When Bakewell finally withdrew, Audubon appears to have been left stranded, and the business was taken over by a new set of men, including another brother-in-law, Nicholas Berthoud, and Benjamin Page of Pittsburgh, who continued it under the name of J. J. Audubon & Company.[226] Agents were also secured at various points on the Ohio and Mississippi rivers. Excepting, as we must assuredly do, his ever staunch friend, Nicholas Berthoud, Audubon believed that he was "gulled by all of these men."
In 1818 a new era of building and general prosperity seemed to dawn in the valley of the Ohio. A new bank was chartered at Henderson, and the woodwork of its brick structure was furnished by Audubon's mill.[227] This bank, however, failed in the course of two years, and forty others scattered throughout that section broke in rapid succession, after having done little more than add to the flood of worthless paper notes that was demoralizing business and sending hundreds into bankruptcy.
The mill was in operation barely two years. The machinery, of which a wooden bolting shaft and wooden cog wheels remained as a curiosity to recent times, seems to have worked badly from the start. But aside from the inexperience of the builders and the financial troubles of the day, the enterprise was foredoomed to failure in a district which raised but little wheat, and in which the demand for lumber was then comparatively slight. "How I labored," said Audubon, "at that infernal mill! But it is over now; I am old, and try to forget as fast as possible all the different trials of those sad days."
In the course of the Audubon and Bakewell partnership[228] the naturalist became involved in a personal quarrel with a man whose initials are given as "S—— B——." It seems that in 1817 Audubon's mechanic, David Prentice, had built for him a small steamboat, though for what purpose is not known. When their interests were severed, we are told, Mr. B—— purchased this steamer, but paid for it in worthless paper. The captain of the craft ran her down to the Mississippi and thence to New Orleans, and Audubon, who was determined to arrest this man if necessary, started in pursuit in a skiff. He failed, however, to overhaul the fugitive, and reached New Orleans only to find that his vessel had been surrendered to another claimant. This was probably in May, 1819, for in his journal of the following year, under date of November 23, when he was again moving down the rivers but in more leisurely fashion, he speaks of two large eagle's nests, one of which he remembered having seen as he "went to New Orleans eighteen months" before.
Through the researches of a later historian I am now able to give a more exact account of this affair. The purchasers of the steamboat were William R. Bowen, Samuel Adams Bowen, Robert Speed, Edmund Townes, Obediah Smith, George Brent and Bennett Marshall, who immediately sued Audubon in the sum of $10,000, on the plea that he had maliciously taken out an attachment upon the vessel in New Orleans, where it had been detained. They represented to the judge of the circuit court, Henry P. Broadnax, that Audubon was about to leave Kentucky, and a warrant was issued to arrest him; he was taken into custody, said the narrator whom I am following, "but executed a bail bond in the sum of $10,000 with Fayette Posey as surety, and was released." Convinced that a trial at Henderson would lead only to a defeat of justice, Audubon now served notice that he would apply for a change of venue to another county. "That notice together with the other papers in the action, is among the records of the Daviess circuit court, at Owensboro, Kentucky. It was written and signed by Audubon. Application for a change of venue was made at Hardinsburg and the case was transferred to the Daviess circuit court." When the case was called, the plaintiffs asked for a continuance, and it was granted them, but when the case was called again at the next term of court, the plaintiffs failed to appear, and the action was finally dismissed.
Returning home, Audubon was obliged to walk from the mouth of the Ohio River to Shawnee Town. Upon reaching Henderson he found that Mr. Bowen had anticipated him. Acting upon advice, he was prepared for an encounter with this man, who as his neighbors declared, had sworn to kill him, and "whose violent and ungovernable temper was only too well known." The anticipated encounter ensued. Audubon, who was then carrying his right hand in a sling from a recent injury received in his mill, waited, as he said, until he had received twelve severe blows from his assailant's bludgeon; then with his left hand he drew a dagger and struck in his own defense. His assailant was felled to the ground, but happily the wound inflicted was not mortal. Mr. Bowen was carried away on a plank, and when the affair was settled in the judiciary court, according to a Henderson tradition, Judge Broadnax gravely left the bench, approached the man who had been under charge of assault, and said: "Mr. Audubon, you committed a serious offense—an exceedingly serious offense Sir—in failing to kill the d—— rascal."[229] "Thomas Bakewell," added the naturalist, "who possessed more brains than I, sold his town lots and removed to Cincinnati, where he has made a large fortune, and I am glad of it.[230]
When the mill was finally closed and the company dissolved in 1819, Audubon as usual was the heaviest loser. Arrested and sent to the Louisville jail for debt, he was able to obtain release only by declaring himself a bankrupt in court. "I paid all I could,"[231] he said in his journal of the following year, "and left Henderson poor and miserable in thought. My intention to go to France and see my mother and sister was frustrated, and at last I resorted to my poor talents to maintain you and your dear mother, who fortunately became easy at her change of condition, and gave me a spirit such as I really needed, to meet the surly looks and cold reception of those who so shortly before were pleased to call me their friend." "I parted," to revert to his later account, "with every particle of property I held, to my creditors, keeping only the clothes I wore on that day, my original drawings, and my gun." Without a dollar in his pocket he left Henderson and walked to Louisville alone; "this," he said on reflection, "was the saddest of all my journies, the only time in my life when the Wild Turkeys that so often crossed my path, and the thousands of lesser birds that enlivened the woods and the prairies, all looked like enemies, and I turned my eyes from them, as if I could have wished that they never existed."
Passing down the Ohio in the following year Audubon made these entries in his diary:
November 2nd, 1820. Floated down slowly within two miles of Henderson. I can scarcely conceive that I stayed there eight years, and passed therein comfortably, for it is undoubtedly on the poorest spot in the country, according to my present opinion.
Nov. 3rd, 1820. We left our harbor at daybreak, and passed Henderson about sunrise. I looked on the mill perhaps for the last time, and with thoughts that made my blood almost run cold bid it an eternal farewell.