Historical Notes |
Frederic Leopold was born on June 16th, 1895 in Burlington, Iowa. The third son of Carl and Clara Leopold, Frederic attended The Lawrenceville School in Lawrenceville, New Jersey and then later the University of Wisconsin-Madison. After graduation, he returned home to Burlington, Iowa where he worked in the family business, the Leopold Desk Company. Frederic married Edith Dixon when he returned from World War I. Frederic was the youngest child in the Leopold family, and with the help of his oldest brother Aldo Leopold, many years were spent researching and working on conservation efforts for the local wildlife. While Aldo traveled and did conservation on a world-wide scale, Frederic ran the family company with his brother Carl, and studied the habits of the dwindling wood duck population in Burlington. With the help of one of Aldo’s graduate students, Arthur Hawkins, they created nesting boxes for the wood ducks. Soon Frederic was monitoring twenty nesting boxes on the Leopold family property, and an estimated 5,000 wood ducks hatched and left the Leopold home for the waters of the Mississippi. Frederic continued to study the wood ducks on his property and the land of the Crystal Lake Club until his death on March 29th, 1989. |