BIRTH AND PARENTAGE 59 



Audubon not only cherished the two children but made 

 them his heirs. On March 7, 1793, Fougere at the age 

 of eight and Muguet at six were legalized by a regular 

 act of adoption in the presence of witnesses at Nantes 

 as the children of Jean and Anne Moynet Audubon. 

 This step was taken at the very moment when the 

 storm had burst over La Vendee, when the fate of 

 Nantes was trembling in the balance and the life of her 

 citizens was most insecure. The act of adoption reads : 



Extract from the registers of births of the sections of La Halle 

 and Jean Jacques of the commune of Nantes, department 

 of the Loire inferieure, on the seventh of March, 17 '4-9 ', the 

 second year of the Republic, one and indivisible, at ten 

 o'clock in the morning. 



Before us, Joseph Theulier, public officer, elected to deter- 

 mine the public status of citizens, have appeared in the town 

 hall, Jean Audubon, commanding the war sloop Cerberus, ves- 

 sel of the Republic, aged forty-nine years, native of Les Sables 

 d'Olonne, department of La Vendee, and Anne Moinet his wife, 

 aged fifty-eight years, native of the former parish of Saint- 

 Leonard, of this commune, who, assisted by Rene Toussaint 

 Julien Beuscher, manufacturer, aged twenty-five years, living 

 in the section of La Halle, Rubens Street, and by Julien Pierre 

 Beuscher, marine surgeon, aged twenty-four years, living in 

 the section of La Fraternite, Marchix Street, and employed 

 steadily in the said war sloop Cerberus, have declared before me 

 that they do adopt and recognize from this moment as their 

 lawful children, to wit : 



A male child named Fougere, born since their marriage, which 

 took place on the twenty-fourth of August, 1772, in the com- 

 mune of Paimboeuf, in this department, to him, Jean Audubon, 

 and a woman living in America, who has been dead about eight 

 years, and a female child, named Muguet, born also since the 



9 For the original text of this act, here given in translation, see 

 Appendix I, Document No. 2. 



