It was noted that Baret never used the public, open air toilet.
Then, around 1775, Jeanne Baret returned to France with her husband and plant specimens in tow.
Baret gave her son up to the Paris Foundlings Hospital,
where he died at about 1 years old.
Today I found out about the secret life of Jean Baret, the first woman to circumnavigate the globe.
Whatever the case, Baret and Commerson did not continue on with the Etoile after the masquerade was discovered.
Born Jeanne Baret to a farming family in 1740,
not a lot is known about her childhood and early life.
Thirdly, Francois Vives, the ship's surgeon,
kept a journal in which he told of his suspicions that Baret was a woman.
With her return to France, Jeanne Baret completed her circumnavigation of the globe,
becoming the first woman to accomplish such a feat.
The plants were turned over to the government, and Baret was later granted a pension for her service on the expedition.
Thus, it was Baret who tramped through the rainforest and brought back most of the samples,
as well as documented her own discoveries.
Perhaps it was her wit or looks, or perhaps Commerson was just
incredibly into plants- but Jeanne Baret's next recorded employer was Commerson himself,
who took her on as a“housekeeper.”.
(It is unknown how Baret came to be literate when it's likely
her parents were not- but it's possible she was taught by a parish priest or even Commerson himself.).
Not only was he often in poor health, requiring Baret's services as a nurse- among other things- but
she was also the one who organized his papers and documented his collections.
Though Baret does not name the father of her child,
the form was signed in a town 30 km away from Baret's residence and witnessed by two men of relatively good standing.
Bougainville himself reported that a group of Tahitians surrounded Baret and
exclaimed that she was a woman, and Baret had to be ushered back on to the ship
in order to avoid a conflict.