Audubon the Naturalist: A History of His Life and Time. Vol. 1 (of 2)

In Short

Francis Hobart Herrick’s biography reconstructs the obscure early life and scientific triumphs of John James Audubon. Drawing on forgotten archives in France, England, and America, Herrick traces Audubon from his obscure birth in Santo Domingo and turbulent boyhood in revolutionary France to his frontier business failures in Kentucky. Driven by an obsessive passion for field ornithology, Audubon forsakes conventional commerce to paint every bird on the continent to the exact size of life. The narrative follows his grueling journey across the American backwoods and his triumphant reception in European scientific circles, showing how an untrained woodsman built The Birds of America through immense personal sacrifice, artistic genius, and unfaltering determination.

The Story

Francis Hobart Herrick sets out to dissolve the myths surrounding John James Audubon by anchoring the naturalist’s life in rigorous documentary history. The narrative opens with the complex Caribbean and European background of Audubon’s father, Jean Audubon, a French naval officer and planter in Santo Domingo. The naturalist is born there out of wedlock, raised through the violent slave uprisings on the island, and brought to France as a child. In Nantes, young Audubon witnesses the bloody horrors of the French Revolution, including Jean-Baptiste Carrier's Reign of Terror, where thousands perish by execution and disease.

To escape the conscription officers of Napoleon, young Audubon is sent by his father to America in 1803 to oversee an estate called Mill Grove near Philadelphia. There, amidst the woods of Pennsylvania, his passion for natural history takes hold. He meets and marries Lucy Bakewell, a woman whose steadfast devotion becomes the essential foundation of his life's work. Partnering with Ferdinand Rozier, Audubon moves west to launch a mercantile business on the Kentucky frontier.

Yet commerce repeatedly fails him. While Rozier attends to ledger books, Audubon wanders through the forests of Kentucky and Pennsylvania, chasing rare warblers, observing animal habits, and sketching specimens. Commercial ventures in Louisville, Henderson, and Steubenville collapse under bad investments, general economic depression, and Audubon’s total indifference to trade. Bankrupt and briefly imprisoned for debt, he relies on his versatile talents to survive—painting portraits, decorating riverboat panels, painting street signs, and giving dancing lessons to plantation families along the Mississippi.

Undeterred by financial ruin, Audubon turns his true devotion into a singular lifelong mission: to illustrate all the birds of North America in life-size drawings. Accompanied by his young assistant Joseph Mason, he travels down the Ohio and Mississippi rivers on flatboats and keelboats, enduring extreme poverty while continuously observing, collecting, and painting. When American scientific institutions in Philadelphia reject his unconventional, dynamic depictions of birds in favor of Alexander Wilson's established works, Audubon resolves to seek his fortune in Europe.

Arriving in Liverpool in 1826 as an unknown American woodsman carrying a portfolio of oversized drawings, he captivates the British public and scientific elite. In Edinburgh and London, figures like William Home Lizars begin engraving his massive copper plates for The Birds of America. Herrick detail-tracks Audubon’s immense labor—raising subscriptions at staggering prices, overseeing engravers, and continuously painting new canvases to fund the project. Volume 1 closes with Audubon firmly established in European intellectual society, his revolutionary vision realized through sheer force of will, preparing further expeditions back to the American wilderness.

How It Unfolds

Out of the revolutionary tempest The story opens amidst the wealth and brutality of colonial Santo Domingo and the subsequent horrors of revolutionary Nantes. A young Audubon grows up under the shadow of violence, escaping conscription when his father sends him across the Atlantic to Pennsylvania.

Life and love at Mill Grove Settling at the family property outside Philadelphia, Audubon learns English, immerses himself in the surrounding forests, and woos his neighbor, Lucy Bakewell. Their union forms the steady emotional anchor of his turbulent career.

Failure on the Western frontier Audubon enters a commercial partnership with Ferdinand Rozier, traveling across the mountains to establish pioneer stores in Kentucky. The business falters repeatedly as Audubon spends his days roaming the wilderness after birds rather than managing the shop.

Poverty and the birth of a mission Stripped of his property and jailed for debt, Audubon turns entirely to his artistic talents to feed his family. He sets out along the Mississippi River, living hand-to-mouth while systematically building a massive collection of life-sized bird illustrations.

Rejection in the East Seeking publishers and financial patrons in Philadelphia and New York, Audubon encounters bitter academic rivalry and institutional resistance. Realizing he cannot secure support in America, he gathers his drawings and embarks on a ship for England.

Triumph in the Old World Landing in Liverpool as an obscure backwoodsman, Audubon instantly captivates European society with his dramatic, life-sized art. He secures aristocratic subscribers, secures skilled engravers in Edinburgh, and begins the monumental publication of The Birds of America.

The People

• John James Audubon: A passionate, charismatic, and endlessly resilient naturalist-artist. He desires to observe, draw, and publish every bird species in North America to the exact scale of life. Thwarted by financial ruin, bankruptcy, academic hostility, and physical hardship, he matures from a irresponsible pioneer storekeeper into a world-renowned scientist and artist.
• Lucy Bakewell Audubon: Audubon's fiercely loyal wife. She desires stability for her family and the ultimate realization of her husband’s artistic genius. Facing years of isolation and financial poverty, she works as a schoolteacher and governess on Southern plantations to support their children and fund Audubon's journeys to Europe.
• Jean Audubon: Audubon’s father, a resilient French naval officer, planter, and slaveholder. He seeks to secure a respectable future for his illegitimate son amidst political turmoil, purchasing the Mill Grove estate in Pennsylvania to shelter the boy from Napoleonic conscription.
• Ferdinand Rozier: Audubon’s pragmatic French business partner. He wants to build a profitable merchant career on the American frontier. Constantly frustrated by Audubon’s lack of business discipline, he eventually parts ways with him amicably to pursue a successful commercial enterprise of his own.
• Alexander Wilson: The pioneer of American ornithology whose legacy stands in competition with Audubon. His supporters in Philadelphia actively oppose Audubon to protect Wilson's posthumous reputation and publishing market.

In Its Own Voice

"Subject to an enervating climate, which Europeans with their intemperate habits could seldom endure for long, the planter, though weak and sick himself, was often obliged to be overseer, driver, apothecary, and nurse to his negroes, the slave of his slaves."

— Context: Herrick describes the harsh, grueling realities faced by planters like Audubon's father on the sugar plantations of Santo Domingo.

"He would seldom hesitate to swerve from his course to study his favorites, and has related how on one occasion, when driving before him several horses laden with merchandise and dollars, he quite lost sight of the pack saddles and the cash they bore, in watching the motions of a warbler."

— Context: Herrick illustrates Audubon's complete inability to prioritize commercial trade over his obsession with wild birds.

"In less than a week is invited to exhibit his drawings at the Royal Institution, and is at once proclaimed as a great American genius."

— Context: Herrick outlines Audubon's sudden, dramatic transition from an unknown frontier painter to a celebrated figure upon his arrival in Liverpool.

What It's Really About

Beneath the narrative of scientific achievement, Herrick’s biography explores the conflict between commercial necessity and creative devotion. It examines how a person born without a clear status or formal training overcomes institutional barriers through sheer persistence. The book investigates the transformation of the American wilderness from an unmapped frontier into an object of intense scientific study, recording the species that inhabited it before industrial expansion altered their habitats.

Herrick also probes the nature of historical truth. By unearthing original French baptismal records, legal documents, and private correspondence, the narrative dismantles the romantic myths and false genealogies created by previous biographers and by Audubon himself. Ultimately, it is a study in resilience—showing how artistic obsession, sustained by the quiet sacrifices of a family, can turn repeated personal and financial failures into a monumental contribution to human culture.

Why Read It Today

Francis Hobart Herrick’s biography remains an exceptional historical study for readers interested in natural history, early American frontier life, and the reality of artistic creation. Herrick writes with precise scholarly rigor, entirely free from romantic exaggeration or legendary fluff. Reading this book feels like examining a meticulously restored portrait: the prose is measured, detailed, and deeply grounded in archival evidence.

What lingers with the reader is the stark contrast between Audubon’s personal hardships and the monumental scale of his visual achievements. Herrick does not shield the reader from the darker or more difficult aspects of the period—including the brutal realities of chattel slavery in Santo Domingo, the mob violence of the French Revolution, or the casual exploitation of natural resources on the American frontier. Furthermore, modern readers must navigate archaic spelling variations in quoted historical letters and detailed legal examinations of real estate transactions. Yet these documentation choices give the biography its enduring authority, offering an authentic, unvarnished look at a flawed man whose obsessive love for the natural world reshaped how we see it.