Mary Agnes Chase

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Mary Agnes Chase

Mary Agnes Chase, born Mary Agnes Meara (born April 20, 1869 in Iroquois County , Illinois , † September 24, 1963 in Bethesda , Maryland ), was an American botanist . As an agrostologist , she researched and worked on grasses , and she also actively campaigned for women's suffrage . Your Author abbreviation is Chase .

Chase attributed her vital interest in grasses to their frequent mention in the Bible. For them, grasses held the earth together and once made it possible for humans to give up life in caves in order to follow the herds of animals.

Life

Mary Agnes Chase in Brazil in 1929

Mary Agnes Chase was born Mary Agnes Meara in Iroquois County, Illinois in 1869 to Martin Meara, a blacksmith from Tipperary, Ireland who worked for the railroad, and Mary Cassidy Brannick Meara. She had four siblings. When she was two years old, her father died and her mother moved the children to Grandmother's in Chicago . With reservations about Irish immigrants, the family changed the last name from Meara to Merrill. In Chicago, Mary Agnes Chase attended Grammar School only because she was expected to support the family. She then worked as a proofreader and typesetter for a newspaper and at the age of 19 married William Chase, the editor of the School Herald. William Chase died of tuberculosis just a year after the wedding, leaving her with a large debt. Mary Agnes Chase paid off the debt, lived frugally, worked nightly for the newspaper, and took daytime classes at the Lewis Institute and the University of Chicago without getting a formal degree.

Visiting the plant exhibit at the World's Columbian Exposition in 1893 with her nephew Virginius Chase, who later became a botanist, sparked her interest in botany and began personal studies of flora in northern Illinois. She created her first field book in 1897. It contains swamp plants that she collected on excursions. On an excursion she met bryologist Ellsworth Jerome Hill, a priest who was already retired. Hill offered to teach her all he knew about botany. Hill hadn't studied botany either. In return, Chase illustrated newly found species for Hill. Hill also explained how a microscope works to Chase . This allowed Chase to work as a meat inspector on the Union Stock Yards .

It was through Hill that Chase met the Curator of Botany at the Field Museum of Natural History , Charles Frederick Millspaugh . He instructed them to be published in 1900 book Plantae Utowanae and from 1903 to 1904 published book Plantae Yucatanae to illustrate. In 1903 she applied for a job as a botanical object draftswoman with the United States Department of Agriculture . She got a job in the forage plants department in Washington, DC Chase worked there initially as an illustrator for the agrostologist Albert Spear Hitchcock . Later she was his research assistant and after his death in 1935 she succeeded him in that position.

Mary Agnes Chase traveled extensively in the years 1913, 1924 and 1929 to 1930 through North and South America. She also collected grasses in Europe. She spent seven months in Brazil and discovered 500 species there.

After she retired in 1939, she continued to work without pay as a research assistant and guardian of the grasses of the National Herbarium . Until the end of her life, she was mostly at work five to six days a week. As a consultant to the Venezuelan Ministry of Agriculture, she traveled to Venezuela to help it develop a range management program. Her field books from 1897 to 1959 are in the collection of the Smithsonian Institution . Her first scientific publication appeared in 1906, followed in 1910 by The North American Species of Panicum , which she published together with Hitchcock, followed in 1915 by Tropical North American Species of Panicum and in 1917 by Grasses of the West Indies .

Chase supported young botanists and built a network in which they could communicate professionally and exchange samples. Mary Agnes Chase always kept her home, Casa Contenta , open to botanists.

Mary Agnes Chase died at the age of 94 in a nursing home in Bethesda, Maryland.

Commitment to women's suffrage

Mary Agnes Chase joined the radical National Woman's Party . Because of her commitment, she was threatened with dismissal from the US Department of Agriculture. As a campaigner for women's suffrage, she was imprisoned for participating in demonstrations in 1918 and 1919.

Awards

Works

  • First Book of Grasses: The Structure of Grasses explained for Beginners . New York: The Macmillan Company, 1922. OCLC 485016096
  • Manual of Grasses of the United States . Washington, DC: US ​​Dept. of Agriculture, 1950. OCLC 228775547
  • Index to Grass Species , with Cornelia D. Niles. Boston: GK Hall, 1962. OCLC 313676122

Web links

Commons : Mary Agnes Chase  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f Hitchcock-Chase | Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation. In: huntbotanical.org. Retrieved January 14, 2019 .
  2. ↑ Chase, Mary Agnes | Encyclopedia.com. In: encyclopedia.com. Retrieved January 14, 2019 .
  3. ↑ a b c d e Chase, Mary Agnes (1869-1963) on JSTOR. In: jstor.org. plants.jstor.org, accessed January 14, 2019 .
  4. ^ Agnes Chase | Early Women in Science. In: biodiversityexhibition.com. earlywomeninscience.biodiversityexhibition.com, accessed January 14, 2019 .
  5. ↑ a b c swaing: Mary Agnes Chase. In: si.edu. Smithsonian Institution Archives, 2017, accessed January 15, 2019 .
  6. ↑ Lotte Burkhardt: Directory of eponymous plant names . Extended Edition. Botanic Garden and Botanical Museum Berlin, Free University Berlin Berlin 2018. [1]
personal data
SURNAME Chase, Mary Agnes
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Meara, Mary Agnes (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American botanist
DATE OF BIRTH April 20, 1869
PLACE OF BIRTH Iroquois County , Illinois
DATE OF DEATH September 24, 1963
Place of death Bethesda , Maryland