Thomas Sadler Roberts

Roberts was an influential educator on birds and their conservation and helped establish the Bell Museum of Natural History.

In his younger days, Roberts accompanied his father to shoot birds including the passenger pigeon and upland sandpiper for food.

One member Robert Williams, whose father owned a bookstore and had access to a library known as the Minneapolis Athenaeum, made it possible for them to research many of their observations.

[1] In his valedictory talk at the Minneapolis High School in 1877 Roberts spoke about how money was sought with vengeance by society and noted that in order to be truly happy one needed "recreation for the mind".

He trained his office assistant Mabel Densmore in the study of birds and she later became an accomplished ornithologist.

[3] From 1887 he served at St. Barnabas Hospital as chief of staff and from 1901 to 1913, taught pediatrics at the University of Minnesota medical school.

[5] In 1914 Roberts served as a doctor on the Hildebret a yacht in the Everglades that was used by his patient James Stroud Bell who had been advised that the Florida sun could improve his health.

[8][9] Roberts' took up the work to document the birds of Minnesota after several of his friends died and his wife had become invalid.

[7][12] Roberts received the AOU's Brewster Medal in 1938 and a Sigma Xi letter of commendation for work in science in 1941.