Mary Agnes Meara Chase

Background

Mary Agnes Meara Chase was born on April 29, 1869 in Iroquois County, Illinois, United States. She was the daughter of Martin John Merrill and Mary Cassidy.

Education

She attended public and private schools in Chicago, and developed an interest in botany, especially grasses, during her youth. In 1958 she was awarded an honorary D. Sc. by the University of Illinois, her only college degree.

Career

During the 1890's Chase worked evenings as a proofreader for the Inter-Ocean Newspaper, while she botanized and took extension courses at the Lewis Institute and University of Chicago during the day. In 1901 she was appointed assistant in botany at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, where she did line drawings for Plantae Yucatanae (published in 1903 - 1904) for her mentor, Charles Frederick Millspaugh. A job in Washington, D. C. , as a botanical illustrator for the U. S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) followed in 1903. Chase worked after hours in the USDA Herbarium, studying grasses, and in 1906 published the first of her scientific papers on the genera of the Paniceae. The following year she was appointed scientific assistant in systematic agrostology, working with Albert S. Hitchcock. Chase started her field collections for the USDA with trips to the southeastern United States. These led to publication, with Hitchcock, of The North American Species of Panicum (1910), considered a standard reference, and of Tropical North American Species of Panicum (1915). In 1913 she collected in Puerto Rico, and in 1917 she and Hitchcock published Grasses of the West Indies. As an agrostologist, or grass culture expert, Chase's responsibilities included determination of varieties of commercial grasses in order to expose many of the fraudulent claims for common grasses made by seed sellers, and to recommend the best species of grasses for livestock. Chase was also involved in the women's suffrage movement. In January 1915 she was among those arrested for maintaining a continuous fire fed by copies of all of President Woodrow Wilson's speeches that referred to liberty or freedom. She was jailed again in August 1918 for picketing the White House. Chase's First Book of Grasses, the Structure of Grasses Explained for Beginners was published in 1922. That year she traveled to European cities to study botanical collections. The following year she became an assistant botanist with the USDA. During this period she also was assistant custodian of the Grass Herbarium, which was transferred from the USDA to the United States National Museum (USNM) in 1912. In November 1924, Chase began her major field explorations of South America with a trip through eastern Brazil. She was no "closet botanist, " but enjoyed traveling on her own to remote regions of Brazil and Venezuela by train, donkey, and foot to collect specimens. Upon her return in 1925, she was promoted to associate botanist with the USDA. She returned to Brazil during 1929-1930 for another collecting expedition. Chase substantially assisted Hitchcock in his work on Manual of the Grasses of the United States (1935). After he died in December 1935, Chase was appointed senior botanist in charge of all systematic agrostology for the Bureau of Plant Industry of the USDA in 1936, and custodian of the Section of Grasses of the USNM, with responsibility for the Grass Herbarium in 1937. Chase retired from the USDA in April 1939, but she continued her scientific work. In 1940 she went to Venezuela, at the request of that government, to conduct a survey and recommend an agrostological program. Despite her age she amassed a substantial field collection for the National Herbarium. In 1951, Chase published a revised edition of Hitchcock's Manual of the Grasses of the United States. At the fiftieth anniversary of the Botanical Society of America in 1956, she was one of fifty botanists to be presented with a certificate of merit, as "one of the world's outstanding agrostologists and preeminent among American students in this field. " Chase's life was single-mindedly devoted to the study of grasses. Reputedly her first question when meeting someone was, "And what grasses do you work on?" If the new acquaintance did not study grasses, she walked away, bored. She often remarked that grasses are what hold the earth together, and believed that civilization was based upon them. Chase amassed thousands of specimens for the Grass Herbarium, and she described and classified a substantial portion of the grasses of America, leaving a bibliography of more than seventy publications. She completely revised the annotated index to grass species of more than 80, 000 cards, published in three volumes in 1962. This index and the revised Manual of the Grasses of the United States were her crowning achievements.

Achievements

• She was appointed research associate in the Division of Plants of the USNM and custodian of grasses for the National Herbarium. In 1958 she was awarded an honorary D. Sc. by the University of Illinois, her only college degree.

Works

More photos

• book

  • California Grasses and Grasslands

    (California Grasses and Grasslands, first published in 195...)

  • Grasses of the West Indies

    (This is a pre-1923 historical reproduction that was curat...)

  • First Book of Grasses: The Structure of Grasses Explained for Beginners (Classic Reprint)

Connections

On January 21, 1888, she married William Ingraham Chase, who died almost a year later. They had no children.

Father:

Martin John Merrill

Mother:

Mary Cassidy

Spouse:

William Ingraham Chase