The Birdman of Koskonong: The life of naturalist Thure KumlienMartha Bergland
© April 20, 2021 by Wisconsin Historical Society Press
304 pp
Biography
ISBN 978-0870-209529
Print $20
Ebook $11.99
BuyWHS Bookstore Amazon Barnes and Noble Kobo Walmart Goodreads About the Book: Thure Kumlien was one of Wisconsin’s earliest Swedish
settlers and an accomplished ornithologist, botanist, and naturalist in the
mid-1800s, though his name is not well known today. He settled on the shore of
Lake Koshkonong in 1843 and soon began sending bird specimens to museums and
collectors in Europe and the eastern United States, including the Smithsonian.
Later, he prepared natural history exhibits for the newly established
University of Wisconsin and became the first curator and third employee of the
new Milwaukee Public Museum.
For all of his achievements, Kumlien never gained the widespread notoriety of
Wisconsin naturalists John Muir, Increase Lapham, or Aldo Leopold. Kumlien did
his work behind the scenes, content to spend his days in the marshes and swamps
rather than in the public eye. He once wrote that he was not “cut out for
pretensions and show in the world.” Yet, his detailed observations of
Wisconsin’s natural world—including the impact of early agriculture on the
environment—were hugely important to the fields of ornithology and botany. As
this carefully researched and lovingly rendered biography proves, Thure Kumlien
deserves to be remembered as one of Wisconsin’s most influential naturalists.
My Review:
A poignant, heart-felt prologue featuring the recollections
of Thure (TOO reh) Kumlien’s (koom-LEEN) young friend Edward Lee Greene opens
this outstanding biographical account of scarcely known Swedish-American
naturalist. In Wisconsin’s early European settlement period, mid to late
nineteenth century, several personalities took a dedicated interest in
identifying and recording Wisconsin’s unique natural features, including flora
and fauna. One particular plant, the elusive Linnea borealis, was a cherished
signal of what once flourished in the state, and could so easily be lost. This
life-long memory sets the tone for Bergland’s biographical account.
Kumlien might not have been the most famous, but the
dedication of this farmer educator naturalist to documenting and sharing
Wisconsin’s wildlife enriched museums and scientific collections around the
world, including the Milwaukee Public Museum, one of my favorite places. “The
specimens that men such as Kumlien gathered in the 1840 are even more valuable
today than they were then—something these naturalists at least partially
understood but probably not the extent that we do now,” for the vast data they
reveal about birds and environment. They provide resources for the study of
“the effects of industrial pollution, climate change, and genetics.”
Using several samples of Kumlien’s letters and artwork of
birds, nests, feathers, and flora, the biography is richly embellished with his
own few words, historical photographs and accounts from family members and
friends. Details, such as newspaper advertising text for ship passengers
emigrating to America, and brief articles about departures and the ports of
call enliven the story. Careful attention to fact, such as what was inscribed
on tombstones, and not only the date of the Kumlien’s wedding but the future of
the Justice of the Peace who married them show the depth of Bergland’s
research.
After establishing Kumlien’s well-to-do upbringing in Sweden
and the development of his passion for ornithology through the first third of
the book, the author divides the chapters into short segments of years from
Kumlien’s emigration, marriage, and settlement in Wisconsin in 1843. The sight
of Milwaukee, the rawness of the young city being cut from wilderness on the
shores of Lake Michigan, may have influenced Kumlien of the need to preserve
aspects of nature which could quickly be destroyed. The early section of the
book is richly documented through a surviving diary of the era. Kumlien was a
gentleman scholar from Sweden, highly educated but not learned about pioneer
living. Early struggles and losses dominate Thure and Christina Kumlien’s life
at Lake Koshkonong where they lived in a poorly constructed shanty for the
first six years of their marriage. Of Kumlien’s introduction to American
ornithology, he sold six bushels of potatoes and fees for appraising
neighboring property he purchased to pay for a $3 copy of Wilson’s
Ornithology, being unable to afford works by Audubon. To earn cash, he used
his taxidermy skills and sold mounted birds to friends, neighbors, collectors,
and museums. He also collected samples of native flora and seed, small mammals,
and insects which he carefully preserved, identified and shipped to
universities and museums around the world.
In 1850, as a result of a Janesville Gazette article
about Kumlien, he was introduced by letter to Thomas Mayo Brewer of the Boston
Society of Natural History. Kumlien began to supply nests, eggs, and bird skins
as well as detailed descriptions to Brewer and a large number of other
collectors. These years of collecting, observing, identifying were intense
times for American ornithologists as they classified and corrected each other
and themselves, and occasionally Audubon, when errors were noted. Eventually
Kumlien secured a teaching position at a nearby school after the Civil War. The
Kumleins had four surviving children and took up various interests, such as
tobacco farming, art, and career government offices in fisheries, besides the
constant collection, preservation, and sale of various species of wildlife.
Kumlien worked on and off during his final years as a conservator and
enthusiastic guide at the Milwaukee Public Museum.
Complementing the biography with art from Thure’s
great-great-grandson, Bergland’s text is written in a friendly style, including
the reader in exploration, discoveries and excitement, tragedy, and joy of life
in a new country. Kumlien may never take his rightful place next to Increase
Lapham or Aldo Leopold, but I am grateful to have gotten to know him better
through this biography.
About the Author:
Martha Bergland is the coauthor, with Paul G. Hayes, of Studying Wisconsin—a
Society Press biography on famed Wisconsin naturalist Increase Lapham, which
won the Milwaukee County Historical Society’s Gambrinus Prize. She taught for
many years at Milwaukee Area Technical College, and lives in Glendale, Wisc
