Biography
Born from a noble family of the province of Soule, his father Michel was born in Arrast-Larrebieu and his mother was Irish. His grandfather Jean-Pierre was an abbot and a notary in Soule.
The family moved to France in 1818 where the brothers received a careful scientific education.
At his return from Ethiopia, he married Virginie Vincent de Saint Bonnet in 1848, and settled in Hendaye where he purchased 250ha to build a castle, and became the mayor of the city from 1871 to 1875.
Abbadie was a knight of the Legion of Honour and a member of the French Academy of Sciences. He died in 1897, and bequeathed the Abbadi domain and castle in Hendaye, yielding 40,000 francs a year, to the Academy of Sciences.
Read more about this topic: Antoine Thomson D'Abbadie
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“Had Dr. Johnson written his own life, in conformity with the opinion which he has given, that every man’s life may be best written by himself; had he employed in the preservation of his own history, that clearness of narration and elegance of language in which he has embalmed so many eminent persons, the world would probably have had the most perfect example of biography that was ever exhibited.”
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—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)