Abbé Correa’s Bedroom

Abbé Correa’s room at Monticello with his portrait. Thomas Jefferson Foundation

Several years ago I visited Monticello, the home of Thomas Jefferson.  On the tour the docent remarked that one of the bedrooms on the first floor was dubbed by the family as “Abbé Correa’s room,” after a Portuguese priest who was a favorite guest and stayed there a number of times.  I had never heard of Correa, nor had I known that the deist Jefferson had a priest friend.  With a little investigation, I learned that the abbé was José Correa da Serra, a Portuguese diplomat who spent much of his life in exile and was a naturalist with a special interest in botany (Davis, 1955).  The last item was all it took to put Correa on my radar.  From then on I made a note whenever I encountered his name, which turned out to be in a number of different contexts. 

When I was researching the Pennsylvania botanist/physician William Darlington (Flannery, 2019), I came across an article with footnotes referring to Correa’s connections with Thomas Nuttall, Benjamin Barton, and Henry Muhlenberg, so he definitely moved among the botanical elite in the United States, where he lived from 1812 to 1820.  In a biography of the French botanist André Michaux, I learned that Michaux’s son François had written a letter of introduction for Correa to the eminent Philadelphia physician Caspar Wistar (Savage & Savage, 1986).  Correa met François Michaux while living in Paris from 1802 to 1812.  There he was also friends with such scientific stars as botanist Antoine Laurent de Jussieu, head of the Jardin des Plantes André Thouin, and explorer Alexander von Humboldt, as well as zoologist Georges Cuvier and hero of the American Revolution Marquis de Lafayette. 

Most surprising to me is that Correa turned up in plant morphologist Agnes Arber’s (1950) The Natural Philosophy of Plant Form.  I had read this book a number of times without registering his name, but now that my antennae were up, there he was in a section on how Correa had influenced Jussieu’s views on natural classification as well as those of the British botanist Robert Brown.  It turned out that before Correa had lived in France, he had been in England from 1795 to 1801.  He was allowed into the country through the good services of none other than the botanical czar Joseph Banks and had friends like Brown and the head of the Linnean Society, James Edward Smith.  How did someone seem to move so easily into the most elite scientific circles in three countries?  That’s what I will try to explore in this series of posts.

Correa was born in Portugal in 1751, but his wealthy family moved to Naples when he was six years old, and he received his early education there.  He then moved to Rome and was tutored by the Portuguese philosopher Luís António Verney who introduced him to botany.  By his early 20’s, Correa was already corresponding with the likes of Carl Linnaeus.  While in Rome he earned a doctorate in law and also studied for the priesthood before returning to Portugal.  There he became an associate of the Duke of Lafões whom he had met when the Duke was living in exile in Italy.  Exile seems to be a major theme in this story, and one of the dangers of being in the upper echelons of society in a politically volatile country.  The duke was able to return home because a new monarch led to an easing of restrictions. 

Both Lafões and Correa were on the liberal side both politically and religiously, and in 1779 they founded the Royal Academy of Sciences in Lisbon in an effort to revive the rather dormant scientific community there.  Correa set about collecting plant and animal specimens for the museum they envisioned.  He also studied botany in earnest and that meant corresponding with botanists in several countries, since there were few opportunities for enrichment at home.  Apparently Correa had a very pleasant manner about him as well as a keen mind filled with information.  This made him an attractive correspondent, with both sides enriching their knowledge through the interchange.  It may have begun with an aging Linnaeus, but went on to include the likes of Smith in England and Jussieu in France.  Correa early on became interested in alternatives to the artificial classification of Linnaeus, and this was a common bond among them.

Meanwhile Lafões and Correa worked to develop the Academy, including by publishing the latest research.  However, they soon encountered resistance from more conservative factions, so publication became a slow process.  They continued on with this project until the mid-1790’s when the Academy gave safe haven to a naturalist Pierre-Marie Broussonet who had to flee France because of his political activities during the French Revolution.  Local authorities who were already suspicious of the Academy put Correa under surveillance, and he was also being scrutinized by the Catholic Church’s Portuguese Inquisition. 

Correa’s position became untenable, and in 1795 he went to England, not returning to his native land for 25 years.  Not only was he allowed into England, but he was welcomed into the cream of botanical society.  He was elected a member of both the Linnean Society and the Royal Society, and over the next seven years presented papers at meetings of both.  What his botanical work in England involved, I’ll cover in my next post. 

References

Arber, A. R. (1950). The Natural Philosophy of Plant Form. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Davis, R. B. (1955). The Abbé Correa in America, 1812-1820: The Contributions of the Diplomat and Natural Philosopher to the Foundations of Our National Life. Correspondence with Jefferson and Other Members of the American Philosophical Society and with Other Prominent Americans. Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, 45(2), 87–197. https://doi.org/10.2307/1005770

Savage, H. Jr., & Savage, E. J. (1986). André and François André Michaux. Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press.