Ethel Bailey Higgins Explained

Ethel Bailey Higgins
Birth Date:August 10, 1866
Birth Place:Vassalboro, Maine, United States
Death Place:San Diego, California, United States
Nationality:American
Fields:Botany
Workplaces:San Diego Natural History Museum
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Ethel Bailey Higgins (August 10, 1866 – March 9, 1963) was an American botanist and the curator of botany at the San Diego Natural History Museum from 1943 to 1957; she continued to serve as associate curator from 1957 to 1963.[1] Higgins authored Our Native Cacti (1931), and other popular works on plants of the southwestern United States and northern Mexico.

Early life and education

Born Ethel Phoebe Bailey on May 10, 1866, in Vassalboro, Maine, to Mary E. Pearson and George L. Bailey, Higgins was educated at the Wesleyan Seminary and Female College (now Kents Hill School) in Readfield, Maine.[2] [3] In 1900, she moved to Los Angeles, California with her parents and worked as a photographer, first in the studio of Frank G. Shumacher,[4] then setting up in her own studio, specializing in botanical subjects.[5] In 1914, she married John C. Higgins; the next year, the couple moved to San Diego.

Career

During her career as a photographer, Higgins produced a series of 300 plant portraits, taking up the study of botany to properly identify her subjects.[6] Higgins exhibited hand-tinted photographs of wild flowers during the 1915 Panama-California Exposition in Balboa Park.[7] In 1931, Higgins authored Our Native Cacti; she joined the staff of the San Diego Natural History Museum in 1933, becoming curator of botany in 1943 upon the retirement of Frank Gander.[8] Higgins compiled the first checklists of San Diego County plants, publishing “Annotated Distributional List of the Ferns and Flowering Plants of San Diego County, California,” in 1949 and “Type Localities of Vascular Plants in San Diego County, California” in 1959. Higgins's surveys have been updated, first in 1986 by R. Mitchel Beauchamp's A Flora of San Diego County, California and more recently by Jon P. Rebman and Michael G. Simpson's Checklist of the Vascular Plants of San Diego County (2014, 5th ed.), which includes new species and revised nomenclature.[9] [10]

During the 1950s and early 1960s, Higgins participated in several of the museum's research expeditions, collecting plant specimens in Baja California and on islands in the Gulf of California. As associate curator (working with her successor as curator of botany, Reid Moran), she helped build the herbarium's specimen collection. She wrote a series of interpretative guides to southern Californian plants and trees and continued collecting specimens in Baja California, Mexico, into her mid-90s.[11] [12]

Higgins died on March 9, 1963, in San Diego, California.[13]

Selected bibliography

Further reading

External links

Notes and References

  1. Book: Engstrand. Iris. Bullard. Anne. Inspired by Nature: The San Diego Natural History Museum after 125 Years. 1999. San Diego Natural History Museum. San Diego, Calif.. 978-0-918969-04-0. 142.
  2. News: At 90, Intrepid Curator Scoure [''sic''] Desert for Plants]. Daily Press (Utica, N.Y.). Associated Press. August 26, 1956.
  3. Web site: California County Marriages, 1850-1952, database, John C Higgins and Ethel P Bailey, 25 May 1914 (FHL microfilm 1033252). FamilySearch.
  4. Web site: Schumacher, Frank G.. University and Jepson Herbaria Archives, University of California, Berkeley.
  5. Carter. Nancy Carol. Ethel Bailey Higgins. California Garden. March 2011. 102. 2.
  6. Lindsay. George E.. Ethel Bailey Higgins. Madroño. 1963. 17. 4. 144.
  7. Southern California at San Diego's Exposition. Râja Yoga Messenger. 1915. 11-12. 34.
  8. Clark. Alice M.. Meet Ethel Bailey Higgins. California Garden. Summer 1951. 42. 2. [p.5].
  9. Book: Beauchamp. R. Mitchel. A Flora of San Diego County, California. 1986. Sweetwater River Press. National City, Calif..
  10. Book: Rebman. Jon P.. Sampson. Michael G.. Checklist of the vascular plants of San Diego County. 2014. San Diego Natural History Museum. San Diego, Calif.. 978-0918969088. 5th.
  11. News: It's not how old you are.... New York News (Sunday). May 3, 1959.
  12. News: Lady botanist, 91, ignores the years. San Diego Union. December 15, 1957.
  13. Web site: Department of Public Health Services, Sacramento. California Death Index, 1940-1997" database, Ethel B Higgins, 09 Mar 1963. FamilySearch.

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