Dr. Victoria Dickenson has written a biographical essay, which you can read here, about René-Gabriel de Rabié, royal engineer and naturalist who lived in Saint Domingue.
René Gabriel de Rabié, born in 1717 in Rochefort, France, was trained as a military engineer. After struggling to find a position in France, where the number of candidates vastly outweighed the military engineer positions that were available, he embarked on a career serving in the French colony of Saint Domingue. Here he married Anne Le Bon and had several children, some of whom followed in his footsteps into the military. After decades of service, he was finally able to take desperately needed medical leave and return to France, where he passed away less than a year later in 1785. This examination of de Rabié’s life offers insight into the colonial and military dynamics of the time.
Hidden Hands in Colonial Natural Histories 