John James Audubon (born Jean-Jacques Rabin; April 26, 1785 – January 27, 1851) was an American ornithologist, naturalist, and painter.
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.
In 1791, he arranged for his natural children, Jean and Muguet, who were majority-white in ancestry, to be transported and delivered to him in France. 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 his natural children to regularize their legal status in France.
When Audubon, at age 18, boarded ship in 1803 to immigrate to the United States, he changed his name to an anglicized form: John James Audubon. From his earliest days, Audubon had an affinity for birds.
He was cheerfully back on solid ground and exploring the fields again, focusing on birds. ==Immigration to the United States== In 1803, his father obtained a false passport so that Audubon could go to the United States to avoid conscription in the Napoleonic Wars.
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.
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.
John James Audubon (born Jean-Jacques Rabin; April 26, 1785 – January 27, 1851) was an American ornithologist, naturalist, and painter.
Another 1887 biographer has stated that his mother was a lady from a Louisiana plantation.
All text is taken from Wikipedia. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License .
Page generated on 2021-08-05