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 R1 54.Sa8 B99 The first scientist 
 
 THE FIRST SCIENTIST 
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 A MEMOIR 
 
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 THE LIFE AND WORK OF 
 
 DOCTOR ANTOINE FRANCOIS SAUGRAIN 
 
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 WILLIAM VINCENT BYARS 
 
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 ST. LOUIS 
 
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 THE FIRST SCIENTIST 
 OF THE 
 MISSISSIPPI VALLEY 
 
 
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 THE LIFE AND WORK OF 
 
 DOCTOR ANTOINE FRANCOIS SAUGRAIN 
 
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 ST. LOUIS. 
 
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THE FIRST SCIENTIST OF THE 
 MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 
 
 What now would be called "the scientific spirit" came to St. Louis 
 and Upper Louisiana with the beginning of the Nineteenth Century, 
 when Doctor Antoine Francois Saugrain became "post-physician" under 
 the Spanish Lieutenant-Governor, Don Carlos Dehault Delassus. Reap- 
 pointed by 1 'resident Jefferson in June, 1805, to this position of some 
 honor hut small profit, Doctor Saugrain, until his death in 1820, con- 
 tinued in St. Louis, what he himself called his "work in the dark" in 
 scientific experiment, conducted under the great difficulties incident 
 to the practice of his profession as a physician in a pioneer settlement in 
 the wilderness. 
 
 In his own generation, when science was not specialized as it is 
 now, he might have been called "the first philosopher of the Mississippi 
 Valley," and there would have been no one to contest the claim. Don 
 Juan d'Ulloa, who came to New Orleans as Governor of Louisiana in 
 1765, owed his appointment more to the regard in which "philosophy" 
 was beginning to be held in Spain than to his talents as an administrator. 
 Me was the most noted philosopher of Spain in his generation, but the 
 revolt of the French element, under Lafreniere, forced his recall from 
 Louisiana too quickly to allow his name to become identified with the 
 Mississippi Valley, except as it figures in a painful chapter of political 
 history. It was only when Doctor Saugrain removed his chemical appa- 
 ratus to St. Louis that the country west of the Mississippi acquired a 
 resident representative of the spirit, already developed in the Eighteenth 
 Century, which was to revolutionize the Nineteenth, with promises of still 
 greater changes at the beginning of the Twentieth. 
 
 While the records of his work, in what was then an isolated frontier 
 village, are preserved only in fragments or by tradition, these, though 
 they demonstrate no immediate results, identify his spirit fully with that 
 which now makes it possible to judge by the most far-reaching results 
 
DR. ANTOINE FRANCOIS SAUGRAIN. 
 
 [From an oil portrait, painted from life.] 
 
the importance of efforts and aspirations, identifying him with the 
 atmosphere in which Franklin and Lavoisier lived and worked. 
 
 Before it is possible to realize the difference between the intellectual 
 conditions of the Eighteenth Century and those of our own, it must be 
 recalled that alchemy, the mysticism which belonged to the magic and 
 the astrology of the Middle Ages, controlled the thought even of the most 
 advanced "chemical philosophers," until in Paris, where Saugrain was 
 then a boy of nine years, Lavoisier announced the discovery, supplement- 
 ing thai of Franklin, which resulted in the death of alchemy and the 
 appearance of the almost fully-grown working theory of modern chem- 
 istry. The excitement immediately produced was so great that Lavoisier 
 was burned in effigy in Berlin by the learned adherents of the theory of 
 the Middle Ages as it had been modified in the attempt to account for 
 merely accidental discoveries. The excitement increased among men of 
 intellect when it was found that those who accepted Lavoisier's results 
 accepted with them a method which, instead of leaving discoveries to 
 chance, made it possible to work towards them and secure them intel- 
 ligently. The history of the human intellect shows no greater revelation 
 of the meaning of physical life and its possibilities than came with the 
 announcement that oxygen gas is everywhere present with an always 
 present tendency to combine with, to change, to energize organic life and 
 at the same time to enter into all the most important processes of change 
 in inorganic. The possibilities of this knowledge, vaguely presenting them- 
 selves to Doctor Priestley, and at once seized on in fundamental principle 
 by Lavoisier, were only slowly realized, but they had an immediate, sen- 
 sational influence in forcing either the sudden abandonment of older 
 theories or else a determined attempt to use them to overpower and silence 
 the representatives of the future. 
 
 Tt was in the intellectual atmosphere thus produced, with the possi- 
 bilities of a new science revealed and only partly comprehended, that 
 Saugrain, as a student in Paris, received the impulses he illustrated by his 
 work in St. Louis. The enthusiasm inspired by Lavoisier's discovery for 
 what was then called "philosophy," was so great, and so soon to be over- 
 come, except in the strongest minds, by the excitement of the French 
 revolution, that it is only with difficulty we can now enter into it at all 
 or realize how high were the hopes inspired by it. 
 
 As is often the case, the element of mysticism, seemingly expelled by 
 larger knowledge, increased as a result of it. 
 
 The only event of the Eighteenth Century which equals in importance 
 tc the present the discoveries of Lavoisier, was the experiment which 
 
enabled Franklin to announce the universal operation of electricity in 
 nature. At first, he was sneered at as an ignorant and pretentious pro- 
 vincial. His discoveries were contemptuously ignored by the learned 
 societies of England, but he found a champion in France for his 
 "philosophy" in the "philosopher" Buff on, who, at a time philosophy 
 covered natural history as well as chemistry and all other sciences, felt 
 it to be not only a right but a duty to reinforce the unknown American 
 with the weight of his authority. In 1752, when by his celebrated 
 
 THE NINI PORTRAIT OF FRANKLIN. 
 
 [Photographed from the Original Terra Cotta Medallion of 1777, presented by Franklin to 
 
 Doctor Saugrain, now in possession of his son, Frederick 
 
 Saugrain, Esq., of Sedalia, Mo. | 
 
 experiment with the kite, Franklin demonstrated his theory, the world of 
 mind in France and Continental Europe was profoundly stirred, and, as 
 experiments made almost simultaneously with his, left no possibility of 
 challenging his assertion longer, he took rank at once in France as one of 
 the greatest of all philosophers. 
 
As demonstrated results from his discovery increased, the learned in 
 England were reluctantly compelled to claim him as a British subject, and 
 in [767, ( >xford University offered him its unwilling honors, followed in 
 1775 by the further British recognition of the Copley gold metal. 
 
 The demonstration made by Franklin in 1752, eleven years before 
 the birth of Saugrain, was followed in [786 to 1 7<;4 by the experiments 
 of Galvani, which, though in themselves strictly scientific, gave new life 
 to the mysticism of the Middle Ages. For the time, at least, the discovery 
 of Galvani appeared to he far greater than that made by Franklin or by 
 anyone else up to that time. It seemed to connect electricity with the 
 principle of life itself and to promise thus to realize the hopes which had 
 inspired the alchemy of the .Middle Ages in its long search for the elixir 
 vita*. The convulsions of a lately-killed frog, under Galvani's currents, 
 at once suggested attempts to restore the dead to life by the use of elec- 
 tric batteries, and the possibilities of "animal magnetism'' impressed 
 themselves on the minds of the partly educated as involving a revelation of 
 the whole mystery of life and death. 
 
 In Paris, where everything that is genuine is welcomed with an 
 enthusiasm only exceeded by that excited when the imagination is allowed 
 its freest possible play, what is now called science as it was then called 
 philosophy, exerted an influence over the minds of all educated people 
 so great that for a time even politics were dwarfed. The two genuine 
 discoveries which had been made, that of electricity and oxygen gas, as 
 universal forces in the economy of the earth, were too great to be appre- 
 ciated in their possibilities then, as they still are, but the hopes they 
 inspired in the minds of those most nearly able to understand, were dis- 
 seminated universally, and when the motto. "Novus Ordo Saeclornm," 
 was engraved on the great seal of the United States, its inspiration was 
 the hope present, not only in America, but throughout Europe, that a "new- 
 order of the ages" had actually begun in which all that was worst in the 
 old would soon be eradicated. 
 
 In science and by the reflex influence of science, in politics also, it 
 was the world's age of highest hope since the first centuries of the 
 Christian era. 
 
 Naturally, in politics as in "philosophy," the hopes of the unknown 
 turned to America, which directly or indirectly determined European 
 politics during the whole of the Eighteenth Century. The struggle be- 
 tween England and the Latin countries, represented by France and 
 Spain, for possession of Xorth America, went on during the first half of 
 the century, and when, after the revolt of the English colonies, Franklin 
 
went to Paris as the representative of American hopes, he found them 
 not different from the hopes of the coming generation of France. At 
 a time when to be a philosopher was to be a searcher into the reasons for 
 the existence of everything, including political and religious systems, he 
 was welcomed as an ambassador from the future. 
 
 According to an unsubstantiated tradition, it was directly from 
 Franklin, that Saugrain, then a lad in his teens studying in Paris, received 
 the impulse which determined his career and sent hrm on his first expe- 
 dition to America. As he belonged to the circle in which Franklin moved, 
 it is easily credible that there may have been such a meeting between them, 
 but it is also true that the Saugrain family and its connection of that 
 period were under the same influences which controlled Franklin, so that 
 it is not necessary to assume the direct meeting with Franklin at this time 
 to account for the fact that immediately after the conclusion of his studies 
 in Paris, and in pursuance of them, Saugrain made his first visit to 
 America. 
 
 The connection of the Saugrains of this period with the intellectual 
 life of Paris is indicated by the marriage of its female members, one 
 of whom, Theresa Angelique, became the wife of Henry Didot, a member 
 of the celebrated house of booksellers and publishers, whose editions 
 of the classics represent the nearest modern approach to the Aldine ; an- 
 other, Marie Louise, married Doctor Joseph Ignace Guillotin, immortal- 
 ized in undeserved odium because his experiments in attempting to find 
 a painless means of death for criminals condemned for capital crimes, 
 resulted in the use of the "guillotine." Still another daughter of the 
 family became the wife of Antoine Charles Horace Vernet, one of a 
 family of famous painters. The Saugrains themselves had been identified 
 for successive generations with the intellectual life of France as librarians, 
 publishers and booksellers. John Saugrain, who removed from Lyons to 
 Paris, was printer to the king under letters patent issued by Charles IX, 
 dated June 10, 1568. He was also a royal bookseller under Henry IV, 
 of Navarre. He died childless, and the family tradition in Paris was 
 maintained by his brother Abraham Saugrain and his descendants, who 
 held much the same relations to the Paris of their day, occupied after them 
 by their family connections, the Didots. Claude Marin Saugrain (born 
 1735: married to Catherine Guillyn), is thus noticed in the Dictionnaire 
 I r niversel, Critique ct Bibliographiquc, of 181 1 : 
 
 "Claude Marin Saugrain — This gentleman, preserver of the 
 library of the Arsenal, was attached to it for nineteen years and never 
 ceased during all that time to give it all his care. To him is due the pres- 
 
ervation of this superb library, the finest and largesi in France, next to 
 the [mperial Library. Descended from a most ancienl and notable family 
 of booksellers, which supplied a bookseller to Henry IV, King of 
 
 THE SAUGRAIN MEMORIAL TABLET. 
 [Photographed from the Tablet in Paris.] 
 
 Navarre, Saugrain was himself a bookseller, but retired from trade and 
 was appointed keeper of the fine library of M. de Papimy, which the 
 Count d'Artois had just acquired. To enlarge still more this famous 
 
collection, he procured the purchase in its entirety of the second part of 
 the famous library of the Duke de la Valliere. In the first storms of the 
 Revolution, on the day of the taking of the Bastile, the mob learned that 
 there was in the Arsenal a library belonging to the Count d'Artois. 
 Thither they went immediately to destroy it. Saugrain, alone in the 
 library, notwithstanding the disturbance which such a tumult occasioned, 
 had the presence of mind to order the porter to change livery and put on 
 that of the King. When after so doing, the porter opened the door, the 
 people withdrew, believing themselves mistaken. It was to> this happy 
 idea that the preservation entire of this precious collection is due. Several 
 times afterwards during the Revolutionary period, he had the courage 
 to resist orders from the government for the dismemberment of the 
 second library of France for the purpose of dividing it among new estab- 
 lishments. This firmness, which in that epoch, frequently endangered his 
 life, was united in Saugrain with a sweet and amiable character which 
 attached to him all who knew him. He died in Paris in 1806 at the age 
 of 70, leaving a reputation for honor and probity which has never been 
 disputed." 
 
 As the booksellers of the Eighteenth Century were not only pub- 
 lishers of books, but often the employers of the men who wrote them, the 
 atmosphere of the Saugrain family, whether as librarians or booksellers, 
 was that of the world of books during a period when it was dominated, 
 as it had not been before and as it has scarcely been since, by books of 
 "philosophy," including everything which is now classified as scientific. 
 Before the discoveries of Lavoisier, however, the only interest equalling 
 that in political philosophy and in the researches stimulated by Franklin, 
 was in natural history as it had been stimulated by Buffon and his 
 school. While it was at its height, it was natural that its interest in 
 America, as the largest field for possible new discoveries, should also* be 
 greatest. While Saugrain was still in Paris, the Spanish Governor at 
 New Orleans forwarded to St. Louis a letter making an earnest request 
 for specimens of the American "mandrake" for one of the cabinets of 
 natural history it had become the fashion of Europe to collect at that time. 
 The special value set on the "mandrake" during the Middle Age,s, when 
 science was confused with magic, seemed to have survived in the botany 
 of the period as part of the tendency to mysticism which showed itself 
 in spite of the work of the "practical philosophers," represented by 
 Franklin and by the makers of the French Encyclopedia. 
 
 During the reign of Charles III of Spain, the scientific spirit of in- 
 vestigation represented in such men as the Count d'Aranda and the Count 
 
 10 
 
d'Ulloa, who were in close touch with the philosophers of France, was 
 stronger than it shows itself to be in the Spain of the present. It was 
 
 under Spanish auspices that Doctor Saugrain made his first visit to 
 America. We know of it only by scant details appearing in notices oi 
 the expedition to the ( >hio which followed it. In his twenty-first year, 
 lie went to Spanish America to "make an investigation of minerals." Four 
 years later, in 1787, when he reappears in Paris, it is in connection with 
 the organization of an expedition by the botanist Pique to visit the Ohio 
 River territory and study its natural history. The date of his arrival 
 in the United States is fixed approximately by the fact that he brought a 
 letter of introduction to Franklin from M. de Veillard of Paris, which 
 Franklin acknowledges February 17. 1788. 
 
 From the journal of this expedition kept by Doctor Saugrain himself, 
 it is shown to have been filled with danger as well as with the difficulties 
 of navigating a stream like the Ohio in open boats. 
 
 "Pique and Raguet* (French); Pierce (American), and myself," 
 he writes, "set out from Pittsburgh, March 19 (1788), stopping at 
 Wheeling, at Muskingum, and at Limestone, a place where a fine town 
 should be built. In short, we continued our journey without accident 
 until the 24th, always admiring both banks of the Ohio, which in places 
 are magnificent. On the 24th, however, when we were opposite the Big 
 Miami, the wind having thrown us a little towards the Pennsylvania side 
 of the river, M. Pique, as we were preparing to get rather more out of the 
 current, called my attention to a flatboat which was upon the same bank. 
 Alas, he was far from thinking that this boat would cause his death. As 
 we were getting away from the shore to gain the stream, we heard our- 
 selves called by Indians, who, at the same time, fired upon us. At the first 
 shot, they killed my mare, and in her death-struggles the poor creature 
 pushed against the horse of M. Pique which gave me a kick in the abdo- 
 men. It threw me flat, and with another, the animal would certainly 
 have killed me had it struck me fairly. It only grazed me, however, and 
 as I had fallen prone, the Indians thought they had certainly killed me. 
 I suppose that they had fired nearly twenty shots from the bank. Except 
 M. Pique, who, as I thought, had been only grazed, since lie did not com- 
 plain of the effects of the wound, none of us were struck. To get beyond 
 the range of the bullets, all four of us took to the oars. The Indians then 
 boarded the flatboat in front of which they had arranged planking pierced 
 with loop holes through which they could fire without exposing them- 
 selves. I left mv oar to see if the guns were in order. Of the three we 
 
 * These names appear also as "Piquet" and " Raquet." 
 
 11 
 
had, I found two loaded. One of them was mine, and the other, the 
 carbine, which belonged to M. Raguet. I hastened to load the third as 
 well as to look after the priming of the pistols. During this time, the 
 Indians advanced upon us and as they did not fire, it was proposed, I do 
 not know by whom, that we should raise a handkerchief as a sign of 
 peace, judging it better to be prisoners among the Indians than to be 
 killed. They approached us more and more nearly, making similar signs 
 of peace, but when they reached us and one of them passed over to our 
 boat, I saw that the unfortunate wretch had a knife in his hand, drawn, 
 I argued as I think with reason, with no good intentions. I fired on him 
 at once with my pistol, sending its two balls into his body. Then M. 
 Raguet fired upon them in turn with his carbine and I also' fired again. 
 Raguet fired three or four shots, but unfortunately, in his haste at the 
 beginning, he had put in the ball before the powder. This delayed his 
 subsequent firing. When he had reloaded and wished to fire, finding 
 that he had his view obstructed, he put his arm outside the protection of 
 the boat in aiming and had it at once broken by a shot. I also-, in putting 
 my hand outside to hold my gun in taking aijm, had a finger of my left 
 hand broken in the same way. At the first shots fired by the Indians from 
 their boat, our American companion sprang overboard and swam to land. 
 This was greatly to our disadvantage, for the Indians who otherwise 
 might have left us, increased their firing as a result of it. I think I fired 
 once more after my finger was broken. M. Raguet was disabled by his 
 broken arm. As for M. Pique, he was unwilling to fire. Thinking, I sup- 
 pose, that the Indians would do him no harm if they took him prisoner, 
 instead of aiding us in our defence, he followed the example of Pierce. 
 As only M. Raguet and myself were left, both of us threw ourselves into 
 the water. As he had his arm broken and could not swim, I believe that 
 he was drowned. He preferred that death, he told me, to being scalped 
 by the Indians. I had not yet reached the bank when I saw M. Pique and 
 two Indians awaiting me. The moment I touched the land, the Indians 
 seized me and bound my hands with the thongs they used in supporting 
 their blankets. They had no sooner made an end of tying me than I saw 
 one of the two who had held me approach M. Pique, throw him to the 
 ground and after opening his coat and shirt, stab him four times, scalping 
 him immediately afterwards. After this, he put the scalp away in a pocket 
 book M. Pique had in his pocket. I leave you to imagine, my friends, 
 what this spectacle was to me! As you may well suppose, I expected 
 :he same fate for myself; but instead of killing me, they made me run to 
 overtake our boat, which, though headed for the shore, had drifted nearly 
 
 12 
 
a quarter of a mile from Ihe place at which we left it. When we came 
 opposite the boat, one of the two attempted to take- me by the hair to drag 
 me, as the boal could not be brouglit into the shore because of the trees 
 i in the overflow, probably). As for me, a cruel fear seized me. Seeing 
 that he had not killed trie and wished to cross the Ohio thus, 1 believed 
 that he wished to bum me on the other side. I made a violent effort, 
 broke the thong which bound me, and throwing myself into the water. 
 Swam with Mich force that the Indian did not venture to follow me. lie 
 did well, for it was my intention, if the)' did so, to seize one of them and 
 drown with him. Those of the party who had thrown themselves from 
 their boat, swimming in order to capture us on shore, now got into our 
 boat and began to cross the Ohio. As for me, I held to a tree near the 
 hank, with my arms about it. The Indians fired from the hoat and 
 wounded me in the neck. When I saw that their boat had reached the 
 middle of the river, 1 regained the shore. When I went to see if M. Pique 
 had expired, I found Air. Pierce, who had concealed himself in a ravine. 
 Together we went to M. Pique, finding him dead." 
 
 This tragedy defeated the object of the expedition. Wounded as he 
 was and without food, Doctor Saugrain made his way down the river, 
 saving himself from further attack from Indians by keeping to the woods 
 with his companion until they were rescued by a party of boatmen, who 
 took them to the Falls of the Ohio, the present City of Louisville, which 
 they reached on March 29th. After his wounds had healed, he returned 
 to Pittsburgh on a flatboat, and reaching Philadelphia, he records, under 
 date of July 20, 1788, as the last entry in his journal, these particulars of 
 his reception by Franklin, who was then 82 years of age: 
 
 "At last I am in Philadelphia, and the first thing I did was to repair 
 to Doctor Franklin's. I found him ill. He had not left his bed for 
 twenty-three days. He arose to receive me, however. He shows me 
 much attention and has greatly commiserated me. He has offered me all 
 j >i i^sihlc help. Finding himself much better, he has invited me to dine 
 to-morrow at his house." 
 
 The Xini medallion portrait of Franklin, which he presented to Doctor 
 Saugrain, is still in the possession of the family, valued as a souvenir of 
 an association with the veteran philosopher to which the younger man 
 looked back as one of the sources of his inspiration in his own subsequent 
 attempts to extend in the Mississippi Valley the spirit of scientific re- 
 search which Franklin, at a time when his own country was not prepared 
 for it, had so greatly quickened in Europe. 
 
 13 
 
It was after returning to Paris from Philadelphia, that Doctor Sau- 
 grain left France finally for America as one of the founders of Gallipolis, 
 Ohio, a French elysium in the wilderness, celebrated in early American 
 history because of the disappointments and disillusionment of its founders, 
 drawn there from France by the brilliant prospectuses of the speculative 
 Americans who had organized the Ohio and the Scioto land companies 
 for the purpose of selling Western lands to Frenchmen whom the Revolu- 
 tionary troubles of Paris made more disposed to. emigrate. Not a few of 
 those thus attracted belonged to the upper classes, and most of the settlers 
 were not only deceived by the promises of the speculators, but were in any 
 event unfitted for the life of a new country. It is not probable, however, 
 that after his previous experience on the Ohio, Doctor Saugrain was thus 
 deceived. His passport, which is still preserved, sfoows that on the 27th 
 of April, 1790, he received permission, in the King's name, to leave France 
 for America, accompanied by his servant. When he reached Gallipolis 
 with the other colonists he found that it was not only a wilderness, but 
 that the wilderness was filled with Indians, at that time in a state of active 
 hostility to settlers. An incident of his prior visit, however, had been an 
 intention to investigate the country along the Ohio as a suitable place for 
 future French settlements, and he had then learned the possible attitude 
 of the Indians towards intending colonists. It is probable that, having 
 this full knowledge of conditions, he had at this time made up his mind, 
 notwithstanding to remain in America. He did remain in any event, shar- 
 ing the hardships of the colonists at Gallipolis and becoming noted, not 
 only among them, but throughout the American settlements of Kentucky 
 and Ohio, for his scientific knowledge. 
 
 In a sketch of his life, written by an acquaintance and published in 
 the Cincinnati Saturday Evening Chronicle of July 14, 1827, seven years 
 after his death, appears this reference to his activities in Gallipolis : 
 "'Dr. Saugrain acquired a great reputation among the inhabitants of 
 Kenawha by his success in inoculation for the small-pox, and many 
 flocked to Gallipolis to be cured. He had, besides, many other resources. 
 He had brought with him a quantity of phosphorus, glass tubes and quick- 
 silver. With the first, he made phosphoric lights, which he sold to the 
 hunters. With the other articles, he made aerometers and barometers. 
 He blew his glass in the winter; a friend graduated the instruments. All 
 these objects were disposed of by wholesale for Kentucky and elsewhere 
 or at retail to the traders and others who came from different parts to 
 visit the colony. Saugrain married at Gallipolis a very young and ami- 
 
 14 
 
able member of a family which had come with him. He always shared 
 his means with the rest." 
 
 This young lady was Miss Rosalie Genevieve Michaut. The date of 
 the marriage has been given as "February 17, 1763," a mistake similar 
 to that by which, in Brackenridge's account of his visit to the family 
 :it ( iallipolis, the Doctor's height is made to appear "4 feet, 6 inches," 
 instead of five feet and six inches, as it appears in his family traditions. 
 
 As it was part of the education planned for Brackenridge hy his 
 lather that he should become a complete master of French by learning to 
 speak it in childhood as a native tongue, he was sent as a child to Gal- 
 lipolis and St. Genevieve. At Gallipolis he was for some time an inmate 
 1 1" Doctor Saugrain's house. 
 
 In 1795, when Brackenridge made his acquaintance, Doctor Saugrain 
 bad been married recently, his family then consisting of his wife alone, 
 as their first child, a daughter named "Rosalie Genevieve" for her mother, 
 was not born until 1797, during the subsequent residence of the family at 
 Lexington, Ky. "The Doctor had a small apartment which contained his 
 chemical apparatus," writes Brackenridge in his "Recollections of the 
 West." "I used to sit by him as often as I could, watching the curious 
 operations of his blow pipe and crucible. I loved the cheerful little man, 
 and he became very fond of me in turn. Many of my countrymen used 
 to come and stare at his doings, which they were half inclined to think 
 had too near a resemblance to the black art." 
 
 It appears that Doctor Saugrain's residence at Gallipolis ended soon 
 after the visit of Brackenridge. He went to Kentucky with his family 
 under circumstances thus detailed in the Cincinnati memoir of 1827: "As 
 for Doctor Saugrain, he did not remain long in Gallipolis. A society in 
 Kentucky, owning iron works, sent for him to enlighten them in making 
 good bar iron which they could not produce. They flattered him and he 
 was easily persuaded to come and impart some of his knowledge to the 
 society. He removed to Lexington with his family and that of his wife. 
 On his arrival he was received with that warmth of hospitality which has 
 always distinguished Kentucky. There he remained about six years,, 
 after which, having a friend in St. Louis, he was again prevailed upon to 
 move and was created physician of the garrison at that place, a sort of 
 sinecure in itself, hut important to him from a professional point of 
 view." 
 
 The date of his removal to St. Louis is usually given as 1798, and 
 it is evident that the dates fixing the length of his residence in Kentucky 
 as "about six years," do not approximate exactness as the visit of Brack- 
 
 15 
 
enridge to his family in Gallipolis was in 1795 and the latest date fixed for 
 his removal to St. Louis as post physician is 1800. It is possible, how- 
 ever, that he visited the town before his removal to it. After his removal 
 and during the whole of his subsequent life, he was noted, not only as a 
 physician, but for the work as a chemist and for the experiments in elec- 
 tricity to which he devoted himself. He had one of the very few electric 
 batteries then in the Mississippi Valley. In addition to his experiments 
 with electricity, he seems to have progressed beyond his experiments with 
 phosphorus lights, to re-inforce the experiments of European inventors 
 who were then attempting to perfect friction matches. It is said that he 
 
 THE SAUGRAIN RESIDENCE IN ST. LOUIS. 
 [From a painting in possession of the family.] 
 
 supplied thermometers and other scientific apparatus as well as the med- 
 icines to the Lewis and Clark Expedition. It is unfortunate in one sense, 
 that contemporaneous public interest in his electrical experiments was so 
 great, since in the fragmentary records of the time, it is always made 
 prominent at the expense of his researches in chemistry. 
 
 When he devoted himself to chemistry in St. Louis in the first decade 
 of the Nineteenth Century, it was under circumstances suggested by the 
 fact that after building his stone residence on the block bounded by 
 
 16 
 
Second and Third, Mulberry (now Gratiot) and Lombard Streets, he 
 found ii advisable to enclose it with a strong stone wall for security 
 again si the vagrant Indians who then thronged the streets ol the post, be- 
 coming sometimes intoxicated and unmanageable. Mis eldest daughter, 
 who lived in St. Louis until late in the Nineteenth Century, felt that six- 
 had never wholly recovered from the shock of seeing an Indian remove 
 the sraln of a victim, killed near the family residence. Working in his 
 laboratory under such conditions, the St. Louis pioneer chemist might 
 well say as he said to one of his daughters who assisted him in his experi- 
 ments: "We are working in the dark, my child. 1 only know enough to 
 know that 1 know nothing." 
 
 Even alder the great results which have since followed the labor of 
 the pioneers in chemical experiment, the experimental chemist of the 
 present must still define his actual knowledge thus. 
 
 In spite of his devotion to science. Doctor Saugrain's work as a phy- 
 sician provided for a family of six children to whom and his widow, who 
 survived many years after his death in 1820, he left a conisderable landed 
 estate, which, though it increased greatly in value with the growth of the 
 town, remained always far less valuable than the memory of His unremu- 
 nerated labors as the pioneer in the experimental science of the Mississippi 
 Valley. His descendants, who still reside in the city, are through the 
 marriages of his daughters, Rosalie Genevieve, on June 10, 1816, to the 
 late Henry Yon Phul ; Eliza, married June 10, 1817, to Captain James 
 Kennedy of the United States Army; Henrietta Theresa, married June 
 10, 1827, to Major Thomas Noel of the United States Army, and 
 Eugenia, married August 21, 1834, to John Reel. Of his two sons, Fred- 
 erick and Alphonse, the former born in St. Louis in 1806, only three years 
 after the American purchase of Louisiana territory, outlived the century 
 and was still living in 1903 at the hundredth anniversary of "the Pur- 
 chase." 
 
 \\ bile the West, as Doctor Saugrain worked in it, bad no learned 
 societies to appreciate, understand and record the results of such experi- 
 ments as his, merged as they have been since in the lasting results of other 
 experimenters working under more favorable conditions, the spirit in 
 which he worked has so recorded itself that bis life makes more intelligible 
 the history of his own generation and of those which have followed it. He 
 brought the light of the Eighteenth Century to the Mississippi Valley and 
 it has grown steadily in radiance until the Twentieth. "Stat nominis 
 umbra !" But the impulses which animated him did not fail him, nor have 
 they failed after him. 
 
 17 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 The following, dated from 64 Rue des Martyrs, Paris, June 10, 1902, was re- 
 ceived in response to a letter addressed to the United States Consul-General at 
 Paris, making inquiries concerning the Saugrain family in France : 
 
 Being an author and a bibliophile, the U. S. Consul-General often refers literary 
 questions to me, and has shown me your note of 27th May. I find in the catalogue 
 of the National Library, and by reference to bibliographical works, that there are 
 eight books by writers of the name of Saugrain, viz., by Cl. Marin Saugrain : 
 
 (1) Nouveau denombrement du royaume par generalites, elections, paroisses, etc. 
 Paris. Saugrain I'aine, 1720. 2 vols, in one, quarto. Also edition in 1755. 
 
 (2) Dictionnaire universel de la France, ancienne et moderne. 3 vols, folio, 1726. 
 
 (3) Code de la librairie et imprimerie de Paris, etc., etc. Paris, 1744. i2mo. 
 
 (4) Code des Chasses. Paris, 1713, 1720, 1734, 1753, 1765. 2 vols., 121110. 
 
 (5) Les Curiosites de Paris, de Versailles, de Marly, Vincennes, St. Cloud. Paris, 
 Saugrain, 171 6. 121110. Nouvelle edition, augmentee (par Pigniol de la Force 
 et Saugrain). Paris, 1723. 2 vols., 121110. 
 
 (6) Nouveau voyage de France, geographique, historique, et curieux. Paris, M. 
 L. R. Paris, Saugrain, 1718, 1730. i2mo. 
 
 (7) Guillaume Saugrain. La Marechaussee de France ou Recueil des ordon- 
 nances, etc. Paris, G. Saugrain, 1697. Suite de la Marechaussee de France. 
 Paris, Vve. Saugrain, 171 7. Lc tout en 2 vols., 4/0. 
 
 (8) Genealogie de la famille des Saugrain, librairies, depuis 1518, jusqu'a present, 
 mise en ordre, imprimee et presentee par Joseph Saugrain, le ier Janvier, 1736. 
 
 This last, I judge from the newspaper article, you possess. The copy in the 
 Paris National Library is marked "Avec continuation m. s. et quelques additions 
 de la main de M. Charles Magnin." I consulted it and found the names of about 
 40 members of the family added in writing. By the way, the name is not 
 extinct in France, unless "M. Saugrain, avocat Cour d'Appel, 15 Rue de 
 Tournon," has died within the last year or two without children. * * * 
 
 Yours very truly, 
 
 ROBERT B. DOUGLAS. 
 To Benj. Von Phul, St. Louis, Mo. 
 
 18 
 
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