Annie Alexander
Annie Alexander
Annie Alexander
1867–1950
Annie Montague Alexander was a philanthropist, explorer, and naturalist. She funded and participated in natural history collecting and research.
“People naturally count it among their blessings to have a roof over their heads at night but how oppressive this roof seems to you, and the four walls of your room after a month or two in the open!”
Annie, 1901, 33 years old. Source: Photograph by W.D. Wilcox, Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, University of California, gift of Anne Perley (Wikimedia Commons).
Annie was born to a wealthy American family who lived in the Kingdom of Hawaii. Her father cofounded the Alexander & Baldwin company, which began by growing sugar cane on the island of Maui. Annie’s family moved to California in 1882. As a young woman, Annie attended courses in paleontology taught by John C. Merriam at the University of California at Berkeley. In 1901, she paid for his collecting expedition to southern Oregon and went along on the trip. Later that year, she wrote to a friend:
I like it more and more, this study of our old, old world and the creatures to whom it belonged in the past, just a much as it does to us today. Perhaps the study is all the more interesting because it is incomplete, there is so much yet to find out – but I think it is wonderful, what all at once you might almost say, this tremendous desire to know has done for science.
— Annie Alexander (1901), letter to Martha Beckwith (quoted in Stein 1997)
Annie organized, funded, and participated in expeditions in the United States and abroad. On these trips, she collected fossils and modern organisms. In 1903 she discovered a new lizard-like marine reptile from the Triassic period. John Merriam named the species Thalattosaurus alexandrae in Annieʻs honor.
Skull of Thalattosaurus alexandrae, the extinct reptile named after Annie. Source: Merriam (1905) Memoirs of the California Academy of Sciences, vol. 5 (Wikimedia Commons).
On the Saurian Expedition of 1905, Annie helped excavate some of the largest ichthyosaur specimens discovered, which were from Nevada. She brought a friend, Edna Wemple, on the trip as her companion. In addition to collecting fossils, she and Edna worked at cooking and other tasks. She noted that the men on the expedition were not always helpful when it came to maintaining the camp:
“We worked hard up to the last. My dear friend Miss Wemple stood by me through thick and thin. Together we sat in the dust and sun, marking and wrapping bone. No sooner were those loaded in the wagon . . . than new piles took their places. Night after night we stood before a hot fire to stir rice, or beans, or corn, or soup, contriving the best dinners we could out of our dwindling supply of provisions. We sometimes wondered if the men thought the fire wood dropped out of the sky or whether a fairy godmother brought it to our door, for they never asked any questions . . . .”
Annie met Louise Kellogg (1879–1967) in 1908. Louise was Annie’s partner for 42 years until Annie’s death, and it is likely that they had a romantic relationship. Louise’s presence allowed Annie to travel and stay in the field for long periods of time, because traveling with another woman was considered more proper than traveling alone. The women traveled the world and started a farm together on Grizzly Island northeast of San Francisco.
Annie and Louise, labeled "at farm exhibit with their shorthorn,” no date. Source: MVZ 6022, University of California Museum of Vertebrate Zoology (Arctos).
Annie was passionate about preserving natural history and founded and established two museums at the University of California at Berkeley: the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology (MVZ) in 1908 and the University of California Museum of Paleontology (UCMP) in 1921. The MVZ originated from a tragedy. In 1904, Annie and her father went on an expedition to East Africa. During the trip, her father was killed in an accident near Victoria Falls. Annie devised the MVZ project to distract herself from her grief. Annie created the UCMP in order to maintain influence over paleontological research at Berkeley after a falling out with John C. Merriam. Annie was upset when he accepted a position as President of the Carnegie Institute in Washington, D.C. Both MVZ and UCMP remain prestigious scientific institutions.
Annie died in 1950 and is buried in Makawao Cemetery, Maui, Hawaii. There are 17 different living and fossil species named after her.
Monument stone for Annie at the University of Colorado campus. It says: "Annie Montague Alexander: She found men a nuisance on her arduous field trips." Source: ReBecca Hunt-Foster (Wikimedia Commons).
Selected works by Annie Alexander
Alexander, A. 1905. Saurian expedition scrapbook 1905. Link In B.M. Waggoner (updated D.K. Smith), ed. 2017. 1905 Saurian Expedition. University of California Museum of Paleontology. Link
Biographical references & further reading
Anonymous. 2002. Gay Bears: The hidden history of the Berkeley campus.: Annie Alexander and Louise Kellogg. Link
Anonymous. 2019. Paleopoems: Annie Montague Alexander & Louise Kellogg. Paleopoems, 7 June 2019. Link
Berta, A., and S. Turner. 2020. Rebels, scholars, explorers: Women in vertebrate paleontology. Johns Hopkins University Press.
Childers, J.L. 2016. The woman beyond the portrait: Annie and Samuel Alexander’s 1904 expedition to East Africa. MVZ Archives, 7 October 2016. Link
Collins, A.G. 1998. The Annie M. Alexander papers. UCMP, University of California-Berkeley. Link
Lindberg, D.R. (with additions by B.M. Waggoner). 1996. Annie Montague Alexander (1867–1950). UCMP, University of California-Berkeley. Link
Lipps, J.H. 2004. Success story: The history and development of the Museum of Paleontology at the University of California, Berkeley. Proceedings of the California Academy of Sciences 55 (supp. I, no. 9): 209–243. Excerpted at UCMP History: Link
Merriam, J.C. 1905. The Thalattosauria. A group of marine reptiles from the Triassic of California. Memoirs of the California Academy of Sciences 5: 1–38. Link
Romeo, J. 2021. Annie M. Alexander: Paleontologist and silent Benefactor. JSTOR Daily, 7 February 2021. Link
Stein, B.R. 1996. Women in mammalogy: The early years. Journal of Mammalogy 77: 629–641. Link
Stein, B.R. 1997. Annie M. Alexander: Extraordinary patron. Journal of History of Biology 30: 243–266. Link
Stein, B.R. 2001. On her own terms. Annie Montague Alexander and the rise of science in the American west. University of California Press, Berkeley. Link
Stricker, B. 2017. Daring to dig : Adventures of women in American paleontology. PRI Special Publication No. 54. Paleontological Research Institution, Ithaca, New York.
Turner, S., C.V. Burek, and R.T. Moody. 2010. Forgotten women in an extinct saurian (man’s) world. In R.T.J. Moody, E. Buffetaut, D. Naish, and D.M. Martill, eds. Dinosaurs and other extinct saurians: A historical perspective. Geological Society, London, Special Publications 343: 111–153. Link
Whatley, R.L., Anna K. Behrensmeyer, and W.G. Parker. 2013. Revealing new Triassic microvertebrate faunas in the Upper Chinle Formation, Petrified Forest National Park, Arizona. IMR Crossroads, Fall 2013: 40–52.