AUDUBON 



THE village of Mandcville in the parish of St. Tam- 

 many, Louisiana, is about twenty miles from New 

 Orleans on the north shore of Lake Ponchartrain. Here, 

 on the plantation of the same name, owned by the Mar- 

 quis de Mandeville de Marigny, John James Laforest 

 Audubon^ was born, the Marquis having lent his home, 

 in the generous southern fashion, to his friend Admiral 

 Jean Audubon, who, with his Spanish Creole wife, lived 

 here some months. In the same house, towards the close 

 of the last century, Louis Philippe found refuge for a 

 time with the ever hospitable Marigny family, and he 

 named the beautiful plantation home " Fontainebleau." 

 Since then changes innumerable have come, the estate has 

 other owners, the house has gone, those who once dwelt 

 there are long dead, their descendants scattered, the old 

 landmarks obliterated. 



Audubon has given a sketch of his father in his own 

 words in " Myself," which appears in the pages following; 

 but of his mother little indeed is known. Only within the 

 year, have papers come into the hands of her great-grand- 

 children, which prove her surname to have been Rabin. 

 Audubon himself tells of her tragic death, which was not, 

 however, in the St. Domingo insurrection of 1793, but in 

 one of the local uprisings of the slaves which were of 



^ " My name is John James Laforest Audubon. The name Laforest I 

 never sign except when writing to my wife, and she is the only being, since 

 my father's death, who calls me by it." (Letter of Audubon to Mrs. Rath- 

 bone, 1827.) All Mrs. Audubon's letters to her husband address him as 

 Laforest. 



