1. The only Rafinesque genealogy appears, at pp. 67-70, in Georges Reynaud, “Un grand naturaliste méconnu: Constantin Samuel Rafinesque (1783-1840)”, Marseille, No. 112 (1978), pp. 61-70. This was compiled from extant French records; it is more detailed than, and sometimes disagrees with, the autobiographical writings of Rafinesque himself.
2. C. S. Rafinesque, A Life of Travels (Philadelphia: Printed for the Author, 1836), pp. 5–13. This short autobiography was translated by Rafinesque himself from an earlier French version written the year before his Prix Volney essay. The French-language original, Précis ou Abrégé (1833), will be cited here only when it contains relevant information Rafinesque chose not to translate.
3. Phillips Russell, “A New Rafinesque Letter”, Journal of the Elisha Mitchell Scientific Society, LIX (1943), 89–90. Rafinesque reviewed Martin Ruter’s little book, Concise Hebrew Grammar (Cincinnati: Methodist Episcopal Church, 1824), and he published a 264-page book of his own in 1838 on the Genius and Spirit of the Hebrew Bible (published in the name of “The Central University of Illinois”, which Rafinesque and a few friends hoped to found). What use he made of his smattering of Arabic is unknown. His facility in German was more important in the context of linguistics. He at least had dipped into Friedrich von Schlegel’s Über die Sprache und Weisheit der Indier (Heidelberg: Mohr und Zimmer, 1808), and may have learned something about Sanskrit there. Apparently he failed to learn that grammatical structure, not similarity of sounds, was considered to be the key to language affinities-a principle generally attributed to Schlegel. However, Rafinesque was never comfortable in German. Although it often has been asserted that he published in German, inspection of Rafinesque’s titles in that language shows that all were translated, by others, from articles he published in French. Writing to Karl von Schreibers in Austria, he used English as his medium and translated his correspondent’s name on the cover as “Charles de Schreibers”. In this letter (Lexington, Kentucky, 15 April 1822; Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Vienna), he requested an exchange of scientific books published in Latin, French, Italian, Spanish or English, adding “but German books I do not understand nor any body here.” Rafinesque has been called a professor of modern languages at Transylvania University. There he did teach French, Spanish and Italian to students and townspeople on a fee basis; but, at the time, the only languages deemed worthy of the university’s attention were Greek and Latin. Rafinesque himself was long denied Transylvania’s honorary M.A. degree because he had received no formal instruction in Greek. His professorship was in botany and natural history, although he was paid no regular salary for this work. Rather, he had the privilege, shared only by the medical faculty, of selling tickets to his courses of lectures to such students and townspeople as cared to attend. In addition, he was granted after a time a modest salary to serve as librarian, keeper of the cabinet of natural history specimens and secretary to the faculty. Transylvania is a liberal arts college today, but retains the university designation of its charter in recognition of its historic heritage.
4. MS. “Synglosson”, Lehigh University Library, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. One of six such word lists Rafinesque mentioned as once among his possessions, only this one is extant. It consists of ninety-two unnumbered leaves and was “begun in 1832”.
5. Possible exceptions may be two of his manuscripts that Rafinesque advertised for sale in 1837: “Dictionary of the Chilian Language, with a grammar” and “Atlantic and Libyan Languages and Dialects restored and compared, grammar, alphabet, &c.” Among other linguistic manuscripts he listed for sale were dictionaries of the Lenape language and “the old Ligurian Languages of Spain, France, Italy”, as well as vocabularies of the five “Atlantic Languages of Central America, Chontol, Choi, Tol, Maya, Poya”, of “the Pelagic or oldest Greek Language”, “Mosaic Hebrew”, “Languages and Traditions of Ceylon and Madagascar”, “old Chinese compared with the modern”, “the Turan Languages of Central Asia”, “the Shuarga or Celestial Language of Imalaya”, dialects of Sicily, Sardinia and Corsica and “10 unpublished Languages of South America.” Since it is not known what happened to these documents, there is no way to tell precisely what languages were involved. Priced at $25 to $50 apiece, each manuscript probably was a notebook filled with excerpts from Rafinesque’s reading. He offered them for sale in his Bulletin of the Historical and Natural Sciences, No. 4 (Spring 1837), pp. 28-29, of which a single copy has been recorded, at the Library of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.