60 AUDUBON, THE NATURALIST 



marriage aforesaid, to him and another woman living in Amer- 

 ica, named Catharine Bouffard, of whose fate he is ignorant. 

 The two children being present, the first aged nine years, 

 that will expire on the 22d of next April, the second aged 

 seven years, that will also expire on the 26th of April next, and 

 both having been born in America, according to this declara- 

 tion that the witnesses above mentioned have signified as true, 

 I have drawn up the present act, which the natural father and 

 the mother by adoption, as well as their witnesses have signed, 

 together with myself in this said day and year. 



It will be noticed that in this legally attested docu- 

 ment, Bouffard, the true name of Muguet's mother, is 

 given, while the name of the mother of Audubon is sup- 

 pressed. It might therefore be inferred that the name 

 Rabin, which appears later, was assumed, but as already 

 remarked, such evidence is not conclusive. 



Fougere, who was also called Jean Rabin, was bap- 

 tized on October 23, 1800, by a priest of the church of 

 Saint-Similien at Nantes. The archives of this church 

 for the period in question have disappeared, but Jean 

 Audubon's copy of the record has survived, and reads 

 as follows: 10 



The Act of Baptism of Jean Audubon-Rabin 

 October 23, 1800 

 We, the undersigned, certify to have baptized on this day 

 Jean Jacques Fougere Audubon, adoptive son of Jean Audu- 



10 Research at Nantes in 1915 revealed that the baptismal records of 

 the parish of Saint-Similien were wanting for the period from 1792 to 

 1803, so it is probable that they were destroyed in the Revolution. The 

 municipal archives of Nantes possess a book of baptismal records of the 

 city without distinction of parishes, but this shows the names of neither 

 "Fougere," "Rabin," nor "Audubon," for the year in question. 



The Abbe Tardiveau was un prtitre assermente, or one of those priests 

 who had sworn in 1790 to recognize the civil constitution of the clergy. 



For copy of the act of baptism in the French original, see Appendix 

 I, Document No. 3. It is impossible to say whether the heading as 

 given in my copy of this act was in the original or not. 



