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Theodore Roosevelt, Jr.:

A Naturalist Collector of Specimens
by Maxine Carter-Lome, publisher

In 1867, Theodore Roosevelt began what he called the Roosevelt Museum of
Natural History. It consisted of 12 specimens that had been carefully preserved
and laid out – in his bedroom. He was eight years old.
A sickly child who was often confined indoors, it has been written that Teddy
found joy in adventure novels and in animals. When a neighborhood vendor gave the
boy the severed head off a harbor-seal carcass, an animal which at the time was plen-
tiful in New York Harbor, Roosevelt prized the gift. He later wrote in his
autobiography that preserving it felt like his own small adventure.
Roosevelt’s lifelong love of nature and conservation came
from his parents, Theodore Roosevelt Sr., a founding member
of the American Museum of Natural History in New York
City, and Martha Bulloch Roosevelt, and his father’s
brother, Uncle Robert B. Roosevelt, an ardent conserva-
tionist. His family indulged his passion for nature
preservation—and the dead-animal collection it produced—largely because of his
childhood illnesses.
As Roosevelt’s health improved and his body grew stronger, his fascination
with the natural world brought him out into the real world and in contact with
things he read about, collected, and wished to study. In particular, birds.
By age 12, young Teddy was studying taxidermy with an associate of John
James Audubon.
In 1872, having obtained spectacles to correct his vision and a shotgun
to aid in capturing specimens, Theodore traveled with his family to Egypt
and Syria, where he collected numerous birds. By then a skilled taxidermist,
he skinned and mounted the birds himself. If young Roosevelt’s collection
methods seemed bloody and cruel, he merely followed the accepted
practices of the leading naturalists of the time. Killing was the only way to
make extremely accurate observations about the physical characteristics of
unfamiliar animals.

While written in a childish hand, the note-
books in which young Roosevelt logged his studies
reflected the zeal with which he pursued Nature. They
contained complete descriptions of the animals
collected, including size, sex, place and date collected,
habits, and even stomach contents. In Vienna,
where the family traveled after leaving Egypt,
Roosevelt turned his hotel room into a virtual
zoological laboratory, much to the dismay of the
cousin who shared his lodgings.
When he set his sights on attending Harvard
University it was largely because of the legacy of
naturalist Louis Agassiz, who left behind the
Museum of Comparative Zoology and a
detailed system of animal classifications still used
today. At Harvard, Roosevelt published his first
ornithological work, The Summer Birds of the
Adirondacks in Franklin County, NY. Teddy
had a particular fascination with birds. Suffering
from nearsightedness as a child, he had a catalog
of their music in his head. He also developed strong
A portrait of Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919) in buckskin, public opinions about invasive species. During an
without his trademark glasses. This portrait is dated 1885, argument known as the “sparrow wars,” Roosevelt
the year he retired to his ranch in the Dakota Territory,
following the death of his mother and first wife. made the case that the invasive English sparrow should
photo: TIME be exterminated in America. His 49-page response
paper to the Natural History 3 examination at Harvard
in his senior year showed that he was a knowledgeable,

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