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 Vendée, 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 inférieure, on the seventh of March, 1749, 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 Vendée, and Anne Moinet his wife, 
aged fifty-eight years, native of the former parish of Saint- 
Leonard, of this commune, who, assisted by René 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 Fraternité, 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 Fougére, born since their marriage, which 
took place on the twenty-fourth of August, 1772, in the com- 
mune of Paimbeuf, 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 
®For the original text of this act, here given in translation, see 
Appendix I, Document No. 2. 
