On July 1, 1821, while living and working in St. Francisville, Louisiana. John James Audubon discovered what he claimed was a new species and named it in honor of Prideaux John Selby (1788-1867). “The works of every student of nature are always pleasing to me, and it is with delight that I see the number of such students daily increasing; but when I meet with one who, regardless of the labour attending upon figuring in their full size the objects from which he has derived his knowledge, my heart expands, and I hail his name with enthusiasm. Mr Selby’s great work [Illustrations of British Ornithology (1821-1833)] is so well known to the scientific world, that I need only here mention the favour which its accomplished author has conferred upon me by permitting me to decorate one of my pages with his name, in quality of foster-father to a beautiful and hitherto unknown species of Fly-catcher.” It has since been determined that Selby’s Fly-catcher is more likely an immature Hooded warbler (see Plate 110).
While working as a tutor in art, dance, and music in St. Francisville, Audubon earned sufficient funds to pay for his wife Lucy to travel from Cincinnati to New Orleans. Lucy left her sons, Victor Gifford (age 12) and John Woodhouse (age 9), with their aunt and uncle, Nicholas and Eliza Berthoud, in Louisville, Kentucky, until Lucy gained employment as a teacher and Audubon and she found proper housing for their family.
John James Audubon frequenting the docks of New Orleans keeping a lookout for Lucy to disembark from the steamboat named Rocket lasted until just before Christmas. Lucy carried with her the drawings that Audubon completed prior to his decision to leave his family in Cincinnati in the spring of 1820 to live and work in Louisiana. Out of the many drawings that Lucy kept and guarded, only a slight few were used for Birds of America. Of the 200 or so drawings that Audubon and Joseph Mason finished while working together in Louisiana and Mississippi, over 50 of them are included in Birds of America. Although the only person whose approval mattered at the time was Lucy Audubon. Otherwise, the last sight that Audubon would have ever likely had of his wife was her stepping aboard Rocket for a trip back up river.