Alexandrine Tinné
African Explorer
1839 – 1869 A.D.

Alexandrine Tinné, an African explorer, born at the Hague, of mixed parentage, her father being an English merchant long resident of Holland, her mother a Dutch baroness, daughter of Admiral van Capellen

By the death of her father, she became one of the richest heiresses in the country, with the prospects of a brilliant marriage, and an enviable social position, but she determined to travel, and in her eighteenth year quitted [sic] the Hague never to return.

In company with her mother and aunt, she visited various countries, and while in Egypt became interested in African exploration. Resolved to devote her fortune and energies to the cause of geographical discovery, to report on the slave-trade, and to help the oppressed people of the “dark continent,” she started on a voyage of discovery in central Africa.

With a numerous train of servants, and a hundred camels, she passed through the Nubian desert to Khartoum, and later penetrated into unknown regions of the White Nile. Her many voyages, and her generous assistance to other scientific travellers [sic] added largely to our geographical knowledge of remote regions.

In January, 1869, she started on her last and fatal expedition, when by a conspiracy among some of the natives, Miss Tinné and her three European attendants were treacherously murdered, and the caravan plundered, and the bodies of the victims left unburied [sic] on the sands.

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Reference: Famous Women; An Outline of Feminine Achievement Through the Ages With Life Stories of Five Hundred Noted Women By Joseph Adelman. Copyright, 1926 by Ellis M. Lonow Company.