John James Audubon

John James Audubon was born in the French colony of Santo Domingo (now Haiti) to a father who owned a sugar plantation and a mother who was an enslaved woman of African descent. His paternity has been the subject of various theories, with one biography suggesting he was the illegitimate son of Jean Audubon, a creole naval officer and friend of Lafayette and George Washington, and Jeanne Rabin, an African-Caribbean slave. Another version identifies his father as Audubon and a wealthy woman from Louisiana. Audubon’s mother died shortly after his birth, and his father recognized him, adopting him and taking him to France. He lived with his stepmother there from 1791 to 1803. During his time in France, he studied painting at the workshop of Jacques-Louis David. Later, to escape conscription into Napoleon’s army, Audubon emigrated to the United States with a false passport aboard a Quaker ship. Once in the United States, he renounced his French citizenship and became an American citizen, dedicating himself to the study of ornithology and bird painting. Audubon became one of the most important naturalists of his time. However, in the following century, a conspiracy theory emerged identifying him as Louis XVII of France, the son of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, suggesting he had survived the death of the heir apparent in 1795. This theory was based on a mysterious letter Audubon wrote to his wife during a visit to France in 1828, in which he described himself as a man who, though walking the streets as an ordinary person, “should command everything.” Despite this, Audubon never claimed to be the Dauphin, and the theory was never substantiated.