LAURENCE BUTLER, who has contributed excellent commentary to this site from time to time, married earlier this year. He and his wife, Maria, are birders, and they received as a wedding gift a copy of John J. Audubon’s journals, published in 1897. At his blog, Butlers Birds and Things, which features stunning photography, Laurence is writing about Audubon’s personal history every other week (additional entries are here, here, here and here.) If you are new to Audubon’s fascinating story, this is a good place to become acquainted with it. In his first entry, Laurence wrote:

John J. Audubon’s life began rather inauspiciously, on an unknown day, in an unknown year, on the French island of Santo Domingo (modern Dominican Republic). Audubon’s mother was killed in a slave insurrection soon after his birth, and his father resettled in Nantes, France, were he remarried. With little knowledge of his early childhood, and none about his birth, Audubon’s journals actually begin with a description of his father’s: “John Audubon, my grandfather, was born and lived at the small village of Sable d’Olhonne, and was by trade a very humble fisherman. He appears to have made up for that want of wealth by the number of his children, twenty-one of whom he raised to man and womanhood…When my father had reached the age of twelve years, his father presented him with a coarse shirt, a stick, his blessing, and urged him to go and seek means for his future support…Some kind whaler or cod-fisherman took him on board as a “Boy”.”

Audubon’s father slowly grew in strength and skill. He achieved his own command of a fishing vessel at twenty-one, and owned several small crafts by twenty-eight, with which he sailed to the Caribbean, where he plied his trade until he could buy a small estate. Within ten years, John Woodhouse Audubon was called to serve in the French navy, and he worked for both Rochambeau and Lafayette during the American Revolution, “The war between England and her child of the West.”

By his own account, Audubon took after his father, both in appearance and disposition: “My father and I were of the same height and stature, say about five feet ten inches, erect, and with muscles of steel; his manners were those of a most polished gentleman, for those and his natural understanding had been carefully improved both by observation and self-education. In temper we much resembled each other also, being warm, irascible, and at times violent; but it was like the blast of a hurricane, dreadful for a time, then calm almost instantly returned.”

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