Background
Charles Alexandre Lesueur was born at Le Havre, France, the son of Jean-Baptiste Denis Lesueur, an officer of the Admiralty, and his wife, Charlotte Geneviève Thieullent.
(This book was originally published prior to 1923, and rep...)
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(Sketches by Charles A.Lesueur Shreveport, Louisiana. (177...)
Sketches by Charles A.Lesueur Shreveport, Louisiana. (1778-1846). The scenes in this book were produced from photographic prints in the American Philosophical Society Library, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania from the original sketches by C.A.Lesueur of the Musee-Bibliotheque of Le Havre, France
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Charles Alexandre Lesueur was born at Le Havre, France, the son of Jean-Baptiste Denis Lesueur, an officer of the Admiralty, and his wife, Charlotte Geneviève Thieullent.
He attended the Royal Military School at Beaumont-en-Auge from 1787 to 1796.
At eighteen Lesueur was assigned to the dispatch boat Le Hardi for brief service in the English Channel. In his twenty-third year he secured through competitive examination a humble post with the scientific expedition sent out in 1800 by order of the First Consul to explore the coasts of Australia. His skill as an artist soon won him a place on the scientific staff, and with the young naturalist François Péron, his companion in the corvette Géographe, he formed an intimate friendship. The two remained with the expedition through hardships which decimated both scientific force and crew, and when they returned to France in 1804 brought to the Museum of Natural History at Paris a collection of more than 100, 000 zoological specimens, including some 2, 500 new species. A report by Cuvier credited Péron and Lesueur themselves with discovering more new species than all the other naturalists of the modern era up to their time.
Lesueur collaborated at first with Péron and later with Louis Desaulx Freycinet, in preparing an account of the expedition, Voyage de découvertes aux Terres Australes. The death of Péron in 1810 and the final downfall of Napoleon in 1815 brought him sorrow and discouragement, and he welcomed the opportunity to become the traveling companion and coworker of William Maclure, wealthy philanthropist and amateur geologist, with whom he left France in August 1815. After a survey of the West Indies in the winter of 1815-1816, they reached New York May 10, 1816, proceeded thence to Philadelphia, and almost immediately set out on a tour of the interior. Their route took them through Delaware and a part of Maryland, to Mercersburg, Pennsylvania, across the mountains to Pittsburgh, north to Lake Erie, to Niagara Falls, thence across New York state past the Finger Lakes, and down the Mohawk Valley to Albany. They explored the shores of Lake George and Lake Champlain, went over into the Connecticut Valley, followed the river to the coast and the coast to Boston and Newburyport. Returning overland from Newburyport to Albany, they descended the Hudson by steamboat to Newburgh, and thence went by road to Philadelphia, arriving late in October. During the journey, while Maclure was making his geological observations, Lesueur sketched and painted, collected shells and fossils, and made notes for a work he hoped to produce on the fishes of North America.
In the following spring, after a brief field-trip into New Jersey, the period of his contract with Maclure expired, and for the next nine years he maintained himself in Philadelphia, by engraving and printing his own plates and by teaching drawing and painting. He was soon elected to membership in the American Philosophical Society and the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, and was a frequent contributor to their publications.
From 1817 to 1825 he was a curator of the Academy. In 1819 he worked for a time on the mapping of the northeast boundary between the United States and Canada; he visited Kentucky in 1821, and the upper Hudson in 1822 and 1823. Maclure, meantime, had become interested in Robert Owen's projected community at New Harmony, Indiana, and in 1825 Lesueur yielded to his persuasion and consented to join the venture. By the keel-boat Philanthropist from Pittsburgh, in which Thomas Say, who became his close friend, Gerard Troost, the mineralogist, Robert Owen, the founder, and his son, Robert Dale Owen, were fellow passengers, he arrived in New Harmony in January 1826. Here for twelve years he taught drawing in the community school, engraved plates for Say's important works on conchology and entomology, and produced several for his own American Ichthyology, which was abandoned after the publication of five plates in 1827. Traveling sometimes with Troost or Say, sometimes alone, from New Harmony as a base, he visited St. Louis in 1826, New Orleans repeatedly, Nashville, and the mountains of Tennessee, making notes, drawings, and sketches of the specimens he gathered, the geological formations he studied, the country itself, and the manners of the people.
In 1837 the gradual decline of the New Harmony community, his loneliness since the death of Say in 1834, and the warning that if he remained abroad his meager pension would cease, decided him to return to France, and for the next eight years he was in Paris, spending most of his time in the library or the museum, at work on his manuscripts and sketches. While here he also tried his hand at lithography.
In 1845 he was called to Le Havre to become director of the newly founded Museum of Natural History there, and the last two years of his life were thus passed in his native city. Lesueur was the first to study the fishes of the Great Lakes of North America. In addition to several papers on reptiles, crustaceans, and other subjects, he published twenty-nine papers on American fishes which are listed in Bashford Dean's bibliography (post). The most notable of all his American contributions is a monographic review of the family of suckers or Catostomidae. He was one of the first in America of the school of systematic zoology which regards no fact as so unimportant that it need not be correctly ascertained and stated. "In showing his drawings, " wrote a former pupil, "Lesueur generally offered a lens, that you might see every hair delineated. " The same pupil, Prof. Richard Owen, also wrote, "In conversation with me, Agassiz once paid a high compliment to Lesueur's accomplishments in ichthyology, considering him then (as I inferred) the next best to himself in the United States. "
Lesueur collected over 100, 000 zoological specimens during his expedition to Australia. He wrote in total over 60 books, including reports of his zoological, geological, historical and archeological research, as well as studies of his life. Lesueur was the first to study the fishes of the Great Lakes of North America. He was noted for his review of the family of suckers or Catostomidae. He was awarded the honor of Chevalier de l’Ordre Royal de la Légion d'honneur for his long years of work in the sciences.
(This book was originally published prior to 1923, and rep...)
(Sketches by Charles A.Lesueur Shreveport, Louisiana. (177...)
Member of the American Philosophical Society
Member of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia
