She Led A 42-Person Search Party Through The Rainforest To Find Her Husband, But Only She Survived

Isabel was born in central Ecuador in the city of Riobamba. Her father, Don Pedro Gramesón y Bruno, was a well-off administrator. Isabel had a privileged upbringing that included dance, music, deportment, as well as foreign languages, most especially French. From an early age she displayed a fascination with French culture and longed to travel to the country more than anything. When, at the age of just 13, she met the French cartographer Jean Godin des Odonais she fell in love with him almost instantly. They wed in 1741 and wound up having several children together. Unfortunately, their time together was short lived.

When she met her husband, he was a cartographer and naturalist and a member of the French geodesic mission that traveled to South America to measure the equator. Not long after they wed, he disappeared. He had traveled from their home to work in French Guyana. Unfortunately, due to the complicated geopolitical alliances and hostilities between nations at the time, Spanish and Portuguese authorities banned Jean, who was a French citizen, from returning through their land in order see his wife. They wouldn't see each other for 19 years.

It took Godin and his colleagues eight years and over 200 miles of travel to prove that the Earth was an oblate spheroid. When he completed his mission, Jean planned on returning to France. But first he wanted to collect Isabel to take with him. He arranged to travel the Amazon by himself; unfortunately, authorities wouldn't give him permission to return to Quito to pick up his wife, who was pregnant at the time. Jean tried using his contacts so he could reunite with Isabel, but no one could help him even though he had previously been granted special permission to travel in the country as part of the geodesic mission.

As the powers of Europe began to shift alliances, so did Jean's opportunities begin to shift. Hoping to appease the French, the King of Portugal allegedly tried to help Jean reunite with Isabel in 1765. He sent a ship to Jean, who found the gesture suspicious. Previously, Jean had written a letter to the French Minister of Foreign Affairs suggesting they invade the Portuguese and Spanish colonies to get their hands on the the Amazon territories and get access to their wealth of resources. So when the king sent the ship, Jean thought he was attempting to trap him - not reunite him with Isabel. The ship waited in a harbor for nearly a year before French authorities sent it away.

When Isabel found out that she was finally going to reunite with her husband, she immediately made plans to travel across the Andes to board a ship where she would meet him in Cayenne, French Guyana. None of her children would be traveling with her because they had all passed away, most of them as young children. Her youngest had recently died of malaria at the same time when Isabel learned that she would finally see Jean again. She took four servants, two brothers, a nephew, three French travelers and dozens of natives with her on her trip.

Isabel may not have realized it at the time, but she was one of the first women to cross the Amazon river. But her journey was of the heart, not for exploration purposes. The first person, male or female, to navigate the whole Amazon river was Spanish explorer Francisco de Orellana in the mid-16th century. He also founded the Ecuadorean city Guayaquil. After Isabel reunited with her husband in the 18th century, a Prussian name Alexander Von Humboldt set out to map South America between 1799 and 1804. He and botanist Aime-Jacques Bonpland detailed their adventures in several volumes of books, which made a huge impact on Charles Darwin.