ONLINE: Martha Bergland

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Wisconsin Historical Society

Educator and author Martha Bergland.

You know all about Aldo Leopold and John Muir, Wisconsin-associated naturalists. You know about John Jay Audubon, the great chronicler of North American birds. But what do you know about the Birdman of Koshkonong? This Swedish settler (aka Thure Kumlien) was an ornithologist, botanist and naturalist who settled near Lake Koshkonong in 1843. He sent bird specimens to all the major museums and was the first curator of the new Milwaukee Public Museum. Kumlien deserves more recognition and Milwaukee writer Martha Bergland's new biography from the Wisconsin Historical Society Press, The Birdman of Koshkonong: The Life of Naturalist Thure Kumlien, will uncover his contributions to ornithology. Bergland will appear on "Book Bites," a series of brief Facebook Live book talks from the Wisconsin Historical Society Press on the WHS Press Facebook page on the first and third Wednesday of each month.

media release: Join Wisconsin Historical Society for "Book Bites" - a series of brief Facebook Live book talks from the WHS Press exploring all things Wisconsin! The series will stream on the WHS Press Facebook page on the first and third Wednesday of each month.

On April 21 author Martha Bergland will offer a sneak peek of her brand new biography, The Birdman of Koshkonong.

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 or Aldo Leopold, yet his detailed observations of the Midwest’s natural world 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.

Martha Bergland is the coauthor, with Paul 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. She lives in Glendale, Wisconsin.