Raguet,
was captured on shore, killed and scalped. Mr.
Pierce and the doctor were pursued and captured.
Their hands were bound, but able to loosen his
hands while his captors were asleep, he and Mr.
Pierce stole away quietly and kept to the woods.
Barefoot, famished and wounded, after three days
they were found by two boats coming down the
river who took them on board and on the evening
of the 29th, they landed in Louisville. The
following day he was taken to the American fort
at Clarksville and was welcomed by Colonel
Ephraim Blain, whom he had met in Pittsburgh.
Here he remained until May 11th, receiving the
aid of an army surgeon until his health was
restored.
An account of the
tragic event suffered on the Ohio appeared in the
Kentucky Gazette on April 4, 1788. Having learned
the news, Franklin wrote to Guillotin who
responded in July requesting more information on
the party he’d sent, and lamenting any hopes
for his dream of colonizing and coming to America
with his wife, mother, brother and others who
knew of his dream.
From Philadelphia,
Benjamin Franklin wrote Joseph Guillotin in
regards to the incident on the Ohio in which
Saugrain and the others were attacked. Dated the
4th of May 1788, it reads:
“It is
with great Concern that I communicate to you the
Intelligence contain'd in the enclos'd Paper. For
tho' the Name of two of the French Gentlemen are
not mentioned, I have reason to fear they were
our two Friends: I suppose they informed you in
their late Letters, that they were prevented from
going down the Ohio last Autumn by the Freezing
of the River before their Boat was ready. They
were thereby detain'd at Fort Pitt all Winter;
and in their last Letter to me they acquainted me
that the Ice being now gone they should soon
proceed, and desired the Letters coming to my
hands for them, might remain with me till I
should hear from them, and receive Directions
where to send them. Your two last accordingly are
still in my Hands. We have as yet no farther
Account of this melancholy Event, and therefore
do not yet know whether the Gentleman said to
have escaped to the Shore, tho' badly wounded,
still survives. I hope to hear that he is
recovered. It seems they were unprovided with
Arms to defend themselves. Indeed Travelling on
the Ohio has for some Years past been thought as
safe as on any River in France, so that there was
not the least Suspicion of Danger, many Thousands
of People having gone down that way to the new
Settlements at Kentucke. I condole with you most
sincerely on the unfortunate Accident. They were
two young Men of uncommon Knowledge and most
amiable Manners, so that I have scarce ever met
with Persons for whom I had in so short an
Acquaintance so much Esteem and Affection. Mr
Pique deposited in my "Hands" thirty
Louis d'ors and some Silver Spoons and Forks,
which will be delivered to him if living, or to
his Representative. I have the Honour to be with
great Regard, Sir. Your most obedient & most
humble Servant , B. Franklin.”
While en route to
Philadelphia, Doctor Saugrain studied the mines,
the salt springs and the agriculture of the land
still determined to settle in the country. He
arrived in Philadelphia on the 20th of July to
find Doctor Franklin ill, but offering him
assistance. While there, the doctor was presented
the Nini medallion portrait of Franklin and met
Brissot de Warville who recorded his account in
his Nouveau Voyage en Septentrionale
Amérique.”
Another letter
regarding the death of the botanist dated 23 Oct
1788 and delivered by Doctor Saugrain, indicate
the young doctor had not yet left Philadelphia
for France, but that he did shortly thereafter.
The letter in part reads:
“I
received your Letter of July 1 with its
Duplicate. I lament with you most sincerely the
loss of poor Mr. Pique. The Money he deposited in
my Hands was Thirty Louis d'ors, which I have
delivered to Mr. Saugrain, as you will see by his
Receipt enclos'd. ... Mr. Pique's Death happening
in a Wilderness Country where there were no
settled Inhabitants it is not possible to obtain
such a thing as an Extrait mortuare. M. Saugrain,
on whose safe Return I congratulate you, will
supply that Deficiency by his Testimony taken
with you. With great Esteem, I am, Sir, Your most
obedient & most humble Servant - B. Franklin.”
With the outbreak
of the revolution in his native country and still
determined to return to America, Dr. Antoine
Saugrain sailed once again for its shores in late
April of 1790 from France and arrived with other
French emigrants to found the settlement of
Gallipolis in Gallia County, Ohio. Here he
remained six years, during which time he attained
great popularity for administering the preventive
inoculation for smallpox, a dangerous practice of
innoculating material from a lesion of a sick
person. Having been an ardent student and early
advocate of Edward Jenner, he no doubt had
learned the practice from him, which Jenner later
perfected by bringing forth the cowpox vaccine in
1798.
Also during this
time, eight year-old Henry Marie Brackenridge
spent a year in the Saugrain home. Tutored in the
French language at St. Genevieve at the home of
Vital & Felicite (Janis) Beauvais, he had
been on his way to Pittsburgh to join his father
when he became ill and described the
doctor’s place as “a small apartment
which contained his chemical apparatus.”
Here Brackenridge describes how he would watch
the curious operation of the doctor’s
blow-pipe and crucible, and of the doctor’s
phosphoric matches ignited spontaneously when the
glass tube was broken. He also recounted the
doctor’s manufacturing of thermometers and
barometers.
In 1793 at the age
of thirty, he married Genevieve Rosalie Michau.
The ceremony took place on the 20th of March just
opposite that place in the county of Kanawha,
state of Virginia. His bride was the daughter of
Jean Michau and Jeanne Genevieve Rosalie
Chevalier, who had also journeyed from France to
Ohio.
The eminent
scientist who so frequently entertained the
Gallipolis community with his experiments, was
shortly thereafter persuaded to remove to
Lexington, Kentucky to improve the quality of
iron bars for an iron works company. Here his
first two daughters were born: Rosalie who was
born in 1797 and Elsie, born in 1799.
The following year
the Spanish Lt. Govenor Zenon Trudeau invited Dr.
Saugrain to move to St. Louis to become surgeon
of the Spanish Garrison and there he arrived in
about 1799 to 1800, accompanied by his wife and
two daughters.
In 1801, the
Spanish authority at New Orleans had responded to
the need of a hospital in St. Louis and appointed
Dr. Saugrain at a monthly salary of $30.00. He
remained the small city’s only physician
until after American occupation, and was among
the distinguished St. Louisans who journeyed with
Lewis and Clark as far as St. Charles. Some
accounts indicate he may have assisted Captain
Lewis in preparing specimens for President
Jefferson’s review or provided Lewis and
Clark with scientific apparatus and medicine for
their transcontinental journey, but no such proof
has been established.
In 1804 when the
Louisiana Territory was transferred to the
American government, he was appointed by
President Thomas Jefferson to serve as surgeon at
Fort Belle Fontaine, an army cantonment fifteen
miles from St. Louis, on the right bank of the
Missouri River. He held this position with the
Army 1811 at which time he resigned.
He was listed in
the 1805 Missouri Territorial Tax List and the
1811 Tax list. He had made his home between
Second and Third Streets, Lombard and Mulberry
streets and it was known to be the first house in
St. Louis to have contain a hall. Its floors were
of polished black walnut and its library at the
time of his death consisted of four hundred and
fifty volumes of books, many of which were
written in French.
Here he raised his
family which grew to include sons Alphonse
“Alfred” who was born in 1803 and
Frederick, in 1806; and a daughter Henrietta
Theresa who was born in 1808. Two more children
followed: Elvire Sophie, born in 1812 who died in
her first year, and Eugenie who was born in 1813.
His home was open
to many, including Meriwether Lewis who spent
time here while awaiting the cession of Louisiana
to the United States; and the famed Henry Shaw
who was charmed by the splendid gardens Doctor
Saugrain kept.
The doctor who had
carried on a lively business of selling drugs and
medicines, and whose clientele included many of
the prominent French families, died in St. Louis
on Thursday, the 18th of May, 1820 at the age of
fifty-seven years, three months and two days. His
death notice appeared in the Missouri Gazette:
"DIED -- On Thursday night last, Doctor
Anthony F. Saugrain, in his 57th year of his age,
sincerely regretted by all that knew him."
Though he was
initially buried at the Old Cathedral burial
grounds the following day, the final resting
place of his remains are not known. His wife,
however, and many family members of his family
have their names inscribed on headstones in
Calvary Cemetery and it is believed that his
remains may have also been buried there.
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