Heroines with unusual names always intrigue me, and
Etheldred Benett is an excellent example. Etheldred was born in either 1775 or
1776, the oldest daughter of a wealthy family in Wiltshire. Unlike Mary Anning,
no likenesses exist of her other than a proprietary silhouette. Like Mary Anning, she discovered early on a fascination with fossils and began
collecting them by the time she was twenty-three.
Etheldred had a number of places she could go. There were
quarries in the area, where the stratigraphy lay bare. She took such careful note
of it that she was later able to map that area of Wiltshire. She also spent holidays
on the Dorset Coast, what today is known as the Jurassic Coast, where she might
have collected fossils as readily as Mary Anning did.
And she wasn’t shy about sharing her knowledge, or her specimens.
Her “curiosity cabinet” in her home in Wiltshire was a must-see for anyone
studying geology of the area. She corresponded with many of the premiere geologists
of the time and sent duplicate specimens to museums and other collectors. In
fact, she sent some unknown specimens to them, hoping to have them named, but
the fossils were ultimately returned to her on their deaths, still unnamed for
scientific purposes.
Sir Richard Colt Hoare, a Wiltshire archaeologist and historian,
urged her to publish her studies in a catalog, which she did in 1831. She
dedicated it to the vice-president of the Geographical Society, calling him her
“friend.” In the first pages, she writes that she had intended to do so
earlier, but “unforeseen circumstances” and “ill health” conspired to delay the
publication.
Tsar Nicholas I was so impressed with her work that he made
her a member of the Natural History Society of Moscow and granted her an
honorary doctorate in civil law from St. Petersburg University at a time when
no woman was admitted. It seems her name confounded the Tsar, and he thought
her a man!
Etheldred passed away in 1845, and most of her collection of
thousands of specimens was purchased by an American who donated it to the
Natural History Museum of Philadelphia. She is widely recognized as the first
female geologist.
Even in Russia.
2 comments:
Absolutely fascinating. I used to have some fossils but I think my siblings have them now. I wanted to be an archeologist when I was about 10. Too late now.
Thanks, Paula! There is a hillside to the south of us. In elementary school, our fourth-grade teacher took us there to harvest "cannon balls." Amidst of hillside of clay, where flat pieces chipped off, you would occasionally find a round ball. Dig it out and carefully chop it in half, and there was a fossil embedded. Some were shells and trilobites, but my father found a massive one with a crab inside. We still have it. :-)
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