John James Audubon

His mother was a Breton chambermaid named Jeanne Rabine and his father a French naval officer, and he was born on a sugar colony where the two of them had no business being together. Jeanne died within months. The boy went to France, and in 1803, at 18, his father put him aboard a ship for America on a false passport to keep him out of Napoleon's army. He caught yellow fever in New York and was nursed by Quaker women who taught him English. He met Lucy Bakewell at Mill Grove, married her in 1808, and took her to Kentucky the next day. The store failed in the Panic of 1819, and he went bankrupt and to jail for debt, and drew deathbed portraits of country people to eat.

In 1826 he sailed for Liverpool with 300 drawings and a plan no American had money for. Britain gave him subscribers. The first ten plates, engraved by W. H. Lizars, were not good enough, so Robert Havell Jr. took the work over and carried it to the end: 435 hand-colored, life-size plates covering 497 species, printed on double elephant sheets 39 by 26 inches, issued in parts from 1827 to 1838. It cost about 115,640 dollars, paid for by advance subscriptions, exhibitions, oil commissions and the skins of animals he shot and sold. He killed his subjects with fine shot and wired them into living postures instead of stuffing them stiff, spending up to four 15-hour days on an eagle. The five volumes of Ornithological Biography, written with the Scottish ornithologist William MacGillivray, carried the text.

The record is full of holes he dug himself. The story that made him America's first bird bander — silver threads on five phoebe nestlings at Mill Grove in 1804, two recovered the next spring — cannot be true: dated drawings put him in France that spring, and modern banders recover about 1.5 percent of nestlings, not 40. The Bird of Washington, the eagle plate that announced him in England as the discoverer of a new species, has never been matched to a specimen, and a 2020 study calls it plagiarism and fraud. The Academy of Natural Sciences rejected his membership on August 31, 1824, amid accusations of misconduct from Alexander Lawson and others. His family owned enslaved people at Henderson and sold them when money ran short. He sold human skulls to Samuel George Morton, some robbed from graves.

He showed signs of senility from 1848 and died at the family house in northern Manhattan on January 27, 1851. He lies in the graveyard of the Church of the Intercession at 155th Street and Broadway. Lucy sold his 435 preparatory watercolors to the New-York Historical Society. In 1905 a bird protection movement took his name, and the name is now the argument. Seattle, Chicago, Portland and New York chapters dropped it after 2022, and more than two dozen regional societies had renamed by 2025, while the national board voted in 2023 to keep it. The plates are not in dispute. Almost nothing else about him is settled.

John James Audubon's life against the full span of the corpus.

• The Birds of America book
  Issued in parts from 1827 — 435 plates on double elephant paper 1838
• Bird of Washington, Plate 11 artwork
  His claimed first discovery — no specimen has ever been found 1827
• Ornithological Biography book
  Five volumes of text, written with William MacGillivray 1839
• The Viviparous Quadrupeds of North America book
  With John Bachman — his sons finished it after he died 1849
• The preparatory watercolors artwork
  Lucy sold all 435 to the New-York Historical Society 1838

• April 26, 1785 aged 0 Born at Les Cayes to a French officer and his mistress His mother, Jeanne Rabine, died within months.
• 1803 aged ~18 Sails for America at 18 on a false passport His father wanted him out of reach of Napoleonic conscription.
• 1808 aged ~23 Marries Lucy Bakewell at Fatland Ford and leaves for Kentucky They went west the day after the wedding.
• 1819 aged ~34 Goes bankrupt in the Panic and is jailed for debt He lived afterward on deathbed portraits drawn for country families.
• August 31, 1824 aged 39 The Academy of Natural Sciences votes down his membership Alexander Lawson and others were accusing him of misconduct.
• 1826 aged ~41 Sails from New Orleans to Liverpool with 300 drawings England took him up as the American woodsman.
• 1838 aged ~53 The Birds of America is finished at 435 plates
• 1839 aged ~54 Completes Ornithological Biography with William MacGillivray Printed separately to dodge the British copyright deposit rules.
• January 27, 1851 aged 65 Dies at his home in northern Manhattan

• Meriwether Lewis 1774–1809
  Co-leader of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, which mapped the American West to the Pacific Ocean. preceded him in the field
• John Muir 1838–1914
  Naturalist and organizer whose advocacy helped create national parks and the modern wilderness movement. inherited the argument
• Theodore Roosevelt 1858–1919
  26th President known for progressive reforms, conservation efforts, and assertive foreign policy. named the movement after him
• Rachel Carson 1907–1964
  Marine biologist whose book Silent Spring launched the modern environmental movement. later Audubon Society campaigner
• Aldo Leopold 1887–1948
  Ecologist whose “land ethic” became foundational to modern environmental thought. wrote the ethic he lacked
• Marjory Stoneman Douglas 1890–1998
  Writer and activist whose advocacy was central to preserving the Florida Everglades as a national ecological treasure. later bird advocate