John James AUDUBON Biography
JOHN JAMES AUDUBON
1785-1851
John James Audubon, America’s most famous naturalist, was born in Les Cayes, Santo Domingo (now Haiti), on April 26, 1785.  His father was a French sea captain, Jean Audubon, and his mother, Jeanne Rabine, was a servant.  After his mother died, his father brought him to his home in Coueron, France, a small town near Nantes, where he was raised by his father and step-mother.  He was given a formal education; however, his passion was exploring and drawing birds and their nests.  In 1803 he was sent to the United States to avoid Napoleon’s draft and to run a farm in Mill Grove near Philadelphia that his father had purchased in 1789.

As a naturalist, his interests were traveling, collecting, and drawing interesting specimens, not in running the farm.  He, therefore, lost the farm.  While in Mill Grove, he met and befriended Lucy Bakewell, who he married in 1808.  Audubon knew great financial hardship as his interests were not marketable.  The family eventually settled in New Orleans after living in Kentucky, and Audubon found he could make some money drawing portraits and as a taxidermist.  He met Alexander Wilson in 1810 and a decade later Audubon developed the idea of publishing his drawings as engravings.