Roger Tory Peterson (August 28, 1908 – July 28, 1996) was an American naturalist, ornithologist, illustrator and educator, and one of the founding inspirations for the 20th-century environmental movement. Background Peterson was born in Jamestown, New York, a small, industrial city in southwestern New York, on August 28, 1908. His father, Charles Gustav Peterson, was an immigrant from Sweden who came to America as an infant. At the age of ten, Charles Peterson lost his father to appendicitis and was sent off to work in the mills. After leaving the mills, he earned his living as a traveling salesman. Roger's mother, Henrietta Badar, was an immigrant, at the age of four, of German and Polish extraction, who grew up in Rochester, New York. She went to a teachers' college, and was teaching in Elmira, New York, when she met Charles. The two married, and moved to Jamestown, where Charles took a job at a local furniture factory. Roger's middle name honors his Uncle Tory who was living in Oil City, Pennsylvania, south of Jamestown. He graduated from high school in 1925 and went to work in one of Jamestown's many furniture companies. One of his high school teachers, Miss Hornbeck, had encouraged his sketching and painting of birds and nature while he waited to earn enough money to buy a camera. Several months after graduating, he traveled to New York City to attend a meeting of the American Ornithologists' Union, where he met distinguished figures such as the artist Louis Agassiz Fuertes and up-and-comers like Joseph Hickey. Soon after, he moved to New York City and earned money by painting furniture, so that he could attend classes at the Art Students League in 1927-1929 and later at the National Academy of Design. He also managed to gain entrance to the eventually famous Bronx County Bird Club, though not himself from the Bronx. He hoped to attend Cornell University, but his family's finances were not sufficient for the cost of tuition. Instead, he managed to obtain a position as an art instructor at the Rivers School in Brookline, Massachusetts. In 1934, his A Field Guide to the Birds was published. The initial run of 2,000 copies sold out within a week. Peterson was married three times: Briefly, to Mildred Washington. For 33 years, to Barbara Coulter, with whom he had two sons. And for 20 years, to Virginia Westervelt. His second