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ABSTRACT
The date of André Michaux's death has been reported as both 1802 and 1803. Recently discovered archival evidence in Mauritius now confirms that 1802 is the correct date. Certain other facts about the life of André Michaux have not been reported previously. Archival evidence in France now reveals the date and place of André Michaux's marriage to Anne Cécile Claye, the dates of Anne Cécile Claye's birth and death, the location of Ann Cécile Claye's birth and death, and certain other previously unknown facts about Michaux's family.
THE DEATH OF ANDRÉ MICHAUX
A curious set of circumstances enabled me to find the death certificate of André Michaux. One day in October 2004, while riding the Paris subway, I was reading the botanical journal "Hommes et Plantes" for which I had just written an article, then not yet published, on the life of André Michaux. Intrigued, the man sitting next to me asked me about the magazine, explaining that he too was interested in botany and in explorers. In the course of the discussion, he told me that he had family on the island of Mauritius.
Several weeks later, he emailed me the reference from a publication by Madame Madeleine Ly-Tio-Fane on the expedition of Captain Baudin, with whom Michaux made his last voyage. Madame Ly-Tio-Fane. had published the death certificate of André Michaux in this study. I immediately wrote to Madame Ly-Tio-Fane. Her response arrived at the beginning of January 2005 with the transcript of the death certificate, preserved in the National Archives of the Island of Mauritius (see the Appendix). Meanwhile, from another lead, I had contacted a Belgian researcher who was interested in the Baudin expedition and who also sent me the transcript of André Michaux's death certificate, but without reference to the archival source.
We now know with certainty that André Michaux died on 19 vendémaire of the year XI (October 11, 1802) at Tamatave, Madagascar. Deleuze, in his 1804 biography of Michaux, and François André Michaux, in his book "Voyage to the West of the Alleghanies" were correct to put his death in the autumn of 1802, even if they did not give the exact date. Bory de Saint-Vincent, Michaux's companion on Ile de France (today the Island of...