Anna Botsford Comstock 1854–1930

Born into a Quaker family in rural Cattaraugus County of upstate New York in 1854, Anna Botsford Comstock lived until she was three years old in a log cabin which she remembers well enough to describe in her autobiography, The Comstocks of Cornell. An educated female neighbour, Mrs. Ann French Allen, was an important influence in directing Anna Botsford towards higher education. Anna Comstock experienced the natural world in emotional terms and felt a sense of personal relationship and responsibility to living things around her. Comstock also faced sexist societal barriers as a member of the first generation of American women with university educations. During her Cornell career, Comstock worked with other founders of the nature-study movement. She called Wilbur Samuel Jackman of Chicago the father of nature-study. She also believed nature was a nurse for human health, an elixir of youth for the teacher, and a cure for problems of school discipline.