André Michaux (Pronounced → ahn-dray mee-show; sometimes anglicised as Andrew Michaud; 8 March 1746 – 11 October 1802)[1] was a French botanist and explorer.

Michaux was trained in the agricultural sciences in anticipation of his one-day assuming his father's duties, and received a basic classical 18th century education, including Latin and some Greek, until he was fourteen.

[4] In 1769, he married Cecil Claye, the daughter of a prosperous farmer; she died a year later giving birth to their son, François André.

His journey began unfavourably, as he was robbed of all his equipment except his books; but he gained influential support in Persia after curing the shah of a dangerous illness.

[5] André Michaux was appointed by Louis XVI as Royal botanist under the General Director of the Bâtiments du Roi and sent to the United States in 1785 with an annual salary of 2000 livres, to make the first organized investigation of plants that could be of value in French building and carpentry, medicine and agriculture.

In 1786, Michaux attempted to establish a horticultural garden of thirty acres in Bergen's Wood on the Hudson Palisades near Hackensack, New Jersey.

[6][7] The garden, overseen by Pierre-Paul Saunier from the Jardin des Plantes, Paris, who had emigrated with Michaux, failed because of the harsh winters.

According to presidential historian Michael Edward Purdy (1954–2023), the "subscription list" stands as the only document of any kind signed by the first four presidents: Washington, Jefferson, Adams, and Madison.

Saunier, his salary unpaid, cultivated potatoes and hay and paid taxes on the New Jersey property, which is now still remembered as "The Frenchman's Garden", part of Machpelah Cemetery in North Bergen.

Saunier continued to send seeds to France for the rest of his life, and is credited with introducing into gardens the chinquapin (Castanea pumila) and the smoking bean tree (Catalpa bignonioides).

It demonstrates that we (not the whole continent, but the United States alone) have three times the number of useful trees that Europe can boast..." Burr's cited quote would apply equally to both Michaux', father and son, and perhaps more to the son, who had been in America a total of some 6 years, and had recently (1804) written about his travels in America, and was subsequently working on his later opus on American trees.