Ep. 22: Birds, Skulls and Secret Agents: John James Audubon Visits Texas, 1837
Wise About Texas
Ken Wise
4.9 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 14 August 2016
⏱️ 34 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In 1837, John James Audubon needed a trip to Texas to complete his legendary Bird of America. He came to Galveston and collected many wonderful specimens. But the story is about a lot more than birds. We have rattlesnakes, sawfish, secret agents, soldier skulls and Sam Houston. Hear about Audubon’s visit in the latest episode of Wise About Texas.
John James Audubon
Texan Secretary of the Navy Samuel R. Fisher
Galveston in 1837
Houston in 1837
Audubon’s Mockingbirds
Audubon’s Whooping Crane
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Howdy and welcome to Wise About Texas, the Texas History Podcast. |
| 0:18.0 | I'm your host Ken Wise and I certainly appreciate that you love Texas history as much as I do. |
| 0:24.4 | You're joining over 27,000 folks who've downloaded this podcast and I hope you're learning some new things |
| 0:29.3 | along the way and maybe a little more about some stories that you had heard before. |
| 0:33.0 | Well, it's August 2016 and the kids are heading back to school soon. |
| 0:37.0 | Summer's winding down. |
| 0:38.0 | I hope that despite the Texas heat, you got to spend some time outside. |
| 0:42.0 | The Texas outdoors are the best in the country. |
| 0:45.0 | We have an extraordinary series of ecosystems in Texas and it makes for some great times |
| 0:50.0 | enjoying our wild places and our wildlife. |
| 0:53.0 | One of the biggest outdoor tourism activities in Texas is bird watching. |
| 0:57.0 | I do most of my bird watching down the barrel of a shotgun during dove, quail, and duck season, |
| 1:01.0 | but there's a bunch of folks who enjoy spotting many of our thousands of interesting wild birds. |
| 1:06.0 | Just a cursory glance online and will reveal a large and active birding community, and they have events all over the state. Well this bird watching |
| 1:14.4 | didn't just start out of the blue. Back in 1837 the great naturalist and |
| 1:19.2 | artist John James Audubon finally made it out west and of course he picked Texas for that |
| 1:24.2 | trip. It's an interesting story and it involves much more than just birds. |
| 1:28.8 | So let's go back to 1837 and get wise about Texas. I'm guessing almost everyone has heard of |
| 1:36.7 | John James Audubon. He was born in Haiti in 1785. His father was a ship |
| 1:41.6 | captain and a plantation owner named Jean or pronounced John I'm sure |
| 1:46.4 | Audubon. His mother was one of Captain Audubon's servants and the Captain |
| 1:50.9 | brought him to France after he was born and the captain's wife, an apparently very tolerant woman, raised young John. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Ken Wise, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Ken Wise and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.