Jean-Charles Houzeau

Jean-Charles Houzeau de Lehaie (October 7, 1820 – July 12, 1888) was a Belgian astronomer and journalist. A French speaker, Houzeau lost his position at the Belgian Royal Observatory in 1849 due to his left-leaning political beliefs.

He moved to Texas in 1958, where he sided with unionists and abolitionists in the American Civil War, then relocated to New Orleans in 1864. In New Orleans, he worked with Dr. Louis Charles Roudanez at the newspapers he founded in the 1860s. American historian Eric Foner called Houzeau "one of the most remarkable men to take part in the saga of Reconstruction."

Houzeau migrated to Jamaica in the postwar years. After reinstatement from an observatory in Brussels, he returned to Europe to work. He came back to Texas for an astronomical event. He published stirring memoirs and other accounts of his adventures and contacts during his travels, as well as several works on astronomical subjects.

Life Houzeau was born in 1820 in Havré (a small city near Mons); at the time it was within the Netherlands, and was later included in the independent nation of Belgium. From 1842, he worked as a voluntary assistant at the Brussels Observatory and began writing papers. He eventually became the observatory's director. He travelled frequently during his career, to Paris, the United Kingdom, United States, Mexico, and Jamaica.

After being removed from the Belgian Royal Observatory for "outspoken political views" , Houzeau migrated to the United States. In Texas by 1858, he first worked as a surveyor. He moved to Uvalde, where he organized early scientific expeditions.

He believed in the abolition of slavery and aided the escape of some notable unionists from San Antonio before the American Civil War. He soon fled to Mexico, disguised as a Mexican laborer for his escape.

Later in New Orleans, when the city had been taken by Federal forces, he worked with Dr. Louis Charles Roudanez, a physician who founded the bilingual New Orleans Tribune - La Tribune de la Nouvelle-Orléans in 1864. During a period of fierce intraparty rivalries, Roudanez lost outside support and the newspaper closed after the election in 1868 of a Northern Republican as governor of Louisiana.

Houzeau then migrated to Jamaica, where he lived for eight years. He kept his European contacts and was reinstated as director of the Royal Observatory in Brussels. He returned to Belgium and his work there as an astronomer.

In December 1882, however, Houzeau made a return trip to Texas. He led a scientific expedition, accompanied by Albert Benoît Lancaster and Charles Emile Stuyvaert, to San Antonio to observe a locally visible transit of Venus across the face of the sun. At the time, this was a method of measuring time and gravity.

Impact According to historian Eric Foner, Houzeau was a pivotal figure in Reconstruction. He transformed the New Orleans Tribune into a widely respected journal in Northern Republican circles and even in Europe (in 1865 it received a letter from Victor Hugo). He “broadened its message to encompass a coherent program embracing black suffrage, equality before the law, desegregation of Louisiana’s schools, the opening of New Orleans streetcars to blacks, and division of the plantations among the freedmen. And...[he] made the alliance between free blacks and the freed the cornerstone of Tribune politics, as the only means of preventing the revolution unleashed by the Civil War from succumbing to reaction.”