Lady philanthropists find plainly in the early reputation for the institution of California. Some of these monetary benefactors are famous nowadays because their loved ones names, such as Hearst and Sather, include connected to biggest property throughout the Berkeley campus. Generally these donors are women who outlived their wealthy husbands and made a decision to expend the majority of the family bundle of money on worthwhile trigger, like the University.

Perhaps one of the most intriguing and vital people donors try, but not as extensively remembered at Berkeley as other people including Phoebe Hearst or Jane Sather. It was mostly by her own option. During the woman life Annie Montague Alexander declined many public identification and prevented focus for her significant gift suggestions for the college. Even art gallery that she had really created and sustained had to implore the woman for just one portrait image of herself to help keep amongst their registers.

Their resistance is put into the general public vision might have been determined by their upbringing, personal shyness or rectitude, some very early worst activities with a sensationalistic hit, dislike of ostentation or maybe — no less than partly — because of the simple fact that she invested a lot of the first 50 % of the 20th millennium in a committed union with an other woman.

Annie Alexander’s benefactions toward Berkeley campus had been comprehensive and prolonged. She was mainly accountable for setting up and financially support both Berkeley’s art gallery of Vertebrate Zoology and also the art gallery of Paleontology. Alexander’s labors on the behalf of technology came at one time after “wild West” got vanishing, but western shore systematic institutions still mostly lacked the analysis selections necessary to draw in and wthhold the most useful scholars.

Alexander’s determination to building the two museum tools produced a vital share for the scholastic top-notch the Berkeley university; both services have become thought to be among the best of their key in america, with big, admired and, sometimes, unique, selections of specimens.

Unlike numerous donors, Annie Alexander gave her own some time and expertise in addition to revenue. In an era when women in the sciences happened to be either uncommon or (at best) considered unusual or unnatural, she turned a premier clinical enthusiast, investing several months each and every year on industry outings. When she financed big expedition she generally accompanied they and, despite undergoing treatment given that camp housekeeper and make by many of their male study colleagues, discovered times directly to see and document numerous latest variety. She accumulated, prepared, and gave to the university galleries thousands of specimens of creatures and fossils throughout the whole world.

Alexander is drawn to nature from the girl earliest years. Produced into a family produced affluent by sugar (she ended up being part heir to your C & H glucose fortune), she invested her very early many years developing up on the Hawaiian isle of Maui, prior to the family transferred to Oakland. Alexander shared with the girl dad, Samuel, a desire for vacation and a sense of adventure, plus they typically journeyed collectively. These were trekking through Africa in which he had been killed in a major accident on a call to Victoria Falls in 1904.

Samuel Alexander had not pushed his young ones to marry, and Annie was actually 37 and single when he passed away. But the girl life involved to improve. A couple of years before she got started initially to examine classes within University of California, attracted to the lectures of John C. Merriam, a paleontologist and teacher of geology. With adequate economic method of her own she began to offering both financial help and time for you to the University’s investigation and getting tools, support which will quietly carry on for pretty much five decades.

In 1908 Alexander looked for women taking a trip partner to go with the lady on a collecting trip to Alaska, probably so she’d never be the actual only real woman on the journey. Because age, two girls travelling along would elicit much less attention than one. Alexander asked Louise Kellogg, a 29 year old Oakland resident, schoolteacher, UC alumna (course of 1901) and relative of Martin Kellogg, a distinguished Professor of Latin and former UC President.

This travel designated the beginning of a 42 seasons connection between the two ladies. Kellogg eagerly signed up with Alexander on her behalf getting outings and moves and turned an educated collector within her very own correct; over time, each of them accumulated, reported, and contributed more than 22,000 place, animal, and paleontological specimens to your University’s logical selections, often investing months or several months in remote regions of the United states West, and once gathering because much afield as Egypt.

Alexander and Kellogg are, by all reports, devoted to both, building an indefatigable employees and a good partnership. They preserved separate houses in Oakland, however in 1911 purchased, produced, and began operating a farm on Grizzly area into the Sacramento, CA lake Delta, in which they existed the main year, quite happily, in considerable separation. Their farm was actually a critical working venture and their asparagus, among different products, turned nationally identified (the farm is currently element of a wildlife sanctuary).

Alexander and Kellogg are extremely subtle regarding their private physical lives. Alexander’s biographer Barbara Stein likened her relationship to exactly what, in belated nineteenth century, was sometimes referred to as “romantic relationship” between two female. “…with or without intercourse, romantic relationships typically engaging everyday lives of fancy, contributed standards and activities and, usually, effort. Alexander and Kellogg managed these a relationship.” Stein additionally questioned several former UC workers who knew both women in their own later years. She writes “one previous Museum of Vertebrate Zoology personnel mentioned merely, “(Alexander) had been a lesbian. We performedn’t mention may be then though. The woman buddy was Louise Kellogg in addition they did every thing collectively on the conclusion of the schedules. They were both enthusiastic about natural records. It was a very delighted partnership I Believe.”

If it first-hand recollection try correct we are eligible for remember Annie Alexander and Louise Kellogg not only as strong and separate females of these era, biggest early benefactors from the institution of Ca, and impressive all-natural history collectors, additionally among the University’s earliest known and the majority of notable lesbian partners.