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Annie Alexander
1867 -1950
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Louise Kellogg
1879 -1967
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Women philanthropists figure prominently in the early history of the
University of California. Some of these financial benefactors are
quite well known today because their family names, such as Hearst and
Sather, are attached to major buildings on the Berkeley campus. In most
cases these donors were women who outlived their wealthy husbands and
decided to expend much of the family fortune on worthy causes, including
the University.
One of the most intriguing and important women donors is, however, not
as widely remembered at Berkeley as others such as Phoebe Hearst or Jane
Sather. This was largely by her own choice. During her lifetime Annie
Montague Alexander refused most public recognition and avoided attention
for her substantial gifts to the University. Even the museum that she
had essentially created and sustained had to implore her for a single
portrait photograph of herself to keep amongst their records.
Her reluctance to be placed in the public eye may have been motivated
by her upbringing, personal shyness or rectitude, some early bad
encounters with a sensationalistic press, dislike of ostentation or
perhaps — at least in part — by the fact that she spent most of the
first half of the 20th century in a committed relationship with another
woman.
Annie Alexander’s benefactions to the Berkeley campus were extensive
and extended. She was largely responsible for establishing and
financially supporting both Berkeley’s Museum of Vertebrate Zoology and
the Museum of Paleontology. Alexander’s labors on behalf of science
came at a time when the “wild West” was vanishing, but West Coast
scientific institutions still largely lacked the research collections
necessary to attract and retain the best scholars.
Alexander’s dedication to building the two museum programs made a vital
contribution to the academic quality of the Berkeley campus; both
facilities are now regarded as among the best of their type in the
United States, with large, admired and, in some cases, unique,
collections of specimens.
Unlike many donors, Annie Alexander gave her own time and expertise as
well as money. In an era when women in the sciences were either
unheard of or (at best) considered unusual or even unnatural, she became
a premier scientific collector, spending months each year on field
expeditions. When she financed a large expedition she usually
accompanied it and, despite being treated as the camp housekeeper and
cook by many of her male research associates, found time personally to
discover and document a number of new species. She gathered, prepared,
and gave to the campus museums tens of thousands of specimens of animals
and fossils from all over the world.
Alexander was drawn to nature from her earliest years. Born into a
family made wealthy by sugar (she was a part heir to the C & H Sugar
fortune), she spent her early years growing up on the Hawaiian island of
Maui, before the family moved to Oakland. Alexander shared with her
father, Samuel, an interest in travel and a sense of adventure, and they
often traveled together. They were trekking through Africa where he was
killed in an accident on a visit to Victoria Falls in 1904.
Samuel Alexander had not pressured his children to marry, and Annie was
37 and single when he died. But her life was about to change. A few
years earlier she had started to audit classes at the University of
California, attracted to the lectures of John C. Merriam, a
paleontologist and professor of geology. With ample financial means of
her own she began to offer both financial support and time to the
University’s research and collecting programs, support which would
quietly continue for nearly five decades.
In 1908 Alexander sought a female traveling companion to accompany her
on a collecting trip to Alaska, perhaps so she would not be the only
woman on the expedition. In that era, two women travelling together
would elicit less attention than one. Alexander invited Louise Kellogg,
a 29 year old Oakland resident, schoolteacher, UC alumna (Class of 1901)
and cousin of Martin Kellogg, a distinguished Professor of Latin and
former UC President.
This trip marked the beginning of a 42 year relationship between the
two women. Kellogg enthusiastically joined Alexander on her collecting
expeditions and travels and became a knowledgeable collector in her own
right; in time, the two of them collected, documented, and donated more
than 22,000 plant, animal, and paleontological specimens to the
University’s scientific collections, often spending weeks or months in
remote areas of the American West, and once collecting as far afield as
Egypt.
Alexander and Kellogg were, by all accounts, devoted to each other,
forming an indefatigable team and a harmonious partnership. They
maintained separate residences in Oakland, but in 1911 bought,
developed, and began operating a farm on Grizzly Island in the
Sacramento River Delta, where they lived part of the year, quite
happily, in considerable isolation. Their farm was a serious working
venture and their asparagus, among other products, became nationally
known (the farm is now part of a wildlife refuge).
Alexander and Kellogg were extremely discreet about their personal
lives. Alexander’s biographer Barbara Stein likened their relationship
to what, in the late 19th century, was sometimes described as “romantic
friendship” between two women. “…with or without sex, romantic
friendships generally involved lives of love, shared values and
experiences and, often, hard work. Alexander and Kellogg maintained
such a relationship.” Stein also interviewed several former UC staff
members who knew the two women in their later years. She writes “one
former Museum of Vertebrate Zoology employee said simply, “(Alexander)
was a lesbian. We didn’t talk about such things in those days. Her
friend was Louise Kellogg and they did everything together to the end of
their lives. They were both interested in natural history. It was a
very happy relationship I think.”
If that first-hand recollection is correct we are entitled to remember
Annie Alexander and Louise Kellogg not only as strong and independent
women of their era, major early benefactors of the University of
California, and remarkable natural history collectors, but also as one
of the University’s earliest known and most distinguished lesbian
couples.
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