Edmond Albius

Edmond Albius was born on the French-occupied island of Reunion near Madagascar. He was born into slavery and at the age of 12 devised a quick method of pollinating vanilla flowers. Up until that point, the only method was a long drawn-out process devised by Belgian Charles Morrow. Before Morrow came up with his method sometime during the 1830s it was pretty near impossible to produce vanilla since once the plant was removed from its native Mexico the the plant no longer had its companion bees. Even in the wild vanilla has around a 1% chance of becoming productive with one of the major reasons being the flowers have to be germinated within 12 hours of it blossoming. Enter a pre-teen with a little stick.

Not long after Albius came up with the method French colonists expanded vanilla plantations and a new industry was born. What did Edmond Albius get out of it? His emancipation. What else? Nada. French botanist, Jean Michel Claude Richard tried to poach his fame by claiming he had come up with the technique a few years before and then traveled to Reunion teaching his method to slave owners. This makes a weird story because according to the slaver who owned Albius, the 12-year-old went around the island 4 years later teaching the method to growers. At some point, his former owner and possibly other locals petitioned France to award Albius a stipend or something but the government denied it, even though he’d made Reunion the leading exporter of vanilla. He’d leave the plantation and end up as a servant. Later he was convicted of stealing and put in prison. His sentence was eventually commuted after serving 2 or 3 years. He died a couple of years after that in the 1880s. They finally honored Albius with a statue in Reunion 100 years after his death.