Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography/Martin de Moyville, Edouard Nicolas Henry

MARTIN DE MOYVILLE, Edouard Nicolas Henry, French explorer, b. in Calais in 1715; d. in Paris in 1779. His father was a " fermier gene- ral " of taxes, and the son followed the same career for several years. Being left at the death of his father with an independent fortune, he abandoned this pursuit, and opened his parlors to philosophers and authors. But his former profession had left a stain upon him, and he resolved to emigrate to Canada, which the peace of 1748 had restored to the French. Settling in Quebec in 1749, he was made a consulting member of the " Conseil sou- verain " of the city, and, by the suggestion of the governor-general, purchased a vast tract of land west of the peninsula of Upper Canada. After several unsuccessful attempts to colonize his new estate, Martin began to study the flora of Canada, then scarcely known to Europeans. During five years he explored Lower and Upper Canada, Acadia, Nova Scotia, and Cape Breton, descending as far south as the New England states, west to Lake Michigan, and north to Hudson bay. He formed an herbarium of 1,450 plants, 180 of which were new. The war of 1756 put an end to his explo- rations, and he returned to Paris. On his arrival he immediately sent a paper to the Academy of sciences, in which he narrated his journeys, and, being invited by that body to undertake the pub- lication of a flora of Canada, associated himself with the naturalist Gaudin, who classified the plants and gave them scientific names. They published " Flore du Canada " (6 vols., Paris, 1769)"; " De I'acclimatation des pi antes Europeennes au Canada " (2 vols., 1771, with fig.) ; and " Histoire, description et proprietes des plantes medicinales de la vallee de Saint Laurent au Canada " (2 vols., 1773, with fig.). Martin published "Journal de voyage a travers la Nouvelle France du Nord ou Canada" (1761); "Expose de I'etat du Canada de 1750 a 1756" (1766); and "Les Six Nations," an essay on the history of the Canadian Indians (1772).