Background

Mary Leonore Akeley (née Jobe) was born Mary Leonore Jobe, on January 29, 1878 in Tappan, Ohio, United States, the daughter of Richard Watson Jobe, a farmer, and Sarah Jane Pittis.

Education

Akeley received her Bachelor of Philosophy degree in 1897 from Scio (Ohio) College. From 1901 to 1903 she pursued graduate studies at Bryn Mawr. Her interest in exploration was sparked during her Bryn Mawr years, when she served as an assistant on a botanical expedition to the Selkirks, British Columbia and in 1906 she returned to graduate studies in history and English at Columbia University and received her Master of Arts degree in 1909.

Career

Akeley taught at Temple College in Philadelphia and from 1903 to 1906 at Cortland Normal School, New York City. While teaching at Hunter College, New York City, from 1907 to 1916, she conducted major explorations of the Canadian Northwest. In 1909 Jobe joined an exploring party in British Columbia and in 1913 studied Indian tribes there.

In 1914 and 1915 she explored the headwaters of the Fraser River and the glaciated region of Mount Sir Alexander, making the first two attempts to ascend this hitherto unnamed and unmapped peak, one of the highest in the Canadian Rockies. She continued her climbing, photography, and botanical collecting in the winters of 1917 and 1918. The Canadian government sponsored her work, published her maps, and in 1925 gave the name Mount Jobe to a high peak at 54°10' north latitude. Accounts of her explorations appeared in travel and popular magazines.

From 1916 to 1930 she operated Camp Mystic in Mystic, Connecticut, where she taught outdoor skills, athletics, and the arts to affluent urban girls and exposed them to her world of exploration through such speakers as Vilhjalmur Stefannson.

In 1926-1927 she accompanied her husband Carl Ethan Akeley on the Akeley-Eastman-Pomeroy expedition to East Africa and central Africa, serving as safari manager and secretary. After ten months in the field, Carl Akeley died of fever on November 17, 1926, at Mount Mikeno in the Congo. Mary Akeley directed the safari for the remaining five months, collecting museum specimens and completing gorilla observations and a park survey. She also led the party to Lake Hannington in Uganda to study and photograph its wildlife.

After her return to the United States, Akeley devoted herself to her husband's work. From 1927 to 1938 she was special adviser and assistant for the African Hall in the American Museum of Natural History and dedicated the Akeley African Hall when it opened in 1936. In 1938 she was appointed to the trustees' committee on the African Hall and African Collections. She also completed, with Belgian zoologist J. M. Derscheid, her husband's report on Parc National Albert, the Congo.

From 1929 to 1936 she was the American secretary of the International Committee for Conservation in Parc National Albert.

Akeley wrote and lectured extensively about her African experiences. In Carl Akeley's Africa (1929) and The Wilderness Lives Again (1940), she described the expedition and exhibit plans. Rumble of a Distant Drum (1946) described, through the eyes of a native boy, her struggle to continue the expedition alone. She also edited her husband's field notes and stories in Adventures in the African Jungle (1930) and Lions, Gorillas and Their Neighbors (1932).

In 1935-1936 Akeley journeyed through Swaziland, Zululand, the Transvaal, and Portuguese East Africa, a trip she described in Restless Jungle (1936). She made ethnographic observations and photographed the Swazi and Zulu people but was disturbed by their modernization. She also surveyed the wildlife of the Natal Reserves and Kruger National Park, and traveled with an elephant herd through the Maputo swamps of Portuguese East Africa. Akeley returned to the Canadian Northwest in 1937, traveling up the Canoe River on what she called "a journey of rediscovery. "

In 1941 she conducted a survey of the women's war effort in Canada and made a study of Alaskan defenses, including Kodiak Island.

Akeley was invited by the Belgian government to return to the Congo in 1946 to visit her husband's grave, to see the recently expanded Parc National Albert, and to prepare a report on all the wildlife sanctuaries in the Congo. She described this trip in Congo Eden (1950). In 1952 she made her fifth and last expedition to Africa, traveling through the Congo and East Africa, southern Africa, and central Africa. She retired to her home at Great Hill in Mystic, Connecticut, remaining independent and aloof from her neighbors.

Achievements

• Akeley was known as the woman who "brought the jungle to Central Park W. " She used her international fame to advocate preservation of wildlife and respect for primitive cultures. Her seven books, all on Africa, reflected a romantic view of traditional African cultures and stressed the dangers posed by unchecked hunting of wildlife and by economic development. She encouraged the establishment of a system of nature reserves throughout Africa and documented vanishing cultures, habitats, and wildlife through still and motion pictures. For her report on Parc National Albert and in memory of her husband, in 1929 she was awarded the Cross of the Knight, Order of the Crown, by King Albert of Belgium. She was inducted into Ohio Women's Hall of Fame in 1979 and the Connecticut Women's Hall of Fame in 1994.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Restless jungle

    (Exciting encounters with jungle animals throng Mary L. Jo...)

  • Congo Eden;: A comprehensive portrayal of the historical background and scientific aspects of the great game sanctuaries of the Belgian Congo with the ... region in the heart of the African Continent

    (First Edition. Shelf and edge wear. Some tears to DJ. Fox...)

  • Rumble of a Distant Drum
  • Adventures in the African jungle,
  • Lions, Gorillas and Their Neighbours

Views

Akeley advocated a strenuous outdoor life for girls and was active in the Camp Fire Girls. She believed that human beings found their highest development in the outdoor life. She stressed the need to study and preserve vanishing human cultures, flora, and fauna. She also opposed unregulated slaughter of wildlife and called herself a hunter with a camera.

Membership

Akeley was a fellow member of The Royal Geographic Society of London, member of the American Geographical Society, and member of the American Alpine Club.

Connections

Akeley married a famous explorer, Carl Ethan Akeley, on October 18, 1924. They had no children.

Father:

Richard Watson Jobe

Mother:

Sarah Jane (Pittis) Jobe

Spouse:

Carl Ethan Akeley

Akeley was noted inventor, taxidermist, and sculptor for the American Museum of Natural History in New York City.

References

• Carl Akeley's Africa; the account of the Alekey-Eastman-Pomeroy African Hall Expedition of the American Museum of Natural History,
• The wilderness lives again;: Carl Akeley and the great adventure,