JEAN AUDUBON AND HIS FAMILY 25 
was Captain Jean Audubon, who was later to become 
the father of America’s pioneer woodsman, ornitholo- 
gist and animal painter. 
By birth a Vendean, at the age of thirty-seven Jean 
Audubon had plowed the seas of half the world, and 
in the course of his checkered career, as sailor, soldier, 
,West Indian planter and merchant, had met enough 
adventure to furnish the materials for a whole series of 
dime novels. Short of stature, with auburn hair and a 
fiery temper, he was then as stubborn and fearless an 
opponent as one could meet on the high seas, and one 
of the gamest fighting cocks of the French merchant 
marine. How much Jean Audubon’s son owed to his 
French creole mother will never be known, but to this 
self-taught, thoroughly capable, and enterprising sailor 
we can surely trace his restless activity, his versatile 
mind and mercurial temper, as well as an inherent ca- 
pacity for taking pains, which father and son possessed 
to a marked degree. 
The true story of Jean Audubon’s career has never 
been told, but even at this late day it will be found an 
interesting human document; and what is more to our 
purpose, it throws into sharp outline much that has 
hitherto remained obscure in the life of his remarkable 
son. The first Audubon to leave any imprint, how- 
ever faint, upon the history of his time, this honest, 
matter-of-fact sailor, would have been the last to wish 
to appear in the garb of fiction, and we shall base our 
story solely upon the unimpeachable testimony of public 
and private records, which researches in France had 
happily brought to light before the beginning of the 
war in 1914.” 
2¥For notice of these records of Jean Audubon and his family, see the 
Preface, and for the most important dccuments, Appendix I. 
