Like the mill, the original house on the hilltop was built of rough-hewn native stone, which is brown or red and very hard. It consists of two stories, with central hall, and a curiously divided attic with dormer windows, which Audubon is said to have converted into a museum. A marble slab in the south gable bears the date of 1762; an addition of the same rough stone was built on the north side, but at a considerably lower level, in 1763, and the commemorative tablet in this instance bears the initials "J. M.," proving that the construction of the buildings of "Mill Grove" was due to the old miller, James Morgan. The interior, with its odd chimney-corner, low ceilings, bold fireplace and hand-wrought iron-work, bears witness to a time when honest, substantial construction and pride in workmanship received the first consideration. The present owner of "Mill Grove" has added attractive porches at the front and back. Ampelopsis climbs over the walls, which are shaded by handsome trees; one of these, a fine black walnut at the easterly porch, which in August bore its great green balls in full clusters, must have been vigorous in Audubon's day, and possibly suggested the introduction of sprays of this full-fruited tree into some of his plates.
While on a visit from Santo Domingo in 1789, concerned with his business interests, Captain Audubon spent some time in Philadelphia. On March 28, 1789, he purchased the "Mill Grove" property, at that time consisting of 284½ acres of land, mansion house, mill, barns, furniture, tools and live stock, from Henry Augustin Prevost[86] and his wife, for the sum of 2,300 English pounds, in gold and silver. He never lived there, and that he never intended to make it his immediate residence is shown by the fact that in less than a fortnight he leased the farm in its entirety, as already noticed, to its former owner, and gave him a mortgage which stood for seventeen years.[87]
Young Audubon lived at "Mill Grove" from the winter of 1804 to the spring of 1805, and again for a few months in the summer of 1806, the year of its final sale by the Audubons and Roziers (see [p. 148]). In his journal of 1820 the naturalist wrote that his father had once the honor of being presented to General Washington, and also to Major Crogan, of Kentucky, "who was particularly well acquainted with him." Jean Audubon left at "Mill Grove" oil portraits of himself and of Washington, both by an inferior American artist named Polk,[88] and it is probable that the one of himself was painted while he was at Philadelphia in the spring of 1789; the drawing is hard and flat, but the appearance of the face clearly indicates a man past middle life, and Captain Audubon had then reached his forty-fifth year.
Young Audubon, we may be sure, lost no time in exploring the resources of this fine estate, where every bird, tree and flower came to him as a new discovery. In following the Perkioming above the mill dam he found a cave, carved out of the rocks, as he thought, by nature's own hand, which was a favorite haunt of the unpretentious but friendly pewees, the first American birds to attract his serious attention. So delighted was the youthful naturalist that he decided to make the pewees' cave his study; thither accordingly he brought his books, pencils and paper, and there made his first studies of American bird life, in the spring of 1804, in the third year of the presidency of Thomas Jefferson. It was early in the season when Audubon chanced upon this quiet retreat; the buds were swelling and maples had already burst into bloom, but snow still lingered in patches through the woods, and the air was piercing chill. The pewees were not yet at home, but one of their nests, fashioned of mud and finest moss, was fixed above the vaulted entrance; their coming was not long delayed, and Audubon, marking the very night or day's dawn when the first pewee arrived, saw them beginning to restore their old home on the tenth of April.
Strange to say, almost at that very time another pioneer in American ornithology, Alexander Wilson, who will enter this history later, was teaching a rough country school at Gray's Ferry, Kingsessing, also on the Schuylkill, and not over twenty-five miles away. Though Audubon's early studies were very desultory, both naturalists began their observations at about the same time, for on June 1, 1803, Wilson wrote to a friend that many pursuits had engaged his attention since leaving Scotland in 1794, and that then he was "about to make a collection of all our finest birds."
It must be set down to Audubon's credit that in the little cave on the banks of the Perkioming, in April, 1804, he made the first "banding" experiment on the young of an American wild bird. Little could he or any one else then have thought that one hundred years later a Bird Banding Society would be formed in America to repeat his test on a much wider scale, in order to gather exact data upon the movements of individuals of all migratory species in every part of the continent. After a few trials, "I fixed," said he, "a light silver thread on the leg of each, loose enough not to hurt the part, but so fastened that no exertions of theirs could remove it." In the following spring he had the satisfaction of catching several pewees on their nests farther up the creek, and of "finding that two of them had a little ring on the leg," proving that the young of a migratory bird, steering by the "compass" which is carried in its brain, did sometimes return to its home region, if not to the actual cradle or home site.
Across the Philadelphia road, which today leads to the little railway station, and not more than a quarter of a mile from Audubon's farmhouse, stood another but more pretentious mansion of the Colonial era, called "Fatland Ford," pertaining to an extensive farm of that name which was noted for the fertility of its alluvial acres. A road from the present village of Audubon to the Schuylkill River and the ford runs through the "Fatlands of Egypt," as the most productive parts of this old farm were then called. From the house could be seen the camping grounds of the Revolutionary soldiers, and James Vaux, its owner and builder, is said to have entertained General Howe at breakfast and to have shown him the room which General Washington, his guest of the previous day, had left just in time to avoid an introduction.
Shortly before Audubon reached "Mill Grove," William Bakewell, an Englishman who had emigrated to New Haven in 1802, bought this farm, and with his wife and family took possession in the winter or spring of 1804.[89] Of the six Bakewell children, the two eldest, Lucy Green and Thomas Woodhouse, were but three years younger than the naturalist. The senior Bakewell, said Audubon, called at "Mill Grove" to pay his respects, but being then from home, and having brought with him a Frenchman's dislike for everything English, he failed to respond. In the autumn, however, when grouse had become plentiful in the woods, a chance meeting brought them together, and young Audubon, who was a great admirer of his neighbor's expert marksmanship and well trained dogs, duly apologized for his neglect and forthwith paid a visit to "Fatland Ford."
We shall let the naturalist tell in his own words of his first meeting with the young woman who afterwards became his wife:
Well do I recollect the morning, and may it please God that I may never forget it, when for the first time I entered Mr. Bakewell's dwelling. It happened that he was absent from home, and I was shown into a parlor where only one young lady was snugly seated at her work by the fire. She rose on my entrance, offered me a seat, and assured me of the gratification her father would feel on his return, which, she added, would be in a few moments as she would despatch a servant for him. Other ruddy cheeks and bright eyes made their transient appearance but, like spirits gay, soon vanished from my sight; and there I sat, my gaze riveted, as it were, on the young girl before me, who, half working, half talking, essayed to make the time pleasant to me. Oh! may God bless her! It was she, my dear sons, who afterward became my beloved wife, and your mother.