Trippe, T. Martin, b. ca. 1848

"And now, as the old year is dying, I will just write one thing more; -- I am going to devote my whole life to the birds, -- in short I am going to be what Audubon was, -- an ornithologist." (1(5):60) An idealistic young man from Orange, N.J., T. Martin Trippe became entranced early in life, and by the age of seventeen, he had begun to assemble a meticulous record of observations on the local avifauna and flora and the beginnings of a private cabinet of natural history.

Raised in comfortable circumstances in Orange, N.J., Trippe began educating himself in natural history at fourteen, commencing his first ornithological journal in the following year, 1863. Relishing his time traipsing through the woods, recording birds he had seen (or killed), he did not stint on the formal study of nature, building a small library on the subject as time and finances permitted. Killing, dissecting, and mounting dozens of birds, he also collected eggs, and apparently made efforts to keep live birds in a cage, including a broad-winged buzzard ( Buteo pennsylvanicus ) that he had shot but not quite killed. The heart of his scientific activities, however, was his carefully recorded observations on seasonal arrivals and departures, and his notes on disparate aspects of avian biology and behavior, including songs, nesting behavior, habitat, feeding behavior, and abundance.

Trippe grew restless in seeking to expand his expertise in natural history, believing that "the popular works are good for nothing," and were either insufficiently detailed or inaccurate, while "the scientific ones are too costly to buy except for rich men" (1(2):20). Yet by the time he entered college in 1866, his library boasted works by DeKay, Giraud, Wilson, and Nuttall on ornithology, several books on ichthyology and "three or four" on botany. On March 20, 1869, he acquired an early edition of Charles Darwin's Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, enjoying it thoroughly, though not quite accepting the argument from natural selection (2:20). "Darwin has almost converted me," he wrote,

As a book of facts it is unrivaled... He arranges these facts with precision; they come up one after another, likr bodies of troops charging upon a battery; and at the end of the battle so deep is the impression that they have made upon the candid reader, so irresistable is their collected strength, that he cannot but confess, that the author has carried his point, and that one of the least of his theories must be true.... I cannot but think that he has established beyond all manner of reasonable doubt, that many of what we call species are derived from other so-called species; i.e. that some species that are universally received by the best naturalists, are nothing more than other equally established species, in other stages of development. How far this transmutation may go on, I cannot pretend to say; but I see no reason why, if the one fact is admitted and admitted it must be, the theory does not follow as a matter of course.

The conclusions which Darwin draws on the subjects of Inheritance, Reversion, Selection, etc., do not entirely meet my assent. I cannot undertake, just at present, to state what my reasons are, for disagreeing with him; for that would require some study of the subjects, now a little rusty from inattention... (2:64-65).

Worst of all, Trippe lamented the gradual elimination of nature from his surroundings:

Trippe's hopes for his western experience were subjected to a quick dose of reality. Hired, as he believed, only because he was recommended by the President of the company, Trippe was clearly underemployed, and passed his free time in studying and reading natural history. But like Orange, Oskaloosa proved to be a "mongrel" place that could not satisfy his hopes. "I am on the outskirts of civilization here;" he wrote, "yet I am not quite far enough west to suit my fancy, either. It is 250 miles to the real wilderness; and in the real wilderness, I long to be. The Wild Turkey, the Deer, and the Wolf still linger here, but it is a rare thing to catch a sight of them, and a few years more will sere them exterminated." (2:196).

Trippe garnered an opportunity to work as a transit man with the Northern Pacific Railroad in April, 1870, and spent five months working in the wilds of western Minnesota, delighting in the new climate and the new fauna. In October, however, he was discharged, and with his eyesight failing, he moved to Saint Paul, reliant, he wrote, only upon his own resources for the first time in his life. After several months of unemployment, by using connections he had made during his work with the Iowa Central, he secured a position with the Albia, Knoxville, and Des Moines Railroad, and returned to Oscaloosa. Trippe's whereabouts after December 1871 are unknown.

From the guide to the T. Martin Trippe Journals, 1865-1871, (American Philosophical Society)