Scientist Althea Sherman: Iowa Time Machine October 10, 1853

Iowa Time Machine ⏰: On October 10, 1853, Althea Rosina Sherman was born in National, Iowa (Clayton County). An artist and teacher who became an ornithologist around age 50, she turned her northeastern Iowa home's grounds into a place of scientific discovery.

Sherman’s first career prepared her for the second in ways she could scarcely have anticipated. She earned a bachelor’s degree at Oberlin College in 1875 and a master’s degree there in 1882, developing the observation and illustration skills that later distinguished her bird studies. Her teaching took her to Carleton College in Minnesota, schools in Kansas, and the public schools of Tacoma, Washington, where she supervised drawing instruction.

In 1895, she returned to National, Iowa, to care for her aging parents. Family responsibilities interrupted her professional life, but the move also placed her among the birds that would become her principal subjects. After her mother’s death in 1902, she devoted herself increasingly to ornithology, developing what she called her “Acre of Birds.” Nesting boxes, feeding stations, and other arrangements turned her yard into a living laboratory. Where specimen collecting had been central to much ornithological research, Sherman concentrated on watching birds live: choosing nests, defending territory, laying eggs, and caring for their young.

Elected to the American Ornithologists’ Union in 1912, she published more than seventy articles and provided research used by Arthur Cleveland Bent in his Life Histories of North American Birds series. In 1925, she challenged the popularity of house wrens, arguing that their destruction of other birds’ eggs and the widespread provision of wren boxes deserved serious scrutiny. #Iowa #OTD #History #Ornithology #Birds