Mathieu (Lobel) de L'Obel (abt. 1538 - 1616)

Born about 1538 in Lille, Nord, Pas-de-Calais, France

Ancestors

Husband of Isabeau (Laigniez) Lobel — married 1596 in Lille, France

Died 3 Mar 1616 at about age 78 in Highgate, London, England

Problems/Questions Profile managers: Katherine Sullivan [send private message], Lisa Fisher [send private message], and Deborah King [send private message]

link title

Biography

Matthias (Lobel) de L'Obel is Notable.

A well known botanist, physician and author.

He is credited with the first attempt to classify plants according to their natural affinities, rather than their medical uses. His Stirpium Adversaria Nova (1570; written in collaboration with Pierre Pena) was a milestone in modern botany. It argued that botany and medicine must be based on thorough, exact observation.

He discovered the medicinal qualities of a low-growing plant in Flanders, which is considered a tobacco substitute, giving the plant his name of "Lobelia" and the botanical family "Lobeliaceae". "Lobeline Sulfate" is a compound found in various formulae used today for helping to stop the use of tobacco.

He was the s/o Jean De Lobel, a distinguished lawyer. Mathiew was a physician at Montpelier, Germany, Italy, and Switzerland; he also practiced medicine in Antwerp, being attached as physician to William of Orange; from Antwerp he came to London, and became physician to James I. (James Cole his son in-law). He was a great student of vegetable physiology, and was the author of a number of books upon medicinal plants.

In 1565 he began his studies at the University of Montpellier in southern France with the renowned physician and naturalist, Guillaume Rondolet. There he met fellow student Pierre Pena. Having a common interest in botany, L'Obel and Pena became friends and went on botanical expeditions together. Following Rondolet's death in 1566, L'Obel and Pena left the university and arrived in England in 1569 with their collections of plants. They traveled throughout the British Isles collecting native plants and, in 1570, published the herbal, Stirpium Adversaria Nova.

After the publication of Stirpium Adversaria Nova, Pena returned to the Continent, pursued a career in medicine, and became a successful physician. L'Obel remained in England for a time. By 1574 he was in Antwerp practicing medicine and working on his next book, the companion volume to Stirpium Adversaria Nova. Titled Stirpium Observationes, it would be profusely illustrated.

L'Obel stayed in Antwerp and was the physician to William the Silent, until the latter's assassination in 1584. L'Obel then returned to England where he remained for the rest of his life.

He spent his final years supervising the gardens of Edward la Zouche, 11th Baron Zouche. Died in Highgate, London in 1616.

Mathieu Lobel and Isabeau Laigniez were the parents of Mary Lobel who married James Cole in England and emigrated to Saco, Maine, and then moved to Plymouth, Massachusetts in 1633, where James Cole established "Cole's Inn", situated on Cole's Hill in Plymouth. There is a monument there. Many famous people were descended the Cole family of New England.

James Savage in "A Genealogical Dictionary of the first settlers of New England" shows: "James Cole, Plymouth 1633, first occupant of the little hill where the early pilgrims had been buried...He kept an inn from 1638 to 1660, and he was living in 1688, very aged."

Ancestral File Number

Ancestral File Number: 4TQQ-GK

Sources

• http://www.geni.com/people/Matthias-de-l-Obel/6000000012396715824

• http://familytreemaker.genealogy.com/users/g/r/e/B-Grebles/WEBSITE-0001/UHP-0073.html

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthias_de_l'Obel

• http://wc.rootsweb.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?op=GET&db=diamonddeb&id=I3988

Katherine Sullivan, firsthand knowledge.

• http://library.cincymuseum.org/bot/lobel.htm

Biography