Mary Agnes Meara Chase

(1869-1963)

Chase became interested in botany and started collecting the flora of northern Illinois. Rev. Ellsworth Hill, a bryologist (specializing in mosses), hired her as an illustrator and she contributed to two Field Museum of Natural History publications. In 1903, she obtained a position as an illustrator for the U.S. Department of Agriculture's (USDA) Bureau of Plant Industry in Washington, D.C. Her new salary was $720 per year. She began a 30-year collaboration with a grass specialist, Albert Spear Hitchcock. When Hitchcock left in 1936, Chase took his place as a senior botanist. During her work at the Bureau, she made great contibutions to the study of grasses (agrostology) and her work had important applications for agriculture. She collected over 4,500 specimens from Brazil, Mexico, Puerto Rico and the U.S. and later donated her collections to the Smithsonian and the National Herbarium. She was active well into her senior years and went on a field trip to Venezuela when she was in her seventies.

Chase was also very active politically. She was a passionate suffragist who was jailed and force-fed when she went on a hunger strike. She supported the Prohibition and made generous donations to the Fellowship of Reconciliation, the NAACP, the National Women's Party, and the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom.

Mary Agnes Meara Chase died in 1963 at a nursing home in Bethesda, Maryland.

Contributed by Danuta Bois, 1998.

Bibliography:
The Remarkable Lives of 100 Women Healers and Scientists by Brooke Bailey, Bob Adams, Inc., Publishers, 1994