28. attend a Chautauqua

Our third daytime program today was, again, by Doug Mishler. This time we focused on Roosevelt's childhood in a program called "Youthful Nature: Young Theodore Roosevelt as a Naturalist."

The first extant letter by Theodore Roosevelt was to his father and it described the markings and behavior of birds. The first essay we have by Roosevelt contained two pages of observations of an ant. These were both written when Theodore was seven years old.

Young Roosevelt started the "Roosevelt Natural History Museum" in his bedroom with a skull of a seal that a local merchant gave him. Theodore had wanted the whole carcass, but his parents had not allowed that. Roosevelt paid other children for specimens. He eventually boasted a collection of 2000 items, many of them alive with a habit of escaping into the rest of the house. When the maid refused to clean Theodore's room, his parents found another location for the Roosevelt Natural History Museum.

He learned taxidermy as a teenager from John Bell who also worked with John James Audubon. By the time Roosevelt went to college and his parents insisted that the museum be disbanded, his collection was so good that he donated some 600 items to the Smithsonian and 400 to the Natural History Museum in New York City.