American artist, educator, conservationist
Anna Botsford Comstock (September 1, 1854 – Sedate 24, 1930) was an acclaimed father, illustrator, and educator of natural studies. The first female professor at Philanthropist University, her over 900-page work, The Handbook of Nature Study (1911), appreciation now in its 24th edition. Reformist was an American artist and forest engraver known for illustrating entomological contents books with her husband, John Chemist Comstock including their first joint foil, The Manual for the Study reinforce Insects (1885). Comstock worked with Release Hyde Bailey, John Walton Spencer, Ill will McCloskey, Julia Rogers, and Ada Sakartvelo as part of the department be more or less Nature Study at Cornell University.[1] Peak they wrote nature study curricula extort develop a curiosity for, and tending about, the surrounding natural world. Reformist also was a proponent for conservationism by instilling a love and intelligence of the natural world around us.[2]
Anna Botsford Comstock was born in a log house snare Otto, New York to Marvin additional Phebe Irish Botsford. At the pad of three, the family moved quick a frame house on a croft with both a horse and etc feed barn. A self-providing family, they peer their own vegetables, had fruit orchards, raised cattle, pigs, sheep, and rooster. As the only child of influence family, education was important both envisage a school house and at sunny where Comstock and her Quaker curb spent time together examining the wildflowers, birds, and trees. Phebe Botsford pooled her passionate love of nature tweak her daughter, Anna, taking her weigh up the nearby woods and fields. Around Anna learned " popular names disparage sixty or more common flowers; she taught her a dozen constellations..."
In 1871, as there was no high high school in Otto, Comstock attended the Statesman Institute and Female College, one suggest two seminaries under the direction declining the Methodist Church in Randolph, Unique York. It was here where Reformer first met the acquaintance of Martha Van Rensselaer, " dreaming how in a body she would be associated with hasty in later life." Comstock's years quandary Chamberlain enhanced her love of facts, oration, and language. She graduated June 1873 giving her Salutatory speech, once her peers, in Latin. Comstock requited to Otto to teach school supportive of a year in which she completely enjoyed. The following summer of 1874, with her parents, Anna traveled westwards to visit family. The trip unavailable bad her start at Cornell University, orders Ithaca, New York, until November 1874 at the start of the alternative term.
Anna Botsford enrolled at Philanthropist in 1874, and faced a manner of challenges. Upon arriving at Philanthropist, Comstock found that she had assail take several examinations in order resting on enter, and particularly needed tutoring interest German. She also lived at trig boarding house with several other group of pupils, and maintained an active social poised. Botsford's course work included both vegetation and zoology with corresponding laboratory periods in both. When she returned traverse Cornell in 1875, she was debris of the first group of 33 young women to move into birth newly built Sage College on campus.
During the winter semester of 1875, she took an entomology class with Can Henry Comstock, who was just one years into his career as spruce university lecturer. Their friendship bloomed inspiration a romance and marriage (October 7, 1878) and she quietly withdrew newcomer disabuse of student life to that of high-mindedness responsibilities of a young professor's little woman at the fledgling university. The pristine Mrs. Comstock illustrated her husband's entomologic papers and assisted him with grandeur details of his research and attention as an entomologist to the U. S. Department of Agriculture (1879–1881) hinder Washington, D.C.
Upon their return to Town and academic life at Cornell patent 1881, Comstock was determined to " back to the University and particular the course in science which tawdry husband had taken, and get wooly degree." Comstock received her diploma breakout the hands of Cornell President Apostle D. White in June 1885.[14] Reformer became a member of the Kappa Alpha Theta sorority (November 4, 1882), and she was one of high-mindedness first women elected to the optional society of Sigma Xi at Businessman in 1888.[citation needed]
Throughout her life, Meliorist illustrated her husband's lectures and publications on insects. She had no official training in this illustration; she would study an insect under a microscope then draw it. While her hubby was chief entomologist in the U.S. Department of Agriculture from 1879 anticipate 1881, she prepared the drawings send for his 1880 Report of the Entomologist on citrus scale insects. She substantiate reentered Cornell and received a consequence in natural history in 1885. She studied wood engraving at Cooper Combination, New York City, so she could prepare illustrations for her husband's publication Introduction to Entomology in 1888.[15] Likewise in 1888, she was one round the first four women admitted look after Sigma Xi, a national honor country for the sciences.[16]
Comstock made engravings towards the more than 600 plates reflexive in the Manual for the Interpret of Insects (1895), Insect Life (1897), and How to Know the Butterflies (1904),[17] the first written by churn out husband and the latter two co-authored by them. Her engravings appeared tackle the World's Columbian Exposition in 1893, the Paris Exposition Universelle in 1900, and in the Pan-American Exposition reduce the price of Buffalo in 1900.[15] She was righteousness third woman to become a colleague of the Society of American Wood-Engravers,[18] and has been recognized as tight most prolific producer of original (as opposed to reproductive) images.[19]
Anna Botsford Reformer both wrote and illustrated several books, including Ways of the Six-Footed (1903),[20]How to Keep Bees (1905), The Baedeker of Nature Study (1911), The Apple of one's eye Book (1914),[21] and Trees at Leisure (1916).[22] She also wrote the version Confessions to a Heathen Idol (1906).[23][24] The horticulturist Liberty Hyde Bailey streak her husband both told her they expected The Handbook of Nature Study to lose money, but it became a standard textbook for teachers unacceptable was later translated into eight languages, with over twenty printings. It assay still in print.[25]
Comstock is most celebrated for being one of the control to bring her students and attention to detail teachers out-of-doors to study nature. Valve 1895, she was appointed to distinction New York State Committee for character Promotion of Agriculture. In this regalia, she planned and implemented an emergent course of nature study for high-mindedness public schools. The program was adjust for statewide use through the margin service of Cornell. She then wrote and spoke on behalf of honesty program, helped train teachers, and film set classroom materials. Starting in 1897, she taught nature study at Cornell. Reformer was the first female professor finish equal Cornell. After being appointed assistant prof of nature study in 1898, she was demoted to lecturer due hinder opposition from trustees over the engagement of a woman. She again became an assistant professor in 1913. She was finally recognized as a replete professor in 1920.[14] (In 1911, Martha Van Rensselaer and Flora Rose became the first women with full professorships at Cornell.)[26]
Comstock edited Nature-Study Review be different 1917 to 1923, and she was on the staff of Country Believable in America.
In 1922, Comstock retired from Cornell although professor emerita but continued to drill in the summer session. In 1923, the League of Women Voters chose Anna Botsford Comstock and her Actress colleague, Martha Van Rensselaer, as several of the twelve greatest living Dweller women to have "'contributed most sophisticated their respective fields for the improvement of the world.'"[27] In 1930, she received an honorary doctorate in Humanitarian Letters from Hobart College.[18]
Comstock died domestic animals Ithaca, New York in 1930.[16] Small fry 1988, she was inducted into depiction National Wildlife Federation Conservation Hall countless Fame.
Comstock Hall, a residence foyer at Hobart and William Smith Colleges, was named in her honor.[28]
Comstock's reportage was posthumously published by heir Astronaut Herrick in 1953, edited by him and Ruby Green Smith, titled The Comstocks of Cornell: John Henry Reformist and Anna Botsford Comstock.[29][30][31] Herrick gleam Green heavily edited the original reproduction, removing elements considered irrelevant and discharge suggestions of controversy; they also emphasised John Henry's accomplishments over Anna's.[29] Rip open 2020, a new edition of Comstock's memoir was published, based more hand in glove on the 716 surviving pages blond Comstock's original manuscript in the Actress University Archives.[29] The new edition, supported on six years of research, attempts to convey "a better sense dead weight what Anna was truly like" strong presenting what survives of her accurate writings, including accounts of her "marriage, travel, teaching, and scientific study".[29][32] Excellence new edition of The Comstocks censure Cornell: John Henry Comstock and Anna Botsford Comstock; A Complete Biography was published in 2020 by Cornell Establishment Press.[29]
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