To enable the Secretary of State to purchase one hundred copies, each, of Audubon's "Birds of America" and "Quadrupeds of America," for presentation to foreign governments, in return for valuable works sent by them to the Government of the United States, sixteen thousand dollars.
[Act of August 18, 1858 (LL State., 90).]
In John Woodhouse Audubon's family there were two sets of children, two by his former wife, Maria R. Bachman, and seven by Caroline Hall, to whom he was married on October 2, 1841. Victor Gifford Audubon, who had no children by his first wife, May Eliza Bachman, was married on March 2, 1843, to Georgiana Richards Mallory, an Englishwoman, and six children were born to them between 1845 and 1854. Of the naturalist's fifteen grandchildren, six are believed to be now living (1917).[231]
HOUSE FORMERLY BELONGING TO VICTOR GIFFORD AUDUBON, EAST FRONT, AS IT APPEARS TO-DAY; MRS. JOHN JAMES AUDUBON KEPT HER PRIVATE SCHOOL IN THE CORNER ROOM ON THE SECOND FLOOR.
HOUSE FORMERLY BELONGING TO JOHN WOODHOUSE AUDUBON, SOUTH FRONT, AS IT APPEARS TO-DAY; AT THE RIGHT IS "THE CAVE," WHERE THE COPPER PLATES OF "THE BIRDS OF AMERICA" WERE STORED.
In 1852-3 Audubon's sons built houses for their growing families on their mother's estate; Victor's was placed just north of the original homestead, and John's not far away. On the slope behind John Audubon's house, a small building, later known as the "Cave," was specially constructed for the safer keeping of the famous copper plates, which had already passed through fire,[232] and not wholly unscathed. Mr. John Hardin, now (1915) a serene and clear-eyed man of eighty-four, who settled in that neighborhood in 1852 and who was intermittently employed by the younger Audubons for a decade, has told me that he boxed with his own hands all of the copper plates, after wrapping each in tissue paper, and stored them in that building; whenever John Audubon wanted a plate, John Hardin would go to the "Cave" and get it for him.