John J. Audubon

John James Audubon (born Jean-Jacques Rabin; April 26, 1785 – January 27, 1851) was an American self-trained artist, naturalist, and ornithologist. His combined interests in art and ornithology turned into a plan to make a complete pictorial record of all the bird species of North America. He was notable for his extensive studies documenting all types of American birds and for his detailed illustrations, which depicted the birds in their natural habitats. His major work, a color-plate book titled ''The Birds of America'' (1827–1839), is considered one of the finest ornithological works ever completed. Audubon is also known for identifying 25 new species. He is the eponym of the National Audubon Society, and his name adorns a large number of towns, neighborhoods, and streets across the United States. Dozens of scientific names first published by Audubon are still in use by the scientific community.

Early life

Audubon was born in Les Cayes in the French colony of Saint-Domingue (now Haiti) on his father's sugarcane plantation. He was the son of Lieutenant Jean Audubon, a French naval officer (and privateer) from the south of Brittany, and his mistress, Jeanne Rabine, a 27-year-old chambermaid from Les Touches, Brittany (now in the modern region Pays de la Loire).Rhodes, Richard ''John James Audubon: The Making of an American''
New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2004, p. 4, accessed April 26, 2011.Souder 2005, p. 18 They named him Jean Rabin. Another 1887 biographer has stated that his mother was a lady from a Louisiana plantation. His mother died when he was a few months old, as she had suffered from tropical disease since arriving on the island. His father already had an unknown number of mixed-race children (among them a daughter named Marie-Madeleine),DeLatt, Carolyne E., ''Lucy Audubon: A Biography'' (LSU Press, 2008), p. 21 some by his mixed-race housekeeper, Catherine "Sanitte" Bouffard (described as a quadroon, meaning she was three-quarters European in ancestry). Following Jeanne Rabin's death, Audubon renewed his relationship with Sanitte Bouffard and had a daughter by her, named Muguet. Bouffard also took care of the infant boy Jean.

The senior Audubon had commanded ships. During the American Revolution, he had been imprisoned by Britain. After his release, he helped the American cause. He had long worked to save money and secure his family's future with real estate. Due to slave unrest in the Caribbean, in 1789 he sold part of his plantation in Saint-Domingue and purchased a 284-acre farm called Mill Grove, 20 miles from Philadelphia, to diversify his investments. Increasing tension in Saint-Domingue between the colonists and the African slaves, who greatly outnumbered them, convinced the senior Jean Audubon to return to France, where he became a member of the Republican Guard. In 1788 he arranged for Jean and in 1791 for Muget to be transported to France.Souder 2005, p. 20

The children were raised in Couëron, near Nantes, France, by Audubon and his French wife, Anne Moynet Audubon, whom he had married years before his time in Saint-Domingue. In 1794 they formally adopted both the children to regularize their legal status in France. They renamed the boy Jean-Jacques Fougère Audubon and the girl Rose.

From his earliest days, Audubon had an affinity for birds. "I felt an intimacy with them...bordering on frenzy hatmust accompany my steps through life." His father encouraged his interest in nature:

He would point out the elegant movement of the birds, and the beauty and softness of their plumage. He called my attention to their show of pleasure or sense of danger, their perfect forms and splendid attire. He would speak of their departure and return with the seasons.

In France during the years of the French Revolution and its aftermath, the younger Audubon grew up to be a handsome and gregarious man. He played flute and violin, and learned to ride, fence, and dance.Rhodes 2004, p. 5 A enjoyed roaming in the woods, often returning with natural curiosities, including birds' eggs and nests, of which he made crude drawings. His father planned to make a seaman of his son. At twelve, Audubon went to military school and became a cabin boy. He quickly found out that he was susceptible to seasickness and not fond of mathematics or navigation. After failing the officer's qualification test, Audubon ended his incipient naval career. He returned to exploring fields again, focusing on birds.

Immigration to the United States

In 1803, his father obtained a false passport so that Jean-Jacques could go to the United States to avoid conscription in the Napoleonic Wars. 18-year-old Jean-Jacques boarded ship, changing his name to the anglicized form John James Audubon. Jean Audubon and Claude Rozier arranged a business partnership for their sons John James Audubon and Jean Ferdinand Rozier to pursue lead mining in Pennsylvania. The Audubon-Rozier partnership was based on Claude Rozier's buying half of Jean Audubon's share of a plantation in Haiti, and lending money to the partnership as secured by half interest in lead mining at Audubon's Pennsylvania property of Mill Grove.Sharpe, Mary Rozier and James, Louis, ''Between the Gabouri, History of the Rozier Family'', 1981Rhodes, ''John James Audubon'' (2004), p.

Audubon caught yellow fever upon arrival in New York City. The ship's captain placed him in a boarding house run by Quaker women. They nursed Audubon to recovery and taught him English. He traveled with the family's Quaker lawyer to the Audubon family farm, Mill Grove. The homestead is located on the Perkiomen Creek a few miles from Valley Forge.

Audubon lived with the tenants in the two-story stone house, in an area that he considered a paradise. "Hunting, fishing, drawing, and music occupied my every moment; cares I knew not, and cared naught about them." Studying his surroundings, Audubon quickly learned the ornithologist's rule, which he wrote down as, "The nature of the place—whether high or low, moist or dry, whether sloping north or south, or bearing tall trees or low shrubs—generally gives hint as to its inhabitants."

His father hoped that the lead mines on the property could be commercially developed, as lead was an essential component of bullets. This could provide his son with a profitable occupation. At Mill Grove, Audubon met the owner of the nearby Fatland Ford estate, William Bakewell, and his daughter Lucy Bakewell.

Audubon set about to study American birds, determined to illustrate his findings in a more realistic manner than most artists did then. He began drawing and painting birds, and recording their behavior. After an accidental fall into a creek, Audubon contracted a severe fever. He was nursed and recovered at Fatland Ford, with Lucy at his side.

Risking conscription in France, Audubon returned in 1805 to see his father and ask permission to marry. He also needed to discuss family business plans. While there, he met the naturalist and physician Charles-Marie D'Orbigny, who improved Audubon's taxidermy skills and taught him scientific methods of research. Although his return ship was overtaken by an English privateer, Audubon and his hidden gold coins survived the encounter.

Audubon resumed his bird studies and created his own nature museum, perhaps inspired by the great museum of natural history created by Charles Willson Peale in Philadelphia. Peale's bird exhibits were considered scientifically advanced. Audubon's room was brimming with birds' eggs, stuffed raccoons and opossums, fish, snakes, and other creatures. He had become proficient at specimen preparation and taxidermy.

Deeming the mining venture too risky, with his father's approval Audubon sold part of the Mill Grove farm, including the house and mine, but retaining some land for investment.

Banding experiment with Eastern Phoebes

In volume 2 of ''Ornithological Biography'' (1834), Audubon told a story from his childhood, 30 years after the events reportedly took place, that has since garnered him the label of "first bird bander in America". The story has since been exposed as likely apocryphal. In the spring of 1804, according to the story, Audubon discovered a nest of the "Pewee Flycatcher", now known as Eastern Phoebe (''Sayornis phoebe''), in a small grotto on the property of Mill Grove. To determine whether the other phoebes on the property were "descended from the same stock", Audubon (1834:126) said that he tied silver threads to the legs of five nestlings:

I took the whole family out, and blew off the exuviae of the feathers from the nest. I attached light threads to their legs: these they invariably removed, either with their bills, or with the assistance of their parents. I renewed them, however, until I found the little fellows habituated to them; and at last, when they were about to leave the nest, I fixed a light silver thread to the leg of each, loose enough not to hurt the part, but so fastened that no exertions of theirs could remove it.

He also said that he had "ample proof afterwards that the brood of young Pewees, raised in the cave, returned the following spring, and established themselves farther up on the creek, and among the outhouses in the neighbourhood … having caught several of these birds on the nest, ehad the pleasure of finding that two of them had the little ring on the leg", but multiple independent primary sources (including original, dated drawings of European species) demonstrate that Audubon was in France during the spring of 1805, not in Pennsylvania as he later claimed. Furthermore, Audubon's claim to have re-sighted 2 out of 5 of the banded phoebes as adults (i.e., a 40% rate of natal philopatry) has not been replicated by modern studies with much larger sample sizes (e.g., 1.6% rate among 549 nestlings banded; and 1.3% rate among 217 nestlings banded). These facts cast doubt on the truth of Audubon's story.

Marriage and family

In 1808, Audubon moved to Kentucky, which was rapidly being settled. Six months later, he married Lucy Bakewell at her family estate, Fatland Ford, Pennsylvania, and took her the next day to Kentucky. The two shared many common interests, and began to explore the natural world around them. Though their finances were tenuous, the Audubons started a family. They had two sons, Victor Gifford (1809–1860) and John Woodhouse Audubon (1812–1862), and two daughters who died while still young, Lucy at two years (1815–1817) and Rose at nine months (1819–1820). Both sons eventually helped publish their father's works. John W. Audubon became a naturalist, writer, and painter in his own right.

Starting out in business

Audubon and Jean Ferdinand Rozier moved their merchant business partnership west at various stages, ending ultimately in Ste. Genevieve, Missouri, a former French colonial settlement west of the Mississippi River and south of St. Louis. Shipping goods ahead, Audubon and Rozier started a general store in Louisville, Kentucky on the Ohio River; the city had an increasingly important slave market and was the most important port between Pittsburgh and New Orleans