Tuesday, May 24, 2011

Subcrib* (for Subscrib*)

While John James Audubon was out gazing at the birds, his other babies, each in their turn, may have been lying beneath the gauze in this little crib down below the Mason-Dixon Line. Sadly, his two daughters, Lucy and Rose, both died in childhood, but his two sons survived. One of them, John Woodhouse Audubon, became a naturalist and writer like his father. After moving to Louisiana in the 1820s, Audubon's wife, Lucy, became the main breadwinner, teaching young children out of their home. The covering that drapes this crib was apparently meant to keep out the bugs in muggy Missouri, Kentucky, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, and Louisiana, where Audubon and his various partners traveled in search of ever more ornithogical specimens. We searched OhioLINK and WorldCat for today's typo and found eight specimens in the former and 104 in the latter.

(The Oakley Plantation children's room at Audubon State Historic Site near St. Francisville, Louisiana, from Wikimedia Commons.)

Carol Reid

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