Louise Kellogg papers, 1908-1940

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Summary

Creators:
Kellogg, Louise, 1879-1967
Abstract:
The Louise Kellogg Papers collection includes field notes, correspondence, and 35 mm slides. Kellogg was an early participant in the MVZ and the longtime companion of the museum’s founder Annie Alexander. Her vertebrate collecting trips took place between 1908 and 1941, mostly in the Western U.S. She was one of the first published female mammalogists.
Extent:
1.0 Linear feet
Language:

Background

Scope and content:

The Louise Kellogg papers include five volumes of bound field notes spanning the years 1908-1941 and focusing on the Western United States, one folder of correspondence spanning the years 1931-1965, and one folder of 35mm slides. The slides are reproductions of original images held by the Smithsonian Institution and the family of Louise Kellogg.

Biographical / historical:

Louise Kellogg was born in Oakland, California on August 27, 1879 to Anita Kellogg and Charles Winslow Kellogg. She attended the University of California (in Berkeley) and graduated in 1901 as a classics major. In 1908, she was invited by her friend Annie Alexander, the founder of the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology at the University of California, to be her companion on a scientific expedition to Alaska. The two women entered into a relationship that lasted until Annie’s death in 1950. Together, they went on many collecting trips, acquiring over 34,000 specimens for the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, the University of California Museum of Paleontology, and the University Herbarium. Kellogg’s first paper, entitled Rodent fauna of the late Tertiary beds at Virgin Valley and Thousand Creek, Nevada, was published in 1910, and represented only the second paper in mammalogy to be published by a woman. Over the course of the next five years she published five more papers. In 1911, Kellogg and Alexander purchased a ranch on Grizzly Island in Solano County, California, where they raised livestock and crops, in addition to collecting specimens in the still relatively undeveloped area. They also continued to go on collecting trips out of the Bay Area. After Joseph Grinnell, the first director of the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, died in 1939, Kellogg and Alexander began to focus less on collecting animal specimens and more on collecting plants. Kellogg continued this work after Alexander’s death in 1950. Her last collecting trip took place in Baja California in 1960. She died in 1967, leaving an endowment to the University Herbarium.

Markos, Stacy. “Louise Kellogg (1879-1967).” The University Herbarium. 2006. Accessed 30 May 2014. http://ucjeps.berkeley.edu/history/biog/kellogg.html.

Stein, Barbara. “Women in Mammalogy: The Early Years.” Journal of Mammalogy 77, 3: 629-641. Accessed 30 May 2014. http://www.jstor.org/stable/1382669.

Rules or conventions:
Describing Archives: A Content Standard

Access and use

Location of this collection:
3101 Valley Life Sciences Bldg, #3160
University of California Berkeley
Berkeley, CA 94720-3160, US
Contact:
(510) 642-3567
mvzarchives@berkeley.EDU
Website