John James Audubon | Page 2

his time and energies, and carried
him further and further from the conditions of a successful business
career.
J. B.
WEST PARK, NEW YORK, January, 1902.

CHRONOLOGY
1780
_May 4_. John James La Forest Audubon was born at Mandeville,
Louisiana.
(Paucity of dates and conflicting statements make it impossible to insert
dates to show when the family moved to St. Domingo, and thence to
France.)
1797 (?)
Returned to America from France. Here followed life at Mill Grove
Farm, near Philadelphia.
1805 or 6
Again in France for about two years. Studied under David, the artist.
Then returned to America.
1808
April 8. Married Lucy Bakewell, and journeyed to Louisville, Kentucky,
to engage in business with one Rozier.
1810
March. First met Wilson, the ornithologist.
1812
Dissolved partnership with Rozier.
1808-1819
Various business ventures in Louisville, Hendersonville, and St.
Geneviève, Kentucky, again at Hendersonville, thence again to
Louisville.
1819
Abandoned business career. Became taxidermist in Cincinnati.
1820
Left Cincinnati. Began to form definite plans for the publication of his

drawings. Returned to New Orleans.
1822
Went to Natchez by steamer. Gunpowder ruined two hundred of his
drawings on this trip. Obtained position of Drawing-master in the
college at Washington, Mississippi. At the close of this year took his
first lessons in oils.
1824
Went to Philadelphia to get his drawings published. Thwarted. There
met Sully, and Prince Canino.
1826
Sailed for Europe to introduce his drawings.
1827
Issued prospectus of his "Birds."
1828
Went to Paris to canvass. Visited Cuvier.
1829
Returned to the United States, scoured the woods for more material for
his biographies.
1830
Returned to London with his family.
1830-1839
Elephant folio, The Birds of North America, published.

1831-39
American Ornithological Biography published in Edinburgh.
1831
Again in America for nearly three years.
1832-33
In Florida, South Carolina, and the Northern States, Labrador, and
Canada.
1834
Completion of second volume of "Birds," also second volume of
American Ornithological Biography.
1835
In Edinburgh.
1836
To New York again--more exploring; found books, papers and
drawings had been destroyed by fire, the previous year.
1837
Went to London.
1838
Published fourth volume of American Ornithological Biography.
1839
Published fifth volume of "Biography."

1840
Left England for the last time.
1842
Built house in New York on "Minnie's Land," now Audubon Park.
1843
Yellowstone River Expedition.
1840-44
Published the reduced edition of his "Bird Biographies."
1846
Published first volume of "Quadrupeds."
1848
Completed Quadrupeds and Biography of American Quadrupeds. (The
last volume was not published till 1854, after his death.)
1851
_January 27_. John James Audubon died in New York.

JOHN JAMES AUDUBON.

I.
There is a hopeless confusion as to certain important dates in
Audubon's life. He was often careless and unreliable in his statements
of matters of fact, which weakness during his lifetime often led to his
being accused of falsehood. Thus he speaks of the "memorable battle of
Valley Forge" and of two brothers of his, both officers in the French
army, as having perished in the French Revolution, when he doubtless

meant uncles. He had previously stated that his only two brothers died
in infancy. He confessed that he had no head for mathematics, and he
seems always to have been at sea in regard to his own age. In his letters
and journals there are several references to his age, but they rarely
agree. The date of his birth usually given, May 4, 1780, is probably
three or four years too early, as he speaks of himself as being nearly
seventeen when his mother had him confirmed in the Catholic Church,
and this was about the time that his father, then an officer in the French
navy, was sent to England to effect a change of prisoners, which time is
given as 1801.
The two race strains that mingle in him probably account for this
illogical habit of mind, as well as for his romantic and artistic temper
and tastes.
His father was a sea-faring man and a Frenchman; his mother was a
Spanish Creole of Louisiana--the old chivalrous Castilian blood
modified by new world conditions. The father, through commercial
channels, accumulated a large property in the island of St. Domingo. In
the course of his trading he made frequent journeys to Louisiana, then
the property of the French government. On one of these trips, probably,
he married one of the native women, who is said to have possessed
both wealth and beauty. The couple seem to have occupied for a time a
plantation belonging to a French Marquis, situated at Mandeville on the
North shore of Lake Pontchartrain. Here three sons were born to them,
of whom John James La Forest was the third. The daughter seems to
have been younger.
His own mother perished in a slave insurrection in St. Domingo, where
the family had gone to