Elizabeth Cabot Agassiz

Elizabeth Cabot Cary Agassiz (pseudonym, Actaea; December 5, 1822 – June 27, 1907) was an American educator, naturalist, writer, and the co-founder and first president of Radcliffe College. A researcher of natural history, she was an author and illustrator of natural history texts as well as a co-author of natural history texts with her husband, Louis Agassiz, and her stepson Alexander Agassiz. Agassiz accompanied her husband on his journey to Brazil in 1865-6 and on the Hassler expedition in 1871–2; of the second, she wrote an account for the Atlantic Monthly. She published A First Lesson in Natural History (Boston, 1859) and edited Geological Sketches (1866). Early life and education Elizabeth Cabot Cary was born on December 5, 1822, into a Boston Brahmin family of New England ancestry. She was born at the house of her grandfather, Thomas Handasyd Perkins, on Pearl Street in Boston, Massachusetts. Her parents were Mary Ann Cushing Perkins Cary and Thomas Graves Cary (who was a graduate of Harvard University in 1811). The Cary and Perkins families were from England, and came to Massachusetts during the seventeenth century. Elizabeth Cary was the second of five daughters and seven children and was referred to as "Lizzie" by her immediate family and close friends. Because of her fragile health, she was tutored at home in Temple Place, Boston, which included the study of languages, drawing, music, and reading. She additionally received informal history lessons from Elizabeth Peabody.