LIFE AT "MILL GROVE" 99 



Audubon's introduction to the country of his adoption 

 proved most inauspicious, for, to follow his account, 

 when walking to Greenwich in Connecticut, some thirty 

 miles from New York, to cash the letter of credit that 

 his father had given him, he was seized with the yellow 

 fever. 2 Fortunately at this critical moment his captain 

 came to his aid, and placed him in the care of two Quaker 

 ladies who kept a boarding house at Morristown in New 

 Jersey. To the faithful ministrations of these kindly 

 sisters the naturalist believed that he owed his life. 



When Jean Audubon finally left the United States 

 not far from the beginning of 1790, he placed his busi- 

 ness interests in America in charge of an agent, named 

 Miers Fisher, "a rich and honest Quaker of Philadel- 



was my father's wish), brought up in France in easy circumstances;" 

 but in the same journal he said that he did not reach Philadelphia until 

 three months after landing, and that "shortly after" his arrival at "Mill 

 Grove" the Bakewell family moved to "Fatland Ford." Mr. G. W. Bake- 

 well, the historian of his family, states that in the spring of 1804, William 

 Bakewell, Audubon's future father-in-law, with his son, Thomas, traveled 

 through Pennsylvania, Virginia and Maryland in search of a farm; they 

 purchased "Fatland Ford," which was then the property of James Vaux. 

 Audubon's account of the Pewee (Ornithological Biography, vol. ii, p. 124) 

 shows that he was at "Mill Grove" before April 10, when "the ground 

 was still partially covered with snow, and the air retained the piercing 

 chill of winter." If these various statements are correct, they would indi- 

 cate that Audubon left Nantes about the middle of November, 1803, 

 and that he finally reached "Mill Grove" not far from the end of 

 March, 1804. On the other hand, Mr. W. H. Wetherill, the present 

 owner of "Mill Grove," informs me that his records indicate that the 

 Bakewells occupied "Fatland Ford" in January, 1804. If this were the 

 case, young Audubon could not have left France later than August, 

 1803. Too much weight, however, should not be attached to such references 

 of a biographical character in Audubon's own writings; for in the account 

 referred to above Audubon said that after his first visit to the United 

 States he remained two years in France and returned to America "early 

 in August;" while we know that his sojourn in France lasted but little 

 more than a year and that he landed in New York on the 28th of May. 

 2 A plague of genuine yellow fever had visited New York in 1795, 

 but in 1804 and 1805 the city suffered from a malignant fever of another 

 type, and to such an extent that 27,000 persons, or one-third of the 

 entire population, are said to have fled to escape the pestilence. This 

 was possibly the malady which seized young Audubon not far from the 

 beginning of the former year. 



