BIRTH AND PARENTAGE 65 
In reading the published accounts of Audubon’s 
early life many have been puzzled by the absence of defi- 
nite dates, as well as by the numerous contradictions in 
which they abound. It is needless to burden this nar- 
rative with a tedious reference to all these errors or to 
attempt to trace their origin, which no doubt had many 
sources, but since we have given the first true account 
of the naturalist’s birth, we cannot pass these matters 
without a word of comment. The situation is somewhat 
involved, since we should possibly differentiate between 
what Audubon at different times believed to be true, and 
what he wished to make known to his family or to the 
public; possibly also we should discriminate between 
what he actually published over his own signature dur- 
ing his lifetime and the material which has appeared 
since his death, even though originally written by his 
own hand. 
The first definite date which Audubon ever gave con- 
cerning his own life was that of his marriage in 1808, 
when he was twenty-three years of age, and all that 
he ever published of a biographical nature is to be found 
in his Ornithological Biography.** In the introduction 
to this work he simply said that he had “received light 
and life in the New World,” and further that he returned 
to America from France, whither he had gone to receive 
the rudiments of his education, at the age of seventeen. 
Since Audubon’s first return to America was in the 
autumn of 1808, when he was actually about eighteen 
and one-half years old, this statement is not so wide of 
the mark as to imply that the date of his birth was not 
then well understood. Moreover, the record of his adop- 
tion, which was certified to at the time of his baptism in 
1800, was carefully preserved among the family docu- 
* Vol. i, p. v; see Bibliography, No. 2. 
