In June of 1821, John James Audubon and his assistant, Joseph Mason, began living and working at a plantation called The Oakley near Bayou Sara, Louisiana. The plantation was established in 1796 by Ruffin Gray who received the grant for the 600-acre plantation from the King of Spain in what was then the Distrito de Nueva Feliciana. A 17-room mansion for Ruffin Gray and his wife, Lucretia, to live in was still under construction when Ruffin Gray died in 1801. When the mansion was completed, it became the home of Lucretia and her second husband, James Pirrie.
James and Lucretia Pirrie eventually accumulated thousands of acres of land and over 100 enslaved people for the growing, harvesting, and sale of cotton. James and Lucretia Pirrie had one child named Eliza who was born on October 21, 1805. James and Lucretia Pirrie traveled frequently to New Orleans to negotiate cotton sales, visit markets and shops, and attend festivals. It was on one such trip that Lucretia Pirrie noticed John James Audubon in a market area drawing portraits. While admiring his drawings, Lucretia Pirrie learned from Audubon that he also danced and played the flute. Wishing that her daughter possessed such talents, Lucretia Pirrie hired Audubon to teach Eliza, art, dance, music, and French in exchange for $60 a month and room and board for him and his assistant, Joseph Mason, at The Oakley. While walking from the docks at Bayou Sara to The Oakley Plantation for the first time, Audubon marveled at the “numberless warblers and thrushes.”
The mansion at The Oakley Plantation remains standing to this day in a state park dedicated to John James Audubon. The Oakley is about five miles south of St. Francisville. The population of the town currently stands at about 1,600. The town used to be situated just above the riverbank from another small town called Bayou Sara. The many cotton plantations along Bayou Sara allowed the town of Bayou Sara to have the busiest docks between Natchez, Mississippi, and New Orleans. Fire, the Civil War, floods, railroads and highways, and boll weevils infesting cotton fields have since relegated Bayou Sara to a public boat ramp and park and picnic area.
Among the many plants and birds that Audubon and Mason studied and drew while living and working at The Oakley was a bird perching on the branch of an Iron-wood tree. The bird beared a close resemblance to a Carolina wren. But then, “It has not, however, the quickness of motion, nor the liveliness.” Audubon felled the bird and then positioned it back onto a branch of the Iron-wood tree for Audubon and Mason to draw. Audubon named the bird a Bewick’s wren (Troglodytes bewekii) for Birds of America in honor of the English naturalist, Thomas Bewick (1753-1828). Bewick wrote A General History of Quadrupeds (1790), A History of British Birds (1797), and Bewick’s Select Fables of Aesop and others. Bewick carved some 200 blocks of wood to create his own engravings for his books. Almost all of the blocks that Bewick carved are housed today in various collections, the most significant being the one at the Great North Museum in Newcastle-upon-Tyne.
However many other Bewick’s wrens there were flying about at The Oakley or anywhere close to the plantation or in the southeastern United States when Audubon first discovered the bird for science, they have since practically vanished. The most Bewick’s wrens are going to be found in the hills above places like Monterey, California, where Jeff Davis counted 143 on July 11, 2017 (see eBird Checklist S38088944).