Ellen Hutchins

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Ellen Hutchins (born March 17, 1785 in Ballylickey House , Bantry Bay, County Cork , † February 9, 1815 in Ardnagashel House , Bantry Bay, County Cork) was an Irish botanist . She identified hundreds of new plant species and became known for her botanical illustrations in contemporary publications. Several plants were named after her. She is considered the first woman botanist in Ireland .

biography

Ellen Hutchins grew up in Ballylickey in the far southwest of Ireland, where her family lived on Bantry Bay in the Ballylickey House . She was the second youngest of a total of 21 siblings, of whom only six - two daughters and four sons - survived infancy; the other surviving sister Catherine died in 1789 at the age of 24. Her father Thomas Hutchins (1735–1787), from the Bantry Bay branch of the family and tenant of Lord Kenmare's lands, was married to his cousin Elinor from the Thomastown branch of the Hutchins (1759). She had been the only surviving child of Arthur Hutchins, who owned large estates on the Cork-Limerick county line between Mitchelstown , Thomastown, and near Charleville , and probably also owned the deceased Cregane Castle north of Charleville. The father Thomas Hutchins (1735–1787) died when Ellen was two years old. He had been a successful French wine smuggler and fishing entrepreneur, leaving his widow Elinor and children in good financial circumstances. Ellen Hutchins was sent to a school near Dublin , where she fell ill with malnutrition (healthy appetite was then considered unladylike). A family friend, Whitley Stokes (1763-1845), Physics - Professor at the University of Dublin , and his wife took Hutchins in her house in Dublin to care for them. During this stay, Stokes, an avid hobby botanist, recommended Ellen Hutchins to also do botany because it was a "healthy hobby". After her recovery , Hutchins returned to her remote home to care for her ailing mother, bedridden great-aunt Isabella, and disabled brother Thomas. There she laid out a garden that is known to our day as Miss Ellen's Garden .

Ellen Hutchins' health later deteriorated again, and in 1812 she became seriously ill. In 1813 she moved to Bandon with her mother after her eldest brother Emanuel forced the two ailing women to leave Ballylickey House . After her mother's death the following year, she moved to Ardnagashel House near Ballylickey, where she was cared for by her brother Arthur (1770-1838), who had created an arboretum there, and his wife Matilda. She died on February 9, 1815 at the age of 29, presumably of tuberculosis , and was buried in Bantry's Garryvurcha Cemetery. Her brother Thomas died shortly afterwards. After the death of Ellen Hutchins, the family disputes culminated in an armed conflict between two of her brothers; one of them tried to storm Ballylickey House with 40 armed men.

Her grave remained nameless. In 2002, the Hutchins family had a plaque erected in their private cemetery. A public memorial was inaugurated by the National Committee for Commemorative Plaques in Science and Technology in 2015 on the 200th anniversary of her death in Bantry's old cemetery .

Botanical collection

Seaweed from the Ellen Hutchins collection
Hutchinsia alpina - chamois cress

Ellen Hutchins, who had never finished school or attended university, specialized in cryptogame research . She primarily collected plants in the Bantry area and County Cork. She was often out in a small boat that someone rowed for her. She showed a talent for plant identification and learned quickly; she painted detailed watercolors of the plants and carefully prepared her finds. She sent this to Stokes, who passed it on to other botanists. Through Stokes she met James Townsend Mackay , a curator of the Botanical Gardens at Trinity College Dublin. He supported her in the classification of the collected plants, and she wrote articles for his publication Flora Hibernica . In 1807 Mackay sent her samples to the botanist Dawson Turner in Great Yarmouth for his publication Fuci . Turner's letter of thanks to Ellen Hutchins was the beginning of a seven year long correspondence with the exchange of specimens and drawings. A selection of these letters was published in 1999 by the National Botanic Gardens of Ireland in Dublin. This publication contains a list of nearly 1,100 plants that Hutchins prepared between 1809 and 1812 at the request of Dawson Turner.

Ellen Hutchins documented a total of 400 types of vascular plants , around 200 types of algae , 200 mosses and 200 lichens . She discovered several previously unknown species, including Jubula hutchinsiae , Herberta hutchinsiae , Leiocolea bantriensis and Thelotrema isidiodes . Their lists and records make it possible to trace the decline of species in Southern Ireland through agricultural practices and biological invasion of plants from other parts of the world.

Ellen Hutchins' work has been published in numerous publications, but never under her name. She was reluctant to agree to plants being named after her. After a visit to Hutchins in 1809, the renowned scientists Lewis Weston Dillwyn and Joseph Woods attested to her that she was "almost the best botanist, male or female, that we have ever met". After her death, her scientific achievements were publicly recognized by male colleagues. Dawson Turner wrote that botany had lost an "admirer" who was as astute as she was tireless and successful. Although he had never met Hutchins in person, after years of correspondence he felt deeply connected to her not only professionally but also personally, and in one of his publications he dedicated the poem to her on the occasion of the death of a lovingly loved sister of James Hurdis . William Henry Harvey acknowledged her achievements in 1847 in his book Phycologia Britannica : Botanists Around the World Would Gratefully Remember the Name of Ellen Hutchins.

Estate and memory

Street art in memory of Ellen Hutchins on the Clontarf Bridge in Cork

Ellen Hutchins' plant collections, drawings and documents are in several museums in Great Britain , Ireland and the USA . She bequeathed her own collection of herbal preparations to Dawson Turner, and most of it is now in the Natural History Museum in London . Her sister Matilda also gave Turner the drawings by Ellen Hutchins; over 200 of them are in the archives of the Botanical Gardens in Kew . Further preparations made by her, which she had sent to other botanists, are archived in Trinity College Dublin, in the collection of the Linnean Society of London in London (Smith collection) and in the New York Botanical Garden . Correspondence between her and Dawson Turner is also held in archives.

The Ellen Hutchins Festival was held for the first time in Bantry in 2015 and has been held annually since then. The festival is designed to honor their lives and work and is designed to focus on the biodiversity and beauty of Bantry Bay. The program includes workshops, exhibitions on botany and the work of Ellens as well as guided hikes, lectures, boat trips and other events in connection with the landscape around Bantry Bay. It was initiated by her great-great-great-niece Madeline Hutchins and received the Heritage Council's Hidden Heritage Award in 2016. In addition, an Ellen Hutchins Heritage Trail was set up on Bantry Bay, where Hutchins botanized.

literature

  • Madeline Hutchins: Ellen Hutchins (1785-1815): Botanist of Bantry Bay . Ellen Hutchins Festival, 2019, ISBN 978-1-916171-70-1 .
  • Early Observations on the Flora of Southwest Ireland: Selected Letters of Ellen Hutchins and Dawson Turner 1807-1814. In: Michael E. Mitchell (Ed.): Occasional Papers XII. Dublin National Botanic Gardens, Glasnevin 1999, ISSN  0790-0422 .
  • Ellen Hutchins. Ireland's First Female Botanist (1785-1815). In: Clodagh Finn: Through Her Eyes: A New History of Ireland in 21 Women. Gill Books, 2019, ISBN 978-0-7171-8319-7 .

Web links

Commons : Ellen Hutchins  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Irish Ard na gCaiseal 'high fortress' , is a townland in the Civil Parish Kilmocomoge , Barony of Bantry, Bantry
  2. ^ Mary Mulvihill: Stars, Shells and Bluebells. Women scientists and pioneers . Women in Technology and Science, 1997, ISBN 0-9531953-0-9 (English).
  3. ^ The hutchins family. In: ardnagashel.wordpress.com. February 4, 2016, accessed January 29, 2020 .
  4. ↑ a b c Jane O'Hea O'Keeffe: Voices from the Great Houses of Ireland: Life in the Big House: Cork and Kerry , therein: Sir Cosmo Haskard: Ardnagashel, Bantry , Mercier Press, Blackrock, Cork 2013, ISBN 978 -1-78117-131-8 .
  5. ^ Anne Secord: Hutchins, Ellen (1785-1815). In: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford University Press, accessed February 28, 2020 .
  6. ↑ a b c Ellen Hutchins (1785-1815). In: womensmuseumofireland.ie. Retrieved January 28, 2020 .
  7. ↑ a b c Ellen Hutchins: Ireland's First Female Botanist. In: ellenhutchins.com. Retrieved January 29, 2020 .
  8. ^ A b c Robert Hume: The Cork scientists who were snubbed by sexism. In: irishexaminer.com. January 29, 2020, accessed on January 29, 2020 .
  9. ↑ Ardnagashel House was expanded by Ellen's brother Arthur, who at the end of his life owned 300 acres (about 1.214 km 2 ) of land. In 1838 the property came to the brother Emanuel. after his death in 1839 to her brother Samuel, who set up a soup kitchen for the poor here during the Great Famine . In the mid-19th century, the Hutchins owned approximately 7,500 acres (over 30 km 2 of land). After the family losses in World War I, Ardnagashel House fell into disrepair and was sold to Colonel Ronald Kaulback after the end of World War II. Burned down in 1968 and rebuilt, it was redesigned as a holiday complex in the 1980s.
  10. ^ A b John Akeroyd: Bantry Bay's First Lady of Botany . In: Sherkin Comment . No. 50 , 2010, p. 13 ( sherkinmarine.ie [PDF]). The arboretum is part of the Historic Cork Gardens .
  11. ↑ ellen hutchins and ardnagashel estate on ardnagashel.wordpress.com ; accessed on January 30, 2020
  12. ↑ The Hutchins Family and Ardnagashel , private website www.ornaverum.org ; accessed on January 30, 2020
  13. ↑ a b ellen hutchins and ardnagashel estate. ardnagashel.wordpress.com, July 28, 2013, accessed January 29, 2020 .
  14. ↑ Ellen Hutchins, Ireland's first female botanist. BSBI News & Views, July 23, 2015, accessed January 29, 2020 .
  15. ↑ Michael Mitchell: Early Observations on the Flora of South West Ireland: selected letters of Ellen Hutchins and Dawson Turner, 1807-1814 . National Botanic Gardens Glasnevin, Dublin 1999.
  16. ↑ Clare Heardman: Ellen Hutchins -Irelands 'first woman botanist' . In: Botanical Society of Britain and Ireland News . No. 129 , April 2015, p. 48-51 .
  17. ↑ Patricia Butler: Irish botanical illustrators and flower painters . Antique Collectors' Club Art Books, Woodbridge, Suffolk 1999, ISBN 1-85149-357-3 , pp. 160 .
  18. ↑ Hutchins, Ellen (1785-1815) botanist. The National Archives, Kew, Richmond, UK, accessed January 29, 2020 .
  19. ^ Award for Ellen Hutchins event. southernstar.ie, June 29, 2016, accessed January 29, 2020 .
  20. ↑ Heritage Trail - Ellen Hutchins: Ireland's First Female Botanist. ellenhutchins.com, September 4, 2013, accessed January 29, 2020 .
personal data
SURNAME Hutchins, Ellen
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Irish botanist
DATE OF BIRTH March 17, 1785
PLACE OF BIRTH Ballylickey , Bantry, Bantry Bay, County Cork
DATE OF DEATH February 9, 1815
Place of death Ardnagashel House, Bantry, Bantry Bay, County Cork