Thure Ludwig Theodor Kumlien (November 9, 1819 – August 5, 1888) was a Swedish-American
ornithologist
Ornithology is a branch of zoology that concerns the "methodological study and consequent knowledge of birds with all that relates to them." Several aspects of ornithology differ from related disciplines, due partly to the high visibility and th ...
,
naturalist, and
taxidermist. A contemporary of
Thoreau,
Audubon, and
Agassiz
Jean Louis Rodolphe Agassiz ( ; ) FRS (For) FRSE (May 28, 1807 – December 14, 1873) was a Swiss-born American biologist and geologist who is recognized as a scholar of Earth's natural history.
Spending his early life in Switzerland, he rec ...
, he contributed much to the knowledge of the
natural history of
Wisconsin
Wisconsin () is a state in the upper Midwestern United States. Wisconsin is the 25th-largest state by total area and the 20th-most populous. It is bordered by Minnesota to the west, Iowa to the southwest, Illinois to the south, Lake M ...
and its birds. He collected and shipped specimens to many investigators in the United States and abroad. He taught
botany
Botany, also called , plant biology or phytology, is the science of plant life and a branch of biology. A botanist, plant scientist or phytologist is a scientist who specialises in this field. The term "botany" comes from the Ancient Greek w ...
and
zoology
Zoology ()The pronunciation of zoology as is usually regarded as nonstandard, though it is not uncommon. is the branch of biology that studies the Animal, animal kingdom, including the anatomy, structure, embryology, evolution, Biological clas ...
, as well as foreign languages, at Albion Academy, and was particularly regarded as an expert in the identification of birds’ nests.
Family and early life
Thure Kumlien was born in 1819 in the parish of
Härlunda in
Västergötland
Västergötland (), also known as West Gothland or the Latinized version Westrogothia in older literature, is one of the 25 traditional non-administrative provinces of Sweden (''landskap'' in Swedish), situated in the southwest of Sweden.
Väs ...
,
Sweden
Sweden, formally the Kingdom of Sweden,The United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names states that the country's formal name is the Kingdom of SwedenUNGEGN World Geographical Names, Sweden./ref> is a Nordic country located on ...
, the oldest of fourteen children in an aristocratic Swedish family.
[ Hoard Historical Museum]
Thure Kumlien
access 2008-09-18. His father, Ludwig Kumlien (1790–1839),
[Angie Kumlien Main, "Thure Kumlien, Koshkonong Naturalist", ''Wisconsin Magazine of History'', Volume 27, number 1, September 1943, p. 21.] was an army quartermaster, and owned several large estates.
[Taylor, p. 86] His mother, Johanna Rhodin (1800–1830) was the daughter of a minister.
His early education was with a tutor, after which he entered the
Gymnasium of
Skara.
He subsequently attended
Uppsala University
Uppsala University ( sv, Uppsala universitet) is a public university, public research university in Uppsala, Sweden. Founded in 1477, it is the List of universities in Sweden, oldest university in Sweden and the Nordic countries still in opera ...
, graduating in 1843.
He took an early interest in natural history and collected many specimens, particularly from the
Baltic
Baltic may refer to:
Peoples and languages
* Baltic languages, a subfamily of Indo-European languages, including Lithuanian, Latvian and extinct Old Prussian
*Balts (or Baltic peoples), ethnic groups speaking the Baltic languages and/or originati ...
islands, sending them to
Hermann Schlegel of
Leiden
Leiden (; in English and archaic Dutch also Leyden) is a city and municipality in the province of South Holland, Netherlands. The municipality of Leiden has a population of 119,713, but the city forms one densely connected agglomeration wit ...
;
Wilhelm Peters
Wilhelm Karl Hartwich (or Hartwig) Peters (22 April 1815 in Koldenbüttel – 20 April 1883) was a German natural history, naturalist and explorer.
He was assistant to the anatomist Johannes Peter Müller and later became curator of the Natural ...
of
Berlin
Berlin ( , ) is the capital and largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's most populous city, according to population within city limits. One of Germany's sixteen constitue ...
,
Carl Jakob Sundevall of the
Swedish Museum of Natural History
The Swedish Museum of Natural History ( sv, Naturhistoriska riksmuseet, literally, the National Museum of Natural History), in Stockholm, is one of two major museums of natural history in Sweden, the other one being located in Gothenburg.
The ...
,
Stockholm
Stockholm () is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in Sweden by population, largest city of Sweden as well as the List of urban areas in the Nordic countries, largest urban area in Scandinavia. Approximately 980,000 people liv ...
, and
John Cassin of Boston were among his other correspondents.
[Taylor, p. 88.]
Career
Kumlien emigrated to the United States in 1843, accompanied by his fiancée, Margaretta Christina Wallberg, and her sister.
They first settled in
Milwaukee
Milwaukee ( ), officially the City of Milwaukee, is both the most populous and most densely populated city in the U.S. state of Wisconsin and the county seat of Milwaukee County. With a population of 577,222 at the 2020 census, Milwaukee is ...
and were married there on September 5 of the same year.
Not long afterward, drawn by letters written by the minister of a local parish, he came to the
Lake Koshkonong
Lake Koshkonong is a naturally occurring lake that acts as a reservoir in southern Wisconsin. Its size was augmented by the creation of the Indianford Dam in 1932, making it one of the larger lakes in the state. The lake lies along the Rock Rive ...
area of Wisconsin.
When he bought his homestead, he bypassed farmland and instead purchased woodland, probably because of his love of nature,
and devoted his spare time to the study of surrounding nature, in particular the local plants, birds, and insects. His first purchase was , from the government; he bought another 40 acres later.
His first home was a log house near
Busseyville.
Often distracted by local wildlife and plants, Kumlien did not succeed at farming;
he supplemented his farm income with
taxidermy and by collecting specimens for museums and other scientists.
Kumlien's life work constituted a rich personal herbarium and an important collection of birds.
He began with a collection acquired by the Boston Society of Natural Sciences in 1854, and expanded his reach to Europe, sending specimens to such scientists as
Elias Magnus Fries
Elias Magnus Fries (15 August 1794 – 8 February 1878) was a Swedish mycologist and botanist.
Career
Fries was born at Femsjö (Hylte Municipality), Småland, the son of the pastor there. He attended school in Växjö.
He acquired ...
of Uppsala and
Thomas Mayo Brewer Thomas Mayo Brewer (November 21, 1814 – January 24, 1880) was an American naturalist, specializing in ornithology and oology.
Biography
Thomas Mayo Brewer was born in Boston, the younger brother of noted Boston merchant Gardner Brewer. He ...
. He also kept up correspondence with
Spencer Fullerton Baird
Spencer Fullerton Baird (; February 3, 1823 – August 19, 1887) was an American naturalist, ornithologist, ichthyologist, Herpetology, herpetologist, and museum curator. Baird was the first curator to be named at the Smithsonian Institution. He ...
,
Edward Augustus Samuels, and others. Kumlien was described by no less a luminary than
Louis Agassiz
Jean Louis Rodolphe Agassiz ( ; ) FRS (For) FRSE (May 28, 1807 – December 14, 1873) was a Swiss-born American biologist and geologist who is recognized as a scholar of Earth's natural history.
Spending his early life in Switzerland, he rec ...
as the world's foremost authority on the identification of birds' nests. Combined with his modesty, his collecting and correspondence made him more widely known to fellow scientists than to his neighbors.
In spite of the recognition and the regard he received from the scientific community, he lived in tight financial circumstances nearly all of his life.
Through the efforts of
Rasmus Bjørn Anderson, Kumlien accepted a position in the faculty of Albion Academy, in
Albion, Wisconsin. From 1867 to 1870, he taught not only botany and zoology, but also foreign languages; he left when financial turmoil hit the college.
[Taylor, p. 90.] He took a position with the State of Wisconsin in 1870,
collecting specimens for the
University of Wisconsin
A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. Universities typically offer both undergraduate and postgraduate programs. In the United States, t ...
in Madison and the teacher training school (the university's collections were destroyed in a fire in 1884). From 1881 to 1883, he worked for the Wisconsin Natural History Society as taxidermist and
conservator of its collections.
[Wisconsin Historical Society, ''Dictionary of Wisconsin History'']
"Kumlien, Thure Ludwig Theodore (''sic'') 1819 – 1888"
Taylor, p. 90;
In 1883, the Natural History Society's collections were transferred to the
Milwaukee Public Museum
The Milwaukee Public Museum (MPM) is a natural and human history museum in downtown Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The museum was chartered in 1882 and opened to the public in 1884; it is a not-for-profit organization operated by the Milwaukee Public Mus ...
, and Kumlien began working for the museum in the same capacity,
[ which enabled him to pursue his naturalist studies year round.] He became a member of the American Ornithologists' Union
The American Ornithological Society (AOS) is an ornithological organization based in the United States. The society was formed in October 2016 by the merger of the American Ornithologists' Union (AOU) and the Cooper Ornithological Society. Its m ...
the year it was founded (1883). He died in 1888, most likely as a result of exposure to preservatives used on bird specimens sent from South America. He is buried at Sweet Cemetery, in Albion.[ His work can still be viewed at numerous museums in Europe and America.]
Legacy
Thure and Margaretta Kumlien had five children (three sons and two daughters): Agusta Kumlien (1844–1845), Aaron Ludwig Kumlien (1853–1902), Theodore Victor Kumlien (1855–1941), Swea Maria Kumlien (1857), and Frithiof Kumlien (1859–1888). Agusta and Frithiof are buried with their parents.[Kumlien, Augusta, Frithiof, Margrette and Thure Ludvig]
usgwarchives.net
Kumlien trained his son, Ludwig Kumlien
Aaron Ludwig Kumlien (March 15, 1853 – December 4, 1902) was an American ornithologist and the oldest son of Thure Kumlien. He took part in the Howgate Polar Expedition 1877-78 and collected a large number of bird specimens which led to the dis ...
, an ornithologist, and also Edward Lee Greene
Edward Lee Greene (August 20, 1843–November 10, 1915) was an American botanist known for his numerous publications including the two-part ''Landmarks of Botanical History'' and the describing of over 4,400 species of plants in the American W ...
, a botanist.
Kumlien was also acquainted with Willard North, the father of author Sterling North
Thomas Sterling North (November 4, 1906 – December 21, 1974) was an American writer. He is best known for the children's novel '' Rascal'', a bestseller in 1963.
Biography
Early life and family
North's maternal grandparents, James Herve ...
; the younger North included him in such books as ''Rascal'' and ''The Wolfling''.
A number of species have been named for Kumlien:
*''Aster Kumlienii'' Benke, a purple aster that grows at Busseyville.
*''Cottus bairdii kumlienii'' (Hoy), the northern mottled sculpin
The mottled sculpin (''Cottus bairdii'') is a species of freshawater ray-finned fish belonging to the family Cottidae, the typical sculpins. This species has a wide but scattered North American distribution.
As the name suggests, its coloration ...
.Cottus bairdii kumlienii (Hoy); NORTHERN MOTTLED SCULPIN
University of Michigan
*''Kumlienia
''Kumlienia'' is a small genus of flowering plants in the buttercup family known generally as false buttercups. There are two species in this genus, both of which were formerly included in ''Ranunculus''. ''Kumlienia cooleyae'' is native to the ...
'' is a genus of flowering plants in the buttercup family
Ranunculaceae (buttercup or crowfoot family; Latin "little frog", from "frog") is a family of over 2,000 known species of flowering plants in 43 genera, distributed worldwide.
The largest genera are ''Ranunculus'' (600 species), ''Delphinium' ...
. It was named for Kumlien by his student Greene.
References
Bibliography
*
Further reading
* Ivey, Zida C.
Pay Tribute to Thure Kumlien at Busseyville’s Centennial
. ''Jefferson County Union'' (Fort Atkinson, Wisconsin).
* Main, Angie Kumlien.
Thure Kumlien: Koshkonong Naturalist
. ''Wisconsin Magazine of History'', 27:1 (September 1943): 17–39.
* Main, Angie Kumlien.
Thure Kumlien: Koshkonong Naturalist
. ''Wisconsin Magazine of History'', 27:3 (March 1944): 321–343.
External links
Albion Academy historical marker, Albion, Wisconsin
Hoard Historical Museum
{{DEFAULTSORT:Kumlien, Thure
1819 births
1888 deaths
People from Skara Municipality
American ornithologists
Scientists from Milwaukee
Swedish ornithologists
Swedish emigrants to the United States