BIRTH AND PARENTAGE 65 



In reading the published accounts of Audubon's 

 early life many have been puzzled by the absence of defi- 

 nite dates, as well as by the numerous contradictions in 

 which they abound. It is needless to burden this nar- 

 rative with a tedious reference to all these errors or to 

 attempt to trace their origin, which no doubt had many 

 sources, but since we have given the first true account 

 of the naturalist's birth, we cannot pass these matters 

 without a word of comment. The situation is somewhat 

 involved, since we should possibly differentiate between 

 what Audubon at different times believed to be true, and 

 what he wished to make known to his family or to the 

 public; possibly also we should discriminate between 

 what he actually published over his own signature dur- 

 ing his lifetime and the material which has appeared 

 since his death, even though originally written by his 

 own hand. 



The first definite date which Audubon ever gave con- 

 cerning his own life was that of his marriage in 1808, 

 when he was twenty-three years of age, and all that 

 he ever published of a biographical nature is to be found 

 in his Ornithological Biography. 18 In the introduction 

 to this work he simply said that he had "received light 

 and life in the New World," and further that he returned 

 to America from France, whither he had gone to receive 

 the rudiments of his education, at the age of seventeen. 

 Since Audubon's first return to America was in the 

 autumn of 1803, when he was actually about eighteen 

 and one-half years old, this statement is not so wide of 

 the mark as to imply that the date of his birth was not 

 then well understood. Moreover, the record of his adop- 

 tion, which was certified to at the time of his baptism in 

 1800, was carefully preserved among the family docu- 



3 Vol. i, p. v; see Bibliography, No. 2. 



