Moving - Mill Grove, Pennsylvania

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Included is a brief history of Mill Grove, PA, which may be of interest to you.

A Brief History of Mill Grove, PA

John James Audubon (1785-1851) is a legend, revered bird watchers and art enthusiasts alike as America's preeminent naturalist and bird artist his instantly recognizable prints adorn many homes and offices throughout the nation. Given his talent and popularity, it's difficult to appreciate the struggle he endured to bring his ornithological images to the public. An emigre with little money and training set adrift in a vast, uncharted new nation, and scorned by leading ornithologists of his day, he cultivated a distinctive persona and developed the extraordinary skills necessary to achieve his life's ambition. And his fabled career began in Pennsylvania, his first home in North America.

Audubon was born in the French colony of Santo Domingo (now Haiti), the son of Captain Jean Audubon, a French sailor and adventurer, and one of his mistresses, Jeanne Rabine, a French chambermaid, who died six months later. Beginning at the age of three he was raised by his father and an indulgent stepmother in Nantes, an industrial city on the Loire River in western France. Young Audubon acquired the graces of a country gentleman, received a bit of naval training, learned to love nature and wildlife, and began to draw.

To escape conscription into Napoleon's army, the eighteen-year-old Audubon was sent to America in 1803 to oversee his father's farm, Mill Grove, in Montgomery County, twenty-four miles northwest of Philadelphia. (The settlement near Mill Grove, once known as Shannonville, was christened Audubon in 1899 to honor its early-nineteenth century resident.) Captain Audubon had purchased two hundred and eighty-four acres in 1789 as an investment, perhaps in the hope-- albeit unfulfilled- that a lead mine on

the property would prove lucrative. He never set foot on the land, but his son's stay, even though it lasted less than three years, was probably the happiest period of the young man's life and would prove pivotal to his career. The centerpiece of Mill Grove was-- and remains-- a substantial stone farm-house, built in 1762 by James Morgan, situated on a gentle slope above the wide Perkiomen Creek, a tributary of the Schuylkill River. Although basically a farm managed by a tenant farmer, the estate contained forest lands, a mill, and mineral deposits.

With few responsibilities at Mill Grove, Audubon's life was carefree. "Hunting, fishing, drawing, and music," he wrote, "occupied my every moment," as did swimming and the local social life. The young dandy's grace as a dancer and prowess in ice skating were the talk of local residents. "Not a ball, a skating match, a house or a riding party took place without me," he recalled. At the time, Audubon later boasted, he possessed "erect stature" and "muscles of steel."

Audubon quickly fell in love with the eastern Pennsylvania countryside and its animals, often roaming the woods and fields incongruously wearing satin breeches and silk stockings. He became an enthusiastic and skilled hunter, both for sport and for his art. He collected all kinds of wildlife specimens, which he both preserved and sketched in attic rooms at Mill Grove.