JOHN JAMES AUDUBON 3 

 beauty. The couple seem to have occu- 

 pied for a time a plantation belonging to 

 a French Marquis, situated at Mande- 

 ville on the North shore of Lake Pont- 

 chartrain. Here three sons were born 

 to them, of whom John James La Forest 

 was the third. The daughter seems to 

 have been younger. 



His own mother perished in a slave 

 insurrection in St. Domingo, where the 

 family had gone to live on the Audubon 

 estate at Aux Cayes, when her child was 

 but a few months old. Audubon says 

 that his father with his plate and money 

 and himself, attended by a few faithful 

 servants, escaped to New Orleans. What 

 became of his sister he does not say, 

 though she must have escaped with 

 them, since we hear of her existence 

 years later. Not long after, how long we 

 do not know, the father returned to 

 France, where he married a second time, 

 giving the son, as he himself says, the 

 only mother he ever knew. This woman 



