John James Audubon. Library of Congress LC-USZ62-11250
John James Audubon has come to be known as the man who familiarized people in the United States and Great Britain with the species of birds found in America.
Audubon was born in Santo Domingo (now Haiti) on April 26, 1785. His father, Lieutenant Jean Audubon, was a French sea captain. His mother was Jeanne Rabin, a Spanish Creole from Louisiana who lived on his father’s sugar plantation. (Jean Audubon had a wife in France.) The baby was named Jean-Jacques Fougere Audubon. His mother died when he was an infant. In 1788, slave uprisings forced Audubon to sell his plantation. He took the little boy and his younger half-sister, Rosa, to Nantes, France. His wife, Anne Moynet Audubon, raised them as her own. And in 1794, she legally adopted them.
Robin on nest.
Audubon later said, “Let no one speak of her as my step-mother. I was ever to her as a son of her own flesh and blood and she was to me a true mother.” Mrs. Audubon treated the children well, although she spoiled the boy.
Jean’s father was away from home a lot, and he left the childraising to his wife. Jean played the flute and the violin and liked to fence, ride, and dance.
He didn’t like to go to school, so he often played hooky with other boys. They roamed the woods and fields, fishing, shooting, and hunting for birds’ nests.
Jean loved birds from an early age, and his father encouraged his interest. Jean said, “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…. He would speak of their departure and return with the seasons.” Jean often brought home birds’ eggs and nests. He began to draw birds that he saw in France.
Jean’s father was concerned about Jean’s lack of interest in his studies, so he took him to the French naval base at Rochefort, where he was stationed. Here the boy studied with a tutor. Once, when he was given some difficult math problems, Jean jumped out the window into the gardens. However, a naval officer took him back to his room.
Lt. Audubon finally gave up and let Jean return home and attend school there. During that time, the boy made more of an effort to paint birds well. Also, to please his mother, he learned his catechism and was baptized.
Jean’s first attempts at drawing birds were not good. He later wrote, “When I was a little lad, I first began my attempts at representing birds on paper, I was far from possessing much knowledge of their nature…. I was under the impression that it was a finished picture of a bird because it possessed some sort of a head and tail, and two sticks in lieu of legs.” Since the boy showed little interest in anything else, his father encouraged him in his drawing.
Meanwhile, Napoleon began drafting young men into the army. In order to keep Jean from being drafted, his father sent him to America. Jean immediately changed his name to John James, the name he used the rest of his life.
In this activity, you will learn how birds’ nests are made and try making one of your own.
Mill Grove House, where Audubon lived when he came to America.
Library of Congress HABS PA,46-AUD,1A—1
Young men and women ice skating.
Library of Congress LC-USZ2629-91165
John James was excited about the move. He enjoyed the trip, but when he reached New York, he became very ill with yellow fever. The ship’s captain took him to two Quaker women who ran a boardinghouse. They nursed him back to health, and he later wrote, “To their skillful and untiring ministrations, I may safely say I owe … my life.”
Soon he was established at Mill Grove, his father’s farm in Pennsylvania. He lived with the Quaker tenants, William Thomas and his wife. Audubon loved life at Mill Grove. He wrote that Mill Grove was “refreshed by the waters of the Schuylkill River, and transversed by a creek named Perkioming. Its fine woodlands, its extensive acres, its fields crowned with evergreens, provided many subjects to my pencil.”
Audubon was popular with the other young people in the area and spent his time enjoying himself. He was a great dancer, played the violin well, and was a good hunter. He said, “Hunting, fishing, drawing, and music occupied my every moment. Not a ball, a skating match, a house or a riding party took place without me.”
Audubon dressed in satin pants, ruffled shirts, and silk stockings. He even dressed this way while hunting or roaming through the woods, finding birds and studying them. He wrote in his journal, “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.” He spent a lot of time drawing the birds he found.
Soon after he arrived at Mill Grove, Audubon met a British neighbor, William Bakewell, in the woods. The man invited him to the house and Audubon was immediately enchanted by Bakewell’s daughter, Lucy. He later wrote to his sons, “There I sat, my eyes riveted … on the young girl before me, who half working, half talking, essayed to make the time pleasant to me. Oh! may God bless her! It was she, my dear sons, who afterwards became my beloved wife and your mother.”
You can make your own bird feeder from things around the house that you would otherwise throw away.
Adult supervision required
The two became great friends, and Lucy was with Audubon when he carried out a scientific experiment. He had discovered a phoebe’s nest in a cave on the property. He wondered if the same birds would return the next year, so he carefully tied threads around their feet. The birds returned the next spring, still wearing the worn and dirty pieces of string on their legs. This was the first bird-banding experiment in the United States.
Audubon and Lucy were in love, but her parents thought they were too young to marry. Her father was also concerned that Audubon had no way to support her. John James was not a good businessman. Along with two other men, he reopened an old lead mine on the farm. The mine did contain lead, but it was expensive to reopen it and they made no profit.
Audubon went back to visit his parents in France. He wanted to get his father’s permission to marry Lucy. He also met naturalist Charles-Marie D’Orbigny, who taught him the skill of taxidermy, or stuffing animals. This made it easier for Audubon to pose the birds he shot in order to draw them in lifelike positions.
Jean Audubon and a friend, Francois Rozier, got together and set up a business partnership for their two sons, John James and Ferdinand. Both boys were eager to get out of the country to avoid being drafted into the French Army. Jean managed to get passports for the boys and got them on an American ship, the Polly.
The two men sent a number of gold coins with the boys to use until they made a profit from their business. About two weeks after they left France, the Polly was overtaken by another ship, the British privateer Rattlesnake. Privateers were ships that were privately owned but were authorized by the government during wartime to attack and capture enemy vessels. The crew of the Rattlesnake took two crew members and much of the cargo, but didn’t bother the passengers. John James and Ferdinand had hidden their gold pieces inside rolls of cable on deck. The privateers did not find the gold.
Audubon worked in Philadelphia for a while for Bakewell’s brother, Benjamin. He was to learn the mercantile business, which was the business of buying and selling goods. Rozier worked for a French importing firm. Audubon also did some part-time work for Dr. Samuel Latham Mitchell, who was a leading naturalist in New York. He probably wasn’t paid for this work. Audubon mounted animal specimens and prepared bird and animal skins for a museum. He did the work in his room, and the neighbors soon became upset at the unpleasant odors. The smell became so bad that they called the constable.
Eventually Audubon got tired of working for someone else. He wrote to Rozier on May 6, 1807, that he wanted to start a store. He had decided what goods they should carry and that the store would be in Kentucky.
Audubon wasn’t the first person to decide to paint all the birds of North America. Alexander Wilson had set out to do the same thing.
Alexander Wilson was born in Paisley, Scotland. He was called Sandy as child. His mother died when he was 10. When he was 12 or 13, he worked as an apprentice for his brother-in-law, William Duncan, who was a weaver.
Wilson was more interested in writing poetry than he was in weaving. After a few year swith Duncan, Wils on became a peddler. Some of his poetry got him into trouble. He wrote a poem about how badly weaving apprentices were treated by their masters. He had to spend a short time in jail, then publicly burn the poem at the crossroads of the town.
In 1794, when he was 28, Wilson decided to leave Scotland to start a new life in America. His nephew, also named William Duncan, went with him. Duncan moved north to farm in New York State. Wilson spent years as a teacher in Pennsylvania and New Jersey.
When he moved to Gray’s Ferry, Pennsylvania, to teach, he met naturalist William Bartram, who was his neighbor. Bartram ran the Bartram Botanical Gardens and got Wilson interested in birds.
Alexander Wilson.
Dover Publications, Inc.
In the early 1800s, Wilson decided to write a book depicting all the North American birds. Hetraveled widely, observing birds and painting them. In 1805 Wilson wrote a letter to President Thomas Jefferson. He volunteered his services as naturalist on a trip to explore land in the west. Though he was not asked to make the trip, he and Jefferson later became friends.
Wilson moved to Philadelphia, where he was assistant editor of Ree’s Cyclopedi’a. The publisher, William Bradford, was impressed with his work and offered to back him in publishing thebook. American Ornithology was published in nine volumes and showed 268 species of birds. Twenty-six of these species had never been described before. He described the behavior and habitat of each bird. The set of books sold for $120, which was more than he made in a year as a teacher.
Wilson traveled far and wide, selling subscriptions for the book. It was on one of these trips that he met Audubon in Louisville. Wilson mentioned in his journal that they went shooting.
The first volume of American Ornithology came out in 1808. Wilson was working on the final volume in 1813 when he died of dysentery. His friend George Ord finished the book for him.
Wilson is remembered as the greatest American ornithologist before Audubon. Three species of birds are named for him—Wil-son’s Phalarope, Wilson’s Warbler, and Wilson’s Storm Petrel.
The two young men made the long, hard trip to Kentucky. The country they passed through was beautiful. The boat slipped between high hills and heavy forests, sometimes passing a small settlement. They slept on their coats on deck at night.
The river presented a number of hazards. The boat sometimes got stuck on a sandbar, and all the passengers had to get into the water and push in order to free it. Sometimes rocks, dirt, and trees that had fallen into the water blocked their way.
The flatboat finally made it to Louisville. The town was located on a high bluff overlooking the Ohio River. Audubon and Rozier immediately explored the town, looking for a suitable building for their business. Audubon had no head for business, and Rozier didn’t have much experience.
Even though the business wasn’t very successful, Audubon returned to Pennsylvania in 1808, determined to marry Lucy. Her father finally agreed, and the two were married on April 5 in the parlor at Fatland Ford, the Bakewells’ home.
Audubon took Lucy back with him to Louisville. He continued to tramp through the woods, drawing birds, while Rozier tended the store. Lucy gave birth to four children during their time in Kentucky. Victor Gifford was the oldest, then John Woodhouse. Two daughters died in infancy.
In 1810, Alexander Wilson came into the store while Audubon happened to be there. Wilson was trying to sell subscriptions to his book of bird pictures. Audubon wasn’t overly impressed with his artwork.
Audubon had invented a new way of drawing birds. He shot them with fine shot so they wouldn’t be torn to pieces. Then he used wires to prop them up in natural positions. He sometimes spent four 15-hour days preparing a single bird and drawing it. His birds were drawn in their natural habitat and were often in motion. Next to his pictures, the paintings of others, such as Alexander Wilson, seemed stiff.
And Audubon was a perfectionist. If he wasn’t satisfied with his paintings, he would destroy them and do them over. Early in his career, 200 of Audubon’s paintings were shredded by rats. He worked very hard redoing them.
For a while he was able to help support his family by doing black-and-white portraits for people. But by 1819, he had run out of people to draw and was thrown into jail for debt. After he got out, he tried to start a business in New Orleans, worked at a museum in Cincinnati, and lived on a plantation, where he taught drawing to the owner’s young daughter. He also spent time roaming in the woods and working on paintings for his book.
Lucy was trained as a teacher, so she taught classes for children from the Audubons’ home. Later she and the children lived on a plantation, where she taught the children of the family.
In 1824, Audubon was ready to find a publisher for his book. He went to Philadelphia, but he made enemies of some of the leading scientists at the Academy of Natural Sciences. He met Charles Lucien Bonaparte, a nephew of Napoleon. Charles was a famed French ornithologist living temporarily in the United States. He liked Audubon and was impressed with his work. He suggested he try to find a publisher in Europe.
Lucy and John James talked over the idea and decided he should try it. In 1826 he sailed from New Orleans, taking 300 drawings with him. He went to England, where he had letters of introduction to some prominent Englishmen. He traveled around the country with his hair slicked down with bear grease, wearing a fringed leather jacket. He entertained people with romantic stories of the frontier. They called him “The American Woodsman.”
An English critic said about his pictures: “In their motion and at rest, in their play and in their combats, singing, running, beating the air, skimming the waves … are real and palpable images of the new world.”
French scientist Georges Cuvier said Audu-bon’s paintings were “the greatest monument ever erected by art to nature.”
Audubon raised enough money to begin publishing his Birds of America. Robert Havell Jr., a London engraver, agreed to engrave the 435 plates. The book was issued in four volumes between 1827 and 1838. A subscription cost $1,000 and he sold more than 200 sets. He also sold oil-painted copies of some of the drawings to drum up interest in his work and bring in extra money.
In 1829, Audubon returned to the United States, where he continued to travel and draw. He convinced Lucy to move to England. He and the family now had enough money to live comfortably. In the 1930s, he traveled back and forth from England to the United States several times. During this time, he finished writing the Ornithological Biography to go with the paintings in his book.
Audubon’s book, Birds of America, did not include all the birds in North America. It included 497 of the more than 700 species that had been identified on the continent. The first plate in the book showed the wild turkey.
The book was referred to as elephant folio because the pages were so large, measuring 39.37 inches high, over 3 inches taller than a yardstick. The pictures were engraved on copper plates and the birds appeared life-size on the pages.
All the printing was paid for from subscriptions, exhibitions, and oil paintings he sold. The actual cost of printing all volumes of the book was $115,640, which today would be over $2 million.
Audubon’s illustration of a summer tanager from Birds of America.
Library of Congress LC-USZC4-722
The last volume was issued in 1838. In 1840, Audubon decided to make a smaller edition, called an octavo edition. Philadelphia printer J. T. Bowen put out this edition between 1840 and 1844. Audubon added 65 plates to this edition. It was also sold by subscription.
In 1939, the family returned to the United States for good. They bought an estate on the Hudson River in New York State. Audubon’s next project was a book on mammals, called the Viviparous Quadrupeds of North America. He wrote the book with his good friend, John Bachman, whose daughters were married to Audubon’s sons. Bach-man wrote much of the text. John Audubon did most of the drawings.
Audubon’s tombstone in Manhattan, New York City.
Library of Congress LC-DIG-ppmsca-23708
In 1848, Audubon began to show signs of old age and confusion. He died at his home on January 27, 1851.
Audubon had a great influence on both ornithology and natural history. His notes helped people to understand bird anatomy and behavior. His book is still considered a great example of book art.
Audubon was concerned about loss of bird habitat and the habit of overhunting. He was afraid some species would die out. Several birds in his book have become extinct, including the Carolina parakeet, the passenger pigeon, the Labrador Duck, and the great auk.
The National Audubon Society, begun in 1905, was named after him. George Bird Grinnel, one of the founders, chose this name because he had been tutored by Lucy and he knew Audubon had been interested in protecting birds and their habitats.
