After Mrs. Audubon had passed her eightieth year she left New York and again made her home in the West. In 1874, when with a granddaughter at Louisville, she dictated and signed the following letter to a gentleman who had asked for an autograph of her husband: _Mrs. Audubon to William R. Dorlan_ LOUISVILLE _Jan. 30 1874_ MR. WM. R. DORLAN DEAR SIR I regret that your letter of Jan. 10th has remained so long unanswered, but my granddaughter who usually writes for me, is so constantly occupied with her pupils that until to-day she has not been able to find time to write to you. I regret that I cannot give you a letter of my husband _John James Audubon_ with the autograph attached. The enclosed, the best I have to send you is one from which the autograph and a portion of the letter were cut off many years ago. With many regrets that I cannot more fully grant your request I am dear Sir Yours respectfully, LUCY AUDUBON Mrs. Audubon's closing days were spent at the home of her sister-in-law, Mrs. William G. Bakewell, at Shelbyville, Kentucky, where she died, with her mental faculties unimpaired, at the age of eighty-six, June 13, 1874, having outlived this sister-in-law and her younger sisters, Mrs. Alexander Gordon, of New Orleans, and Mrs. Nicholas Augustus Berthoud, of St. Louis. Not long after John W. Audubon's death, his family disposed of their house on what had been the "Minnie's Land" estate, and lived successively at Harlem, New Haven, Connecticut, and Salem, New York, where Mrs. John W. Audubon died, and where her daughter, Maria Rebecca, the biographer of her father and grandfather, with a sister, still resides. Victor Audubon's family, with some of their kinsfolk, remained at the Hudson River place, which was included in the section known as "Audubon Park," until May, 1878, when they took a house in New York, where Mrs. Victor Audubon died in 1882. A brother of Mrs. Victor Audubon, Mr. E. Mallory, in writing to a friend in Buffalo from "Audubon Park, August 31, 1874," said that it was a source of deep regret to Mrs. John James Audubon that her last years were not passed with them, under the shadow of her old home on the Hudson; and he continued: "She was a kind and good friend, very intelligent, and much beloved here; I remember her telling a young lady, who asked her if she had read some fashionable novel, that she had no time; 'at my age,' said she, 'I must make the most of my time.' As she was a wide reader, it was a great trial when, in age, her eyesight completely failed her. The minister who pronounced her eulogy[245] said: Many of you can recall that aged form and benignant countenance, as she moved along these streets upon errands of usefulness and benevolence, with benedictions on her tongue, and smiles that were a blessing to all who met her.