a biography of the day-matilda coxe evans stevenson (ethnologist, 1st woman to work in southwest)
Matilda Coxe Stevenson
Born Matilda Coxe Evans
May 12, 1849
San Augustine, Texas
Died June 24, 1915 (aged 66)
Oxon Hill, Maryland
Nationality American
Fields Ethnologist
Institutions Bureau of American Ethnology, Smithsonian Institution
Alma mater Miss Annable's Academy; private study of law with her father, Alexander H. Evans; of chemistry and geology with Dr. N. M. Mew of the Army Medical School, Washington, D.C.; of ethnology with her husband, James Stevenson, of the USGS
Spouse James D. Stevenson (m. 1872)
Matilda Coxe Stevenson (née Evans) (May 12, 1849 – June 24, 1915), who also wrote under the name Tilly E. Stevenson, was an American ethnologist, born in San Augustine, Texas.
Life and career
Born Matilda Coxe Evans, in 1872 she married James Stevenson (1840-1888),[1] an ethnologist with whom she spent 13 years in explorations of the Rocky Mountain region. In the 1880s, the Stevensons "formed the first husband-wife team in anthropology."[2]
In 1885, Matilda Coxe Stevenson became the first President of the Women's Anthropological Society of America.[3][2][4]
After 1889 she was on the staff of the Bureau of American Ethnology of the Smithsonian Institution. Stevenson explored the cave, cliff, and mesa ruins of New Mexico, studied all the Pueblo tribes of that state, and from 1904 to 1910 made a special study of the Taos and Tewa Native Americans. Artifacts collected by Matilda and James Stevenson are in the collections of the Department of Anthropology in the National Museum of Natural History of the Smithsonian Institution. Papers from Stevenson are in the Institution's National Anthropological Archives.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matilda_Coxe_Stevenson
Matilda Coxe Evans Stevenson
by Jennifer McBride
Matilda Coxe Evans Stevenson was an American ethnologist and the first woman to work in the American Southwest. Stevenson is best known for her work among the Zuni people, and for her role as the co-founder of the Women's Anthropological Society of America.
Matilda Coxe Evans Stevenson was born May 12, 1849 in San Augustine, Texas. While Evans was still an infant, her parents Alexander H. Evans of Virginia and Maria Coxe Evans of New Jersey, moved to Washington, D.C., where her father worked as an attorney, writer and journalist. Evans and her four siblings were raised in a privileged, middle-class household. They were taught by their mother with the assistance of a private governess before attending private schools in Philadelphia. Evans received her only formal education at Miss Annable's Academy, which was described as a "sheltered female seminary." In 1868, after completing her education at Miss Annable's, Evans returned to Washington, D.C., where she studied law with her father (while serving as a law clerk in his office), as well as chemistry and geology with Dr. N. M. Mew of the Army Medical School of Washington, D.C. Evans never earned a formal college or advanced degree, due to the educational exclusion of women in higher learning institutions at that time. Evans' effort to obtain a secondary education was further compounded by her interest in science (Evans had intended to become a mineralogist), a discipline that was specifically closed to women.
In April 1872, Evans married Colonel James Stevenson of Kentucky. James Stevenson was an executive officer of the U.S. Geological Survey and a self-taught geologist, naturalist and anthropologist. After her marriage, Stevenson accompanied her husband on numerous geological surveys in Colorado, Idaho, Wyoming and Utah. Stevenson helped her husband construct valuable fossil and ornithological collections, that are now housed at the Smithsonian Institution and assisted him in his famous 1978 study of geysers in the Yellowstone region. During one of these trips in the mid-1870's, Stevenson made her first ethnographic study on the Ute and Arapaho. She learned the basics of ethnographic technique from her husband, and like most anthropologists of the period, was largely self-taught, learning through trial and error. Unfortunately, Stevenson nor any other member of the expedition published the results of her ethnographic study.
Stevenson made her first of several trips to the Southwest in 1879. She was a member of the first collecting and research expedition of the newly formed Bureau of Ethnology, under the direction of John Wesley Powell. Stevenson's position on the team was "volunteer coadjutor in ethnology", which meant assistant to her husband, who was leading the expedition. The research team spent six months in Zuni and Hopi, collecting ethnographic objects, surveying local archeological sites, gathering materials from caves and shrines and amassing information on various cultural and social aspects of Pueblo life.
Stevenson's first publication, "The Zuni and the Zunians," was published in 1881 and was reflective of her experiences on the expedition. It dealt with the basic categories of Zuni life and was the first scholarly ethnography of the Zuni published for a popular audience. This trip also led to many unrecognized publications, for Stevenson helped her husband prepare reports, analyses, and catalogs of the collection that were later published in the Bureau of Ethnology Annual Reports. Parezo (1988) claims that James Stevenson disliked writing reports and that he lacked the creative mind and discipline needed for writing. Creativity and synthesis were thus left to Stevenson, who excelled in both areas. Stevenson's contributions were largely unacknowledged until 1884, when British anthropologist Edwin B. Tylor visited the Stevenson's and discovered the extent of her original contributions, and publicly commented on her work.
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http://www2.webster.edu/~woolflm/matildastevenson.html
Matilda Coxe Evans Stevenson
1849 - 1915
A pioneer in American ethnology, Matilda Coxe Evans Stevenson was the first woman to work in the American Southwest. Known especially for her work with the Zuni, Matilda Stevenson was part of the first research expedition undertaken by the Bureau of Ethnology, assisting in the collection of thousands of ethnographic objects and in gathering important aspects of Pueblo cultural and social life.
Largely self-taught, Evans Stevenson never earned a formal undergraduate or advanced degree which to some makes her accomplishments are all the more impressive.
She was the first American ethnologist to consider children and women "worthy of notice" (Parezo 1999:41), and she was able to use her female identity to obtain information not easily accessible to male ethnographers. However, Evans Stevenson's own primary interest was religion.
Evans Stevenson often felt hindered in her professional advancement (both in terms of recognition and, in the beginning, funding) and found it necessary to fight for women's professional equality. She was the first woman to be paid as a staff government anthropologist, being officially hired in the late 1890s as a temporary employee with the Bureau. The position was to become permanent and she would hold it until her death in 1915. Throughout her career, however, Evans Stevenson was always paid considerably less than her male counterparts.
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http://anthropology.usf.edu/women/stevenson/Stevenson.htm