DR. SAUGRAIN'S RELATION OF HIS VOYAGE DOWN THE OHIO RIVER FROM PITTSBURGH TO

THE FALLS IN 1788.

BY EUGENE F. BLISS.

BEFORE giving the translation from the French of Dr. Saugrain's Relation it may be well to give a sketch of his life.

Antoine François Saugrain de Vigni was born in Paris, February 17, 1763. His family had for generations been publishers and booksellers. As early as the sixteenth century his ancestor, John Saugrain, born in 1518, had been printer to Charles IX. in Lyons, and afterward to Henry IV. of Navarre. His son served in the same capacity Catherine, queen of Navarre, and thus to his own time, almost without exception, there was in each generation some Saugrain bookseller, publisher or both. His family was

related also to the well-known publisher, Didot, Dr. Saugrain's sister, probably, having married into that family. Another famous name may be mentioned here, for another sister, Marie Thérèse, married Dr. Joseph Ignace Guillotin of unhappy memory. To Dr. Saugrain's name is often appended "de Vigni." His grandson, A. P. Saugrain, Esq., of St. Louis, says of this name: "It may not be uninteresting to state the reason for this. In those days, and it may be the custom still, children almost immediately after they were born were given out to nurse, and the mother rarely saw her child until it had attained the age of probably four or five years. The child took the name of the hamlet, town or village near which it was reared. Hence the name, Vigni, for my grandfather, which, I find,

he retained in his family for many years after reaching the age of manhood and probably kept it through life. So cherished was the custom that a grandaunt of mine (Dr. Saugrain's sister) on the birth of a child shortly after arriving in this country, determined from the stress of circumstances to nurse it herself. This was thought at the time so strange that one of the family painted a portrait of the mother in the act of nursing the child; we have the portrait in the family to this day."

Little or nothing is known of Dr. Saugrain's early education, but there can be no doubt that his parents gave heed to the bent of his mind, and his studies, beyond the obligatory Latin, must have been of a scientific and practical character. As a young man he studied physic, surgery and mineralogy. To judge from dates and his age, it is not probable that he ever practised medicine in Paris.

The first of his three visits to America was made upon the invitation of Don Galvez, Spanish Viceroy of Mexico. What parts of the country he examined is not known, but he was employed as mineralogist and as a student of the natural history of Mexico. His patron, whom Humboldt calls the enlightened Galvez," writes in a letter still extant, of Saugrain's scholarly attainments and expresses. regret for his absence. The death of the Viceroy forced Dr. Sangrain to return to France. In 1787, in company with M. Piqué, a botanist, he made his second visit to America for travel in Kentucky and along the course of the Ohio. Brissot de Warville dined with the two naturalists at Dr. Guillotin's the day of their departure from Paris. Upon arrival in America they hastened to Pittsburgh, but were there detained by the early setting in of winter. The enthusiastic young men, however, were not discouraged nor made idle by their detention and the partial failure of their plans. They established themselves in an abandoned cabin a few miles from town, were their own hewers of

wood and cooked their own food, for the greater part venison and potatoes, for bread was scarce and dear. They used their time in various scientific pursuits. Dr. Saugrain tried his hydrostatic scales in testing the capacity of different woods in the production of potash, finding corn-stalks the most fruitful. He examined many mines in the neighborhood and found iron, lead, copper and silver. The two naturalists set out from Pittsburgh March 19, 1788, with the adventures given in the letter translated. M. Piqué was killed by the Indians; Dr. Saugrain arrived in Louisville March 29th. There he remained till May 11th of the same year, when he went back to Philadelphia, overland as far as Limestone, then by boat to Pittsburgh, reaching his destination June 17th.

How long he remained in Philadelphia is a matter of conjecture, as is also his occupation in Paris up to the time of his third voyage to America with the Scioto emigration. Special consideration was shown him by the agents of the Scioto Company, both on account of his acquaintance with the Ohio country and his skill in medicine and mineralogy. William Playfair, as director of the Scioto Company, made a contract with him in Paris April 22, 1790, by the terms of which he was to receive two hundred acres of land, his passage to America as well as that of three servants, tools, seeds and beasts for the proper working of his land, provisions for a year and aid in building his cabin, all in consideration of Saugrain's knowledge and experience, who on his part agreed to give the Company his services, making himself useful in any way he could, for the year after his arrival in America.

Dr. Saugrain landed with other immigrants at Alexandria, in Virginia, in May, 1790. With them he shared the delays, disappointments and unavoidable hardships of the journey from the coast, over the mountains, to the Valley of the Ohio. He married in Gallipolis, but did not remain many years there with the so called Scioto Colony, for in

1797 we find him a resident of Lexington, Kentucky, where his first child was born.

Mrs. Mentelle, herself the daughter of one of the unfortunate immigrants, contributed to the Saturday Evening Chronicle of July 14, 1827, an article about Dr. Saugrain, in which she says: "Dr. Saugrain had acquired a great degree of reputation among the inhabitants of Kanawha by his success in inoculation for the smallpox. ... He had besides many other resources; he had brought with him a quantity of phosphorus, glass tubes and quicksilver; besides other things he made aërometers and barometers. All these articles were disposed of at wholesale for Kentucky and elsewhere, or in retail to the traders and those who came from different parts to visit the colony." Mrs. Mentelle makes mention of a party of Indians who visited Gallipolis on their way to the seat of government. "As they went about the town, they were led to Dr. Saugrain's and there examined his different machines with great curiosity. The doctor had an electric apparatus and thought it would be highly amusing to give them a shock; he placed a coin on the electric plate and told the interpreter to desire some of the Indians to keep it if they could take it off. One of them after some hesitation ventured to lay hold of the silver and received such a shock that he rushed out of the house in the greatest and most hideous fright. Dr. Saugrain, picking up the coin himself without any effect from the exploded machine, left the interpreter and the other Indians impressed with the most profound awe for the magician who could work such wonders."

Henry W. Brackenridge, author of "Recollections of the West," gives an amusing account of his year's residence in Dr. Saugrain's family. Brackenridge's book was written forty years after the events recorded and, I fear, is more entertaining than accurate. He speaks of the doctor as “a cheerful, sprightly little Frenchman, four feet six, English measure (but the doctor's children add a foot to this scant

computation) and a chemist, natural philosopher and physician. . . . The doctor had a small apartment which contained his chemical apparatus and I used to sit by him as often as I could, watching the curious operations of his blowpipe and crucible. I loved the cheerful little man and he became very fond of me in turn. Many of my countrymen (the native Kentuckians) used to come and stare at his doings, which they were half-inclined to think had too near a resemblance to the black art."

In the year 1800, at the urgent request of his friend, Trudeau, Governor of St. Louis, then belonging to the French, Dr. Saugrain removed to that town, going down the Ohio to the Mississippi in a flatboat and then working up the latter stream. Many weeks were consumed in this tedious trip. Five years later he received from President Jefferson a commission as Assistant Surgeon in the army and was assigned to duty at Fort Bellefontaine, a post on the Missouri River a few miles from St. Louis. For several years he was the only physician at St. Louis, and he continued in practice to the time of his death. "He could have amassed a large fortune," says Mrs. Mentelle, "but with a heart and hand always open and a very large family, he never felt a desire of accumulation and died poor, regretted and beloved by all." His death occurred in 1821. He left six children, four of whom were daughters. His grandchildren were thirty-one in number.

The original of the following translation, with many other documents, was put into my hands several years ago. I am inclined to think it the draft of a letter sent by Dr. Saugrain to his friends in France.

My Friends: The ice having caught us at Pittsburgh, you know that we were obliged to remain there the space of four months, and that in the end, the Ohio having opened, we saw with regret our first boat depart, carried away by the ice. We had another one made, in which we