About this Collection

Edgewood College is pleased to present the Field Notes of Owen J. Gromme, widely regarded as the 20th Century's Audubon. This collection of twenty two volumes, digitally scanned and searchable, begins on April 13, 1914 and concludes on August 8, 1989, only weeks before the stroke that would still Gromme's creative life. Included are three volumes of African Field Notes from the great Cudahy-Massey Expedition of 1928-1929, the expedition that built the African collections at the Field Museum in Chicago and the Milwaukee Public Museum. This is an unprecedented collection in the field of Natural History-acute observations of one man through eight decades. Here one reads of the young Gromme, at dawn on the Eldorado Marsh, studying the nests of the American Bittern, returning in successive years to discover fewer eggs with less tinsel strength... the observation and realization of the impact of the first use of DDT by local farmers-this insight decades before Rachel Carson would create the environmental movement with the publication of The Sea Around Us. Twenty two volumes filled with observations, studies and sketches by an author, artist, botanist, biologist, zoologist-a pioneering environmentalist and wildlife ecologist. There is something here for everyone.

Owen Gromme (1914-1989) was a friend and colleague of Mark and Marian Lefebvre who gifted the collection to Edgewood. The gift was made to honor the Oscar Rennebohm Foundation, its current and former directors.

The Field Notes of Owen J. Gromme are available on the web exclusively from Edgewood College embodying the mission to develop intellect, spirit, imagination and heart.

Copyright Statement

The contents of this collection are Copyright © 1989 Stanton & Lee Publishers, Inc.
Digitized for this collection with their permission.