Elisee Reclus

On December 14, 1858, he married Marries Clarisse Brian, a "mulatto" Senegalese woman. Their two daughters Magali and Jeannie were born in 1860 and 1863 respectively.

After the death of Marries Clarisse Brian in 1869, he informally married Fanny Lherminez the following year.

In 1874 Fanny Lherminez died and Reclus got married for the third time to Ermance Gonini in 1875.

He was born on March 15, 1830, in Sainte-Foy-la-Grande, Gironde located in south-west France to Jacques Reclus and his wife Zéline nee Trigant as one of their fourteen children.

His father was a pastor of a strict evangelical group while his mother was a primary school teacher. After his father left Sainte-Foy-la-Grande in 1831, he was raised by his grandparents in Laroche till 1838 after which he again started living with his family in Casteetarbes.

Many of his brothers achieved great heights in their respective professions including Élie Reclus and Onésime, who became geographer like him.

He completed his primary education in Rhenish Prussia and then enrolled at the Protestant college of Montauban in 1848 to pursue higher studies in theology along with his older brother Elie. However he had to leave Montauban because of defying teachers.

In 1849 he took up a teaching position for the Moravian brothers in Neuwied but resigned in January 1851 to study geography at the ‘University of Berlin’. Here he came under the guidance of Carl Ritter, who was considered the founder of modern geography and attended several lectures of the latter.

He returned to France and opposed the coup of Napoleon that took place on December 2, 1851, following which he and his older brother Elie took exile in London. Next six years he travelled and worked in Great Britain, the US, Columbia and Central America.

During 1852 he worked as a teacher first in London and then in Dublin and towards the end of the year he moved to New Orleans, Louisiana. There he began working as a dockworker.

From 1853 for around 2 ½ years he worked as a tutor to one of his cousin’s children at their plantation Félicité located at a distance of around fifty miles upriver from New Orleans. ‘Fragment d'un voyage á Louisiane’, published by him in 1855 gives an account of his experience of passing through the Mississippi River Delta as also his perspective of the pre-war New Orleans.

His tenure at Louisiana marked an important phase in his life developing his social and political views that saw him strictly opposing racism and slavery and intensifying his views regarding inhumanity of capitalism.

In August 1855 he moved to Columbia where he stayed for 1 ½ years and endeavoured to establish an agricultural colony, but remained unsuccessful.

He was a proponent of conservation of nature and was against cruelty to animals.

He was highly regarded by eminent personalities like Henry Stephens Salt, George Perkins Marsh, Octave Mirbeau and Alfred Russel Wallace.