Elizabeth Gertrude Knight Britton Records (RG4)

The New York Botanical Garden. All rights reserved. © 2005; 2006.

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Biography of Elizabeth Gertrude Knight Britton

Elizabeth Gertrude Knight Britton (1857-1934) was a bryologist, educator, and one of the founding leaders of the New York Botanical Garden. Born Elizabeth Gertrude Knight in New York City 9 January 1857, she was the first of five daughters of James and Sophie Anne (Compton) Knight. She spent part of her early childhood on her grandfather's sugar plantation in Matanzas, Cuba. She graduated from the Normal School (now Hunter College) in 1875 and taught there as a critic teacher (1875-82) and Tutor in Natural Science (1882-85). She married Nathaniel Lord Britton 27 August 1885. Their parallel botanical careers lasted until their deaths within months of each other in 1934. Both are intrinsically associated with the creation of the NYBG, and Elizabeth Britton became one of the foremost authorities in bryology of her time.

Elizabeth Knight joined the Torrey Botanical Club (1879), published her first paper in the club's bulletin (1883) and served as Curator of Mosses (1884-85) and editor (1886-88). She and her Torrey Club associates, such as John Strong Newberry and Nathaniel Lord Britton, were leaders in botanical science in the waning years of the 19th century and beginning of the 20th. In 1893 she was the only woman nominated to be one of 25 charter members of the Botanical Society of America. She joined Columbia College as an unofficial curator of its moss herbarium where she was instrumental in acquiring the collection of the Swiss bryologist August Jaeger. Though she lacked an advanced degree, she oversaw the work of doctoral students at Columbia, including Abel Joel Grout, who became a leading North American bryologist in the 20th century.

Mrs. Britton began her botanical career with the discovery of the fruit of the moss Eustichium norvegicum and the presence of a rare curly grass fern Schizaea pusilla, in Nova Scotia in 1879. She was a fervent fieldworker and made extensive collections in the Adirondack and Appalachian Mountains, Puerto Rico, Cuba, and Jamaica. In 1888 the Brittons sailed to England to examine the Bolivian collection of Henry Hurd Rusby at the Kew Botanic Garden. This visit has become legendary as Mrs. Britton's inspiration to create a similar institution in New York. On their return to New York they became involved with the Torrey Botanical Club to establish a botanic garden in New York City, and Mrs. Britton became a prime mover in the fundraising efforts in the 1890s that led to its creation. In 1912 she became NYBG Honorary Curator of Mosses, an unpaid position, providing annual reports from 1914 to 1929. In 1906 the NYBG purchased the William Mitten moss herbarium and she spent years on its reorganization and integration into the garden's collection.

Mrs. Britton wrote 346 papers, 170 of which were on mosses, with many more on ferns and wild flower preservation. In 1889 she began a series of 11 papers titled "Contributions to American Bryology" that described the genera Orthotricum, Ulota, Physomitrium, Bruchia, and Scouleria. Soon afterwards she wrote a series of 8 articles, "How to Study the Mosses," for a popular botanic periodical, The Observer. In 1892 she published a list of the mosses of West Virginia and from 1903 to 1914 a series of 12 papers on moss taxonomy in The Bryologist. While her research of the 1890s led toward a systematic study of the mosses of the eastern United States, a proposed Handbook of Mosses of Eastern America, she abandoned this project in favor of shorter papers. She also contributed papers on moss systematics to the project known as the North American Flora.

Early in the history of the NYBG she launched a public effort to raise people's consciousness about wild flower preservation. In 1902 she helped organize The Wild Flower Preservation Society of America and published a series of articles on the subject in the Journal of the NYBG (1912-29). In recent years Elizabeth Britton has become the focus of several studies on women in the sciences in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Among her many distinctions, Mrs. Britton served as president of the Sullivant Moss Society (1916-19) and chaired the Conservation Committee of the Federated Garden Clubs of New York (1925), but her stature as a brilliant, and female, scientist makes her unique. At a time when professional opportunities for women were rigidly delimited, Elizabeth Britton seems all the more outstanding through her leadership, influence, strong personality, and indomitable will. Her enthusiasm and dedication to botany have left a lasting mark on the NYBG and its moss collections.

Scope and Content

The Elizabeth Gertrude Knight Britton collection consists of correspondence, research and personal papers, and manuscripts & typescripts, photographic material, artwork, and printing plates covering her teaching career at the Normal School and her association with the Torrey Botanical Club and NYBG. Mrs. Britton's field notebooks are located in the NYBG Collectors' Field Notebook collection. In some cases, her field notes are located in notebooks of associated collectors, especially Nathaniel Lord Britton.

Restrictions

Access restrictions

This collection is open for research with permission from Mertz Library staff.

Copyright

Requests for permission to publish material from the collection should be submitted in writing to the LuEsther T. Mertz Library of the New York Botanical Garden.

Related Material

New York Botanical Garden

RG4--Nathaniel Lord Britton Records, 1875-1934

RG4--Robert Statham Williams Records, 1888-1938

PP--William Mitten Papers, 1846-1910

RA--Wildflower Preservation Society of America Records, 1894-1933

Gray Herbarium and Arnold Arboretum Combined Libraries, Harvard University

James Franklin Collins Papers, 1884-1935

George Edward Davenport Papers, 1872-1907

Walter Deane Papers, 1881-1929

George Golding Kennedy Papers, 1864-1896

Thomas Morong Letters, 1874-1888

Separated Material

From Series 5: Artwork -- Two oversize drawings of Ms. Taylor have been separated and removed to the NYBG Art & Illustration Collection #59.

Administrative Information

Preferred Citation

E.G. Britton (RG4), Archives, the New York Botanical Garden.

Acquisition Information

This collection was transferred to the New York Botanical Garden Archives.

Processing Information

Originally processed by David Rose, Archives Assistant, September 1999 with grant funding from The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH-PA 23141-98) and the Harriet Ford Dickenson Foundation. Converted to EAD v. 2002 in October 2006 by Kathleene Konkle under a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH-PA 50678-04).

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