Sarah P. Monks

Sarah P. Monks, seated, holding a starfish specimen, from a 1920 publication.

Sarah Preston Monks (1841 – July 10, 1926) was an American naturalist, educator, scientific illustrator, and poet, based for much of her career in San Pedro, California.

Early life

Sarah Preston Monks was born in Cold Spring, New York, the daughter of John Monks. The artist John Austin Sands Monks was her younger brother. She studied at Vassar College, where she earned a bachelor's degree in 1871 and a master's degree in 1876. She read one of her own poems, "Waiting for the Tide", at Vassar's 1871 graduation ceremony.[1] She pursued further technical training at the Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania.[2]

Career

While still in Philadelphia, she worked at the Academy of Natural Sciences, classifying ornithological specimens. Monks taught chemistry, zoology, and drawing at the Los Angeles State Normal School from 1884 to 1906,[3] and was curator of the school's museum.[4] She also taught about entomology and microscopy at the school's Teachers' Institutes (continuing education programs for teachers in Southern California).[5][6] Meanwhile, she worked on research projects in her own time, and in collaboration with the William Emerson Ritter's laboratory on Terminal Island.[7] She collected specimens and published scientific and popular articles on turtles, lizards, salamanders, spiders, shipworms, and diatoms.[8] She also published poetry. In her seventies, she consulted on topics including marine biology, entomology, botany, and geology from her cottage and garden in San Pedro, California. "I am pleasing myself as I please," she explained of her unconventional interests. "I have been bossed all my life."[2]

Publications by Sarah P. Monks included the textbook Anatomy Physiology Hygiene (though she was not credited as author of this text, only as illustrator), "A Partial Biography of the Green Lizard" (The American Naturalist, 1881),[9] "Regeneration of the Body of a Starfish" (Proceedings of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, 1903),[10] "Variability and Autotomy of Phataria" (Proceedings of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia 1904).[11] She was listed as a member of the Woods Hole Marine Biological Laboratory in 1888, and in 1894 as a founding member of the laboratory's Biological Association.[4]

Personal life

Sarah Preston Monks had a cottage named "Phataria" on Sea Pansy Bay in the Los Angeles Harbor, next door to the cottage of her friend, Charles Fletcher Lummis. She donated her library of scientific publications and other materials to the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County in 1915.[4] Monks died in 1926, in San Pedro, California, aged 85 years.[12]

References

  1. ↑ "Vassar College Commencement Exercises Yesterday" New York Times (June 22, 1871): 1. via ProQuest
  2. 1 2 Henrietta Boeckmann, "Interesting Westerners" Sunset (January 1920): 54.
  3. ↑ Keith Anderson, The Los Angeles State Normal School, UCLA's Forgotten Past: 1881–1919 (2015): 140, 143. ISBN 9781329317192
  4. 1 2 3 Geraldine Knatz, "Early Women Scientists of Los Angeles Harbor" Bulletin of the Southern California Academy of Sciences 115(2)(2016): 98-111.
  5. ↑ "The Teachers" Los Angeles Times (April 20, 1888): 8. via Newspapers.com
  6. ↑ "Teachers' Institute" Los Angeles Herald (March 29, 1892): 6. via Newspapers.com
  7. ↑ Geraldine Knatz, "The Marine Biological Laboratory at Terminal Island, Los Angeles Harbor" Bulletin of the Southern California Academy of Sciences 115(2)(2016): 84-97.
  8. ↑ "All About Diatoms" Los Angeles Herald (September 6, 1891): 6. via Newspapers.com
  9. ↑ Sarah P. Monks, "A Partial Biography of the Green Lizard" The American Naturalist (February 1881): 96=99.
  10. ↑ Sarah P. Monks, "Regeneration of the Body of a Starfish" Proceedings of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia 55(1903): 351.
  11. ↑ Sarah P. Monks, "Variability and Autotomy of Phataria" Proceedings of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia 56(August 1904): 596-601.
  12. ↑ "Authoress Dies" Santa Ana Register (July 12, 1926): 1. via Newspapers.com
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