Esther Boise Van Deman

Background

Van Deman was a daughter of Joseph and Martha (Millspaugh) Van Deman. She was born in South Salem, Ohio, the fourth and youngest child of her father's second marriage when he was already sixty years of age. She had two older half-brothers.

Her one sister was nine years her senior; of her two brothers, only one survived infancy. The Van Deman (originally Vandeman) family was of German origin.

Her grandfather, John, who was born in Virginia in 1757, fought in the Revolutionary War and received a land grant in Ohio in return for his services. Here Esther was born and grew up in a comfortable farm house. Her mother had a Dutch-Scottish background and brought her children up in the Presbyterian faith. They all attended the South Salem Academy.

When the sister married in the early 1870's the family followed her to Sterling, Kansas. As a child, Esther showed considerable musical ability and for a time seriously considered embarking upon a musical career.

Education

Esther was graduated from the University of Michigan in 1891 and received a master's degree in 1892. The next fourteen years brought an alternation of advanced study and college teaching.

After a year of graduate work at Bryn Mawr, she taught Latin at Wellesley College from 1893 to 1895, then went on for further study at the University of Chicago, receiving her doctorate in 1898.

She taught at Mount Holyoke College from 1898 to 1901, studied in Rome as a fellow of the American School of Classical Studies from 1901 to 1903, and returned to America as associate professor of Latin and archeology at Goucher College, a position which she held from 1903 to 1906.

In 1936, she received an honorary degree from the University of Michigan.

Career

Esther enjoyed teaching but chafed at the restrictions imposed by a convention on college teachers. Too outspoken for her own good, she was constantly at odds with the administrators. The die was cast for research when in 1906, she returned to the American School in Rome under the auspices of the Carnegie Institution of Washington. She remained there, except for brief intervals, the rest of her life.

In 1907, while listening to a lecture in the Atrium Vestae in Rome, Miss Van Deman was suddenly struck with the possible significance for a chronology of the fact that the bricks blocking a doorway differed essentially from those in the main body of the wall.

From literary sources, she learned that there were at least as many periods of construction as there were different varieties of brick. The results of this research were published by the Carnegie Institution in 1909. She then determined to substantiate her method by subjecting various monuments to a similar investigation, publishing a preliminary study for the project in the American Journal of Archaeology in 1912.

World War I and a serious nervous collapse in 1917 interrupted the work, but four articles had grown out of her research before she turned her attention to a special study of the Roman aqueducts, which resulted in a magnificent monograph published by the Carnegie Institution in 1934. Had she resisted the lure of the aqueducts she might have brought to publication the results of her life work on the methods of determining the date of concrete construction which she had mapped out in 1912. When she realized that she might not live long enough to write her magnum opus, she put her notes in order so that the work could be continued by another.

Esther made a final visit to America in 1936. She became ill soon after her return to Italy that fall and died at Rome in the following spring. The day before her death her illness was diagnosed as cancer. She was buried in the beautiful Protestant Cemetery in Rome.

Achievements

• Van Deman was a leading archaeologist of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Van Deman extended her research to other kinds of concrete and brick construction and published "Methods of Determining the Date of Roman Concrete Monuments" in The American Journal of Archaeology. Her basic methodology, with few modifications, became standard procedure in Roman archaeology.

Works

More photos

• book

  • The Atrium Vestae (Classic Reprint)

    (Excerpt from The Atrium Vestae I take this opportunity t...)

  • Carnegie Institution of Washington, Publication No. 108; The Atrium Vestae

    (Leopold is delighted to publish this classic book as part...)

  • The Building of the Roman Aqueducts (Carnegie Institution of Washington Publication)

    (Harbound. Oversized octavo. xi, 440 p. illus., 59 plates ...)

  • The Neronian Sacra Via (American Journal of Archaeology, Second Series, October-December 1923, Vol. XXVII No. 4)
  • The House of Caligula (American Journal of Archaeology, Second Series, October-December 1924, Vol. XXVIII No. 4)

Personality

Esther was an attractive young woman with blue eyes, fair skin, and light hair. She was engaged to be married at three different times, but in each case found herself finally unwilling to surrender her complete independence.

Loyalty was the keynote of Miss Van Deman's character loyalty to family, friends, institutions, and any cause which she espoused.

For years, Esther denied herself everything possible to establish a trust fund to take care of her brother, a victim of congenital cataracts, together with his wife and his two daughters who had inherited his blindness. Her friends could do no wrong, and if by chance they did things of which she did not approve, she invented tales to explain or excuse their actions. If, however, one forfeited her friendship, she became an implacable enemy.

Like many Americans who resided in Italy in the confused years following World War I, she conceived an ardent admiration for Mussolini, from which she never wavered. Possessing a colorful personality, she was an inveterate talker, a result perhaps of a fundamental loneliness. Although some of Miss Van Deman's conclusions have been superseded by later investigations, the essential canon which she established for ancient construction still stands with slight modifications.

During her lifetime scholars of every nationality consulted her, but she gave freely of her time and information also to young students and indeed to anyone who was genuinely interested. Few names in Roman archeology are better known than hers.

Connections

Father:

Joseph Van Deman

Mother:

Martha Millspaugh

Grandfather:

John Van Deman

References

• Who Was Who in America with World Notables, 1607-2010: Index for Volumes I-XXXI and Historical Volume (Who Was Who in American Index) by Sara J Gamble (2010-12-31)