John James Audubon | Page 2

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. Genevi��ve, 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 live on the Audubon estate at Aux Cayes, when her child was but a few months old. Audubon says that his father with his plate and money and himself, attended by a few faithful servants, escaped to New Orleans. What became of his sister he does not say, though she must have escaped with them, since we hear of her existence years later. Not long after, how long we do not know, the father returned to France, where he married a second time, giving the son, as he himself says, the only mother he ever knew. This woman proved a rare