HIDING IN PLAIN SIGHT: NEW EVIDENCE ABOUT THE BIRTH, IDENTITY, AND STRATEGIC PSEUDONYMS OF JOHN JAMES AUDUBON

Abstract

John James Audubon, the self-trained artist and naturalist, is best known for The Birds of America. Although his life has been widely studied in biographies, his birth mother and the confusing series of names assigned to him during the early decades of his life have never been satisfactorily explained, leading to many misconceptions and controversies. New documentary evidence, including an important unpublished letter, allows us in the first part of this article to connect the historical dots to firmly establish his ancestry and to counter misunderstandings about it. The documents analyzed in the second part clear up the mysteries surrounding his early identities and pseudonyms, which prove to have been both intentional and strategic, and also underline that Jeanne Rabine was his mother. In the process, the study will also illuminate elements in the large cache of Audubon's early ornithological pastels and the manuscript of his earliest autobiography held by the Ernst Mayr Library and Archives of the Museum of Comparative Zoology and Houghton Library of Harvard University.