Lucy Bakewell must have had a great sense of adventure to marry John James Audubon. Just days after their wedding on April 5, 1808, Lucy left her safe and comfortable family home called Fatland Ford just outside of Philadelphia and was riding in a stagecoach with all her belongings on board and Audubon sitting by her side heading in the direction of the western frontier of North America. While traversing a ridge just west of Pottsgrove, Pennsylvania, a snowfall began to cause the horses to lose their footing. Lucy agreed to begin jettisoning her belongings and Audubon followed on foot to lessen the weight that the horses had to pull. Even with the lightening load, the horses kept stumbling and falling and failed to keep the stagecoach upright. Lucy was pulled out of the stagecoach lying on its side and placed on horseback for Audubon to take her to an inn in Chambersburg to ease her fright and where all her cuts and bruises could start healing. Rather than any regrets of leaving Fatland Ford, Lucy regained her strength and maintained her faith in Audubon to take her westward.
If it was not already, Pittsburgh was surely the point where Lucy could stand no more. Instead, she joined her husband and hundreds of others, some with their cows, pigs and other barnyard animals, to endure the mayhem, stench, mud, and almost a complete lack of privacy aboard a river flatboat and float down the Ohio River. Despite such primitive living conditions, Lucy and John James Audubon and their fellow passengers must have found solace and hope in the comparatively smooth traveling that the flatboat afforded, the grandeur of the trees and forests along the river banks, and the abundance of wildlife: “A Wild Turkey [or Great American Hen], a Grouse, or a Blue-winged Teal, could be procured in few moments; and we fared well, for, whenever we pleased, we landed, struck up a fire and provided, as we were, with the necessary utensils, procured a good repast.”
Upon landing in present-day Louisville, Kentucky, Audubon worked out arrangements for him and Lucy to reside at an inn called the Indian Queen. Audubon resumed assisting his partner Ferdinand Rozier with a trade business that they had established in the town. And on June 12, 1809, John James and Lucy Audubon had their first child. Lucy gave birth to a boy who was named Victor Gifford.