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Summed up in stone

Nina Morgan recalls a pioneering palaeontologist

Words by Nina Morgan
14 March 2025
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Annie Alexander on the Saurian Expedition in northern Nevada in 1905 (Public Domain)

Annie Alexander [1867 – 1950], came late to palaeontology but left an enduring legacy. Born in Honolulu (in what was then the Kingdom of Hawai’i), raised on Maui, and independently wealthy thanks to an inheritance from her father, the founder of the California and Hawaiian Sugar Company (C&H Sugar), Annie put her money where her mouth was.

Always interested in natural history, in 1900 at the age of 43, she began attending the palaeontology lectures given by John C. Merriam [1869 – 1945] at the University of California in Berkeley, USA (UC Berkeley) and fell in love with vertebrate palaeontology and field work. Her first trip, in the summer of 1900 was to the Fossil Lake region in central Oregon. Then in 1905 she funded and took an active part in the two-month long Saurian Expedition in the Humboldt Mountains in Nevada, which recovered some of the best preserved specimens of ichthyosaurs ever found. Women could not travel alone, so she was accompanied by Edna Wemple – the first woman to earn a master’s degree in palaeontology at UC Berkeley.

A woman’s field work is never done

As the only two women on the field trip, Annie and Edna were expected to take on all the cooking and other jobs to keep the camp running. As Annie recalled:

“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 bones. No sooner were these loaded in the wagon for Davison to haul to Mill City 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…”

Offer made and accepted!

In 1907, Annie offered to fund a natural history museum on the UC Berkeley campus. But there were some conditions attached. As she wrote to then-UC President Benjamin Ide Wheeler [1854 – 1927] in 1907:

“Should the University of California within the next six months erect a galvanized iron building furnished with electric light, heat and janitor’s services and turn it over to my entire control
as a Museum of Natural History for the next seven years, I will guarantee the expenditure of $7000 yearly during that time for field and research work relating exclusively to mammals, birds, and reptiles of the west coast, with the understanding that the University of California would be in no way responsible for the management of the funds for carrying out the work, or selection of collectors….”

In 1908, the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology was founded, under the directorship of Joseph Grinnell [1877 – 1939]. That same year Annie met Louise Kellogg [1879 – 1967] who accompanied her on an expedition to Alaska under the guise that, “two women [in the field] would attract less attention than one.” Neither married and they lived and went on collecting expeditions together until Annie’s death 42 years later at the age of 82.

While Annie’s ashes were buried in Makawao Cemetery in Maui, a monument to Annie was later erected at the University of Colorado that summed up her life quite accurately. It reads:

“She found men a nuisance on her arduous field trips.”

Annie Alexander on the Saurian Expedition in northern Nevada in 1905 (Public Domain)

Acknowledgements

I thank Peter Lincoln and Richard Wrigley from the Westmoreland Geological Society for drawing my attention to Annie M. Alexander’s monument.

Author

Nina Morgan

Nina is a geologist and science writer based near Oxford, UK.

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