By Bartee Haile

A resolution was introduced in the senate of the Lone Star Republic on May 25, 1837 to make a world famous naturalist and wildlife painter an “honorary Texan.”

John James Audubon was born Jean Rabin on a Caribbean island in 1785 to parents from two very different worlds. His father was a rich French seafarer, merchant, planter and slave trader, while his mother was a Creole servant who died less than a year after giving birth. 

As an adult Audubon tried to divert attention from his embarrassing beginning with the silly suggestion that he was the missing son, the “Lost Dauphin,” of King Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette. He repeatedly referred to his “noble birth” and “my great secret” claiming he was actually an “aristocrat” who looked like his “real, not my adopted father.”

In truth Audubon had no reason to complain. Rather than leave his illegitimate son behind on Santo Domingo, his father took him home to a childless wife who raised the boy as her own.

Audubon’s doting mother let him do whatever he pleased. He learned to ride, shoot, dance and to play three musical instruments but could barely read or write. His youth was spent outdoors drawing birds, collecting nests and seeing “nature through his own eyes instead of through the spectacle of books.” 

The elder Audubon did not want his offspring to fight Napoleon’s wars, so in 1803 he sent him to America. After living five years on land his father owned outside Philadelphia, the idle immigrant married a neighbor’s daughter named Lucy.

The couple went west to Kentucky, where the husband’s lackadaisical attempts to bring home the bacon always ended in failure. Audubon hit rock bottom in 1819, when his debts landed him in jail. Moving to Cincinnati for a fresh start, he worked for awhile as a taxidermist, portrait painter and art teacher.

Then in 1820 at the age of 35, Audubon had his Great Idea. He would draw every bird in the United States! His subjects would be life-size with their natural habitat as the background. He did not have a clue what he would do with the finished product, but that did not matter.

While Audubon was away, which was most of the time, long-suffering Lucy supported herself and their two sons by teaching school. She even saved enough to pay for her absentee spouse’s trip to England in 1826 to find a publisher for the 240 watercolors of his feathered friends. 

“The American Woodsman” with his frontier costume and shoulder-length hair was an instant sensation in London. He met every person of importance, including Czar Nicholas I of Russia, who gave him an expensive diamond ring. He was no less a hit in Paris, where future monarch Louis Philippe contacted the Austrian emperor and the king of Sweden on his behalf. 

A Scottish engraver agreed to publish “The Birds of America,” and the ground-breaking work sold like hot cakes on both sides of the Atlantic. By 1830 the artist was well-known and wealthy. 

When the Seminole War forced Audubon to postpone a trip to Florida in late 1836, he hitched a ride to the Texas coast on a revenue cutter. On April 25, 1837, the Campbell announced its arrival in Galveston Bay with a blast from its biggest gun, and secretary of the navy S. Rhodes Fisher welcomed the distinguished guest to the Lone Star Republic.

Audubon and son John spent two weeks exploring Galveston Island and gathering specimens for his next project, “The Viviparous Quadrupeds of North America.” On a side trip to an army garrison, the naturalist was shocked by the squalid living conditions of the Texas soldiers and their Mexican prisoners of war. 

Following a leisurely 10-day cruise, the Campbell reached the capital city of Houston on May 18. Spring rains had flooded the town and surrounding countryside, and the visitors waded through ankle-deep water on the long walk to the presidential “mansion” – a two-room log house.

Sam Houston was not home, so the Audubon party wandered the muddy streets of the new capital, which was still a work in progress. They bumped into the Hero of San Jacinto dressed in “a fancy velvet coat with trousers trimmed in broad gold lace,” and he invited them back to his place for a drink.

A few days after Audubon’s departure, Senator S.H. Everitt offered a resolution to make the “celebrated ornithologist” an honorary Texan. The paperwork was sent on to the committee on foreign relations, where it gathered dust instead of support.

John Audubon came back to Texas in 1845. Accompanied by Ranger Capt. John Coffee Hays, “a man not afraid to go to Hell by himself,” he scoured the Hill Country for more four-footed creatures. His invalid father, whose traveling days were over, was particularly pleased with his son’s sketches of cougars.

The “Houston Press” and “Houstonia” magazine recently interviewed Bartee about his new book “Texas Boomtowns: A History of Blood and Oil.” You can read both on his website barteehaile.com.