Proposed Franklin Schmidt Memorial Fellowship 
for a study of 
E P.&IRIE CHICKET IN THE LAM STATES 
Franklin James White Schmidt 
In 1929 Franklin Schmidt resolved to dedicate his career to the conser- 
vation of the prairie chicken. 
He had just been graduated from a biological course at the University of

Wisconsin. He had been raised in the Wisconsin chicken country in Clark 
County. He had acquired skill in field research while employed on scientific

expeditions for the Field Museum. Herbert Stoddard, his friend and advisor,

had just shown, by his studies of bobwhite, how a technique for conservation

and management could be built up by first constructing a foundation of life

history facts. Schmidt resolved to do the same thing for prairie chickens.

He got a job as assistant to Dr. A. 0. Gross, who had been employed by 
the Conservation Commission to study prairie chickens. At the end of the

summer, when Dr. Gross had to leave,Schmidt was put in charge of the project.

For five years, with intermittent support from the Commission and from 
interested sportsmen, he worked early and late at his self-appointed task.

His work centered in the "sand counties" of central Wisconsin,
the largest 
remaining chicken range in the Lake States region. 
By 1935 he had won a research fellowship from the University, was within

easy distance of his doctorate, and had accumulated more new information

about prairie chickens and sharptail grouse than had ever been gathered 
by any naturalist, living or dead. At the insistence of the University, he

had set down the gist of his findings in a series of eight papers. His plan

was ultimately to publish a monograph on the chicken and the sharptail, 
equivalent to Stoddard's "Bobwhite." 
On August 8, 1935, while stopping overnight at the home of his parents 
in Clark County, Wisconsin, he met his death in a midnight fire, which also

destroyed seven of his papers and most of his photographs, notes and records.

The presumption is that he was overcome by smoke in trying to gather up his

manuscripts, on which ho had been working before going to bed. 
One of the eight papers had been submitted to the Wilson Bulletin, and 
will be published shortly. 
Proposal 
It is proposed to establish, at the University of Wisconsin, a 
Franklin Schmidt Memorial Fellowship for the study of prairie chickens and

sharptail grouse. 
The purpose of the fellowship is to resume Schmidt's work at the point 
where it was snatched from his hands, and carry it forward to the point 
where a monograph can be published.