FOREWORD AND POSTSCRIPT lxxix 



Audubon's mother; to her parents, in whom were united the 

 Rabin and Fougere families; and to Belony Fougere, the re- 

 puted brother of Jean Jacques Fougere Audubon, I give on the 

 authority of Judge Fougere, who considers himself a great- 

 grandnephew of Audubon in direct descent from Belony Fou- 

 gere. His knowledge of his family history comes from his 

 grandfather, Oxylus Fougere, who died at Les Cayes in 1908, 

 at the age of eighty-five, and who had often spoken of his 

 famous uncle who had lived in the United States, referring, of 

 course, to J. J. F. Audubon. If the naturalist was correct in 

 speaking of having had two (or three) older brothers, he was 

 mistaken in thinking that all of them had been "killed in the 

 wars," for Belony survived, and his descendants are living at 

 Les Cayes to-day. 



Audubon's mother, according to this account, came from 

 two well-known land-owning families, the Rabins and the 

 Fougeres, who held estates respectively in the northern and 

 southern parts of what is now the Haitian Republic. These 

 tracts, according to Judge Fougere, still bear these family 

 names, in accord with the French custom of naming sections 

 of the public domain after the principal land-owners, and are 

 so marked on the maps to-day. Judge Fougere, who has kindly 

 investigated this matter for me, found that in S. Rouzier's 

 Geographical and Administrative Guide Book of Haiti the 

 Rabin division in the north is situated in the fourth rural 

 section of the Commune of Port-de-Paix, and the Fougere divi- 

 sion in the district of Miragoane in the southern part of the 

 country. 



The father of Mademoiselle Rabin is said to have objected 

 so strenuously to his daughter's consorting with Captain Jean 

 Audubon, a married man, that she insisted on having her chil- 

 dren by him bear the patronym, not of her irate father, but 

 of her mother, who was presumably more complacent. Perhaps 

 Audubon's early dislike of the Rabin name may be traced to 

 this opposition expressed by his mother, but this is purely 

 speculative. 



