The success that John James Audubon had gained with a trading business that he established in Henderson, Kentucky, allowed him to take a majority stake in the founding of a milling business. The delays in constructing and operating the mill left Audubon back scraping together funds to support himself and his family. Matters did not improve for Audubon when his father died in Nantes, France, on February 19, 1818, while having most of his estate tied up in farmland in Pennsylvania that Audubon had already sold off. If the estate of Jean Audubon owed anything to the French government, they were going to have to find John James Audubon in Henderson, Kentucky, to collect it.
The mill business finally had to be shut down which forced Audubon to declare bankruptcy. To raise funds to pay off his creditors, Audubon began selling off his belongings, all the way down to his flock of prairie-chickens and Canada geese. His wife, Lucy, and their two children moved in with relatives in Louisville while Audubon served his time in debtor’s prison and searched for a new home and source of income.
In desperation, Audubon pulled out his brushes, pencils, and crayons and started to be paid for the first time for his artwork by drawing portraits. Audubon then learned about Dr. Daniel Drake (1785-1852) wanting to hire a taxidermist for the Western Museum in Cincinnati. With the money Audubon earned working at the museum, he was able to rent space in a boarding house to accommodate him, Lucy and their children. Almost as soon as Lucy arrived in Cincinnati, she landed work as a school teacher.
Instead of taking time away from work to explore the outdoors and draw, Audubon was now getting paid! Among the most noticeable birds was the Ruffed Grouse and watching the risks the birds would take flying across the Ohio River. In the fall, “The Grouse approach the banks of the [Kentucky side of the] Ohio in parties of eight or ten, now and then of twelve or fifteen, and, on arriving there, linger in the woods close by for a week or a fortnight, as if fearful of encountering the danger to be incurred in crossing the stream.” Indeed, gunners stood alert and ready.
Of those shot trying to reach their winter feeding grounds, they were sold in great numbers “in the Cincinnati market for so small a sum as 12 1/2 cents each.” Those that survived the fuselage in the fall then took their chances flying back across the river in the spring for nesting: the males “proceed singly… The females follow in small parties of three or four.” Ruffed grouse have been shot to such a degree and have lost so many woods and places to linger that they are essentially gone from Kentucky and Ohio.