Elizabeth Gray (born Elizabeth Anderson; 21 February 1831 – 11 February 1924) was a Scottish early
fossil collector. Gray created scientifically organised collections of fossils for several museums.
Life
Elizabeth Anderson was born in
Alloway in 1831. She and her family moved to
Enoch
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near
Girvan
Girvan ( gd, Inbhir Gharbhain, "mouth of the River Girvan") is a burgh and harbour town in Carrick, South Ayrshire, Scotland. Girvan is situated on the east coast of the Firth of Clyde, with a population of about 6,450. It lies south of Ay ...
in Ayrshire where they farmed and Elizabeth attended a small private school. Her father was described as an enthusiastic collector of fossils who had a type of trilobite named after him. Anderson was sent to a boarding school in Glasgow when she was fifteen. She stayed for a year
[ and then returned to help in the home.][R. J. Cleevely, 'Gray , Elizabeth (1831–1924)', '']Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
The ''Dictionary of National Biography'' (''DNB'') is a standard work of reference on notable figures from British history, published since 1885. The updated ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography'' (''ODNB'') was published on 23 September ...
'', Oxford University Press
Oxford University Press (OUP) is the university press of the University of Oxford. It is the largest university press in the world, and its printing history dates back to the 1480s. Having been officially granted the legal right to print books ...
, 200
accessed 18 Nov 2015
/ref>
Marriage (and holidays in Girvan)
She married Robert Gray on 8 April 1856 and they both shared an interest in collecting fossils
Fossil collecting (sometimes, in a non-scientific sense, fossil hunting) is the collection of fossils for scientific study, hobby, or profit. Fossil collecting, as practiced by amateurs, is the predecessor of modern paleontology and many sti ...
each holiday back in Girvan
Girvan ( gd, Inbhir Gharbhain, "mouth of the River Girvan") is a burgh and harbour town in Carrick, South Ayrshire, Scotland. Girvan is situated on the east coast of the Firth of Clyde, with a population of about 6,450. It lies south of Ay ...
. She was assisted by their children when they were able. They lived in Glasgow, where Robert worked in a bank, and their holidays were spent back in Ayrshire. Elizabeth's interest lay in documenting and discovering fossils and she trained her children to document their findings too.[ Robert co-founded the Natural History Society of Glasgow where much of their findings were exhibited. It was traditional that men took the lead and Mrs Robert Gray was a name she used. Robert would present and take credit for his family's work.][ At the time you needed to publish papers to join learned societies. Elizabeth's specimens were frequently used at the start of meetings of the Natural History Society of Glasgow but with poor attribution that implied that her husband or she were ''possibly'' those responsible.] However, in 1866 the first Gray collection was given to the Hunterian Museum
The Hunterian is a complex of museums located in and operated by the University of Glasgow in Glasgow, Scotland. It is the oldest museum in Scotland. It covers the Hunterian Museum, the Hunterian Art Gallery, the Mackintosh House, the Zoology M ...
in Glasgow by the two of them.[
The curator of the Hunterian Museum was ]John Young John Young may refer to:
Academics
* John Young (professor of Greek) (died 1820), Scottish professor of Greek at the University of Glasgow
* John C. Young (college president) (1803–1857), American educator, pastor, and president of Centre Col ...
who was the Regius Professor of Natural History at the University of Glasgow
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, motto = la, Via, Veritas, Vita
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and a strong supporter for women's higher education. He ran classes for women and in 1869 he invited Elizabeth to attend lectures in geology at his university. Her finds and their scientific descriptions became type specimen
In biology, a type is a particular specimen (or in some cases a group of specimens) of an organism to which the scientific name of that organism is formally attached. In other words, a type is an example that serves to anchor or centralizes th ...
s. Many of her finds are type specimens; the mollusc '' Lophospira trispiralis'', the starfish '' Hudsonaster grayae'' and the echinoderm '' Archophiactis grayae'' are all defined by fossils she found.
From 1874 they were able to use the expertise of the palaeontologists of Edinburgh as the family moved to follow Robert's new job. The Ordovician
The Ordovician ( ) is a geologic period and system, the second of six periods of the Paleozoic Era. The Ordovician spans 41.6 million years from the end of the Cambrian Period million years ago (Mya) to the start of the Silurian Period Mya.
T ...
fossils were described and classified. Robert died in 1887.
Further collaboration
Elizabeth Gray's work was drawn upon by many publications, such as Charles Lapworth
Charles Lapworth FRS FGS (20 September 1842 – 13 March 1920) was a headteacher and an English geologist who pioneered faunal analysis using index fossils and identified the Ordovician period.
Biography
Charles Lapworth was born at Faring ...
's ''Girvan Succession'' of 1882. Lapworth noted her work's significance as "the very first collection in which the exact localities and horizons of every individual fossil... erewritten down at the time of collection." Elizabeth was offered the chance to learn how to scientifically describe her own finds by Doctor Ramsay Traquair of the Royal Scottish Museum
The National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh, Scotland, was formed in 2006 with the merger of the new Museum of Scotland, with collections relating to Scottish antiquities, culture and history, and the adjacent Royal Scottish Museum (opened in ...
, but she wanted to concentrate on finding specimens for others to study as she felt that others had more experience.[ The palaeontologist Thomas Davidson benefited from Gray's lack of interest and he described collections of fossils that Gray sent to him between 1857 and 1885. In 1878–1880, R. Etheridge and H. Alleyne Nicholson published a ''Monograph of the Silurian Fossils of the Girvan District in Ayrshire'' using Gray's collection. When Nicholson's funding ran out so did his interest and Gray turned to F.R.Cowper Reed of Cambridge for assistance. He was thought of as a recluse but he was able to publish several papers based on Gray's fossils and it is thought that he never visited the site to see where they had been collected.][ William Kingdon Spencer worked on her fossils as did Jane Longstaff who sorted out the fossil gastropods. Gray was constantly organising and begging for assistance to ensure that her finds were described correctly and to this end she had a long and at times impatient correspondence with Francis Bather at the British Museum.][
In 1900 Gray was made an honorary member of the ]Geological Society of Glasgow
The Geological Society of Glasgow is a scientific society devoted to the study of geology in Scotland.
The society contributed to the understanding of Scotland's glacial history, and the relationship between the Earth's rotation and climate ch ...
, and in 1903, aged 72, Gray was awarded the Murchison geological fund in recognition of her lifelong contributions to the field. The ''ODNB
The ''Dictionary of National Biography'' (''DNB'') is a standard work of reference on notable figures from British history, published since 1885. The updated ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography'' (''ODNB'') was published on 23 September ...
'' notes that Gray was "a woman of considerable character, determination, and resourcefulness, with a phenomenally retentive memory."[
Gray continued gathering fossils until the age of 92,] and died in Edinburgh
Edinburgh ( ; gd, Dùn Èideann ) is the capital city of Scotland and one of its 32 council areas. Historically part of the county of Midlothian (interchangeably Edinburghshire before 1921), it is located in Lothian on the southern shore of t ...
in 1924.[
After her death, her work was continued by her daughters, Alice and Edith.]
Legacy
Gray has left extensive collections of Scottish fossils in a number of British museums. She and her family worked in Girvan from 1855 to 1941. The family created scientifically organised collections of fossils for several museums including the Natural History Museum
A natural history museum or museum of natural history is a scientific institution with natural history collections that include current and historical records of animals, plants, fungi, ecosystems, geology, paleontology, climatology, and more. ...
. Alice, assisted by Edith, continued to visit Girvan until 1941. Alice described it as the recreation of her childhood. They would cover where they had been working to avoid others discovering their current interest and they would not retire for the night until the days findings had been catalogued. Even the chippings from their specimens were retained so that they could be further split, in their house, to find a further fossils. Excluding her father's work the family's interest in actively collecting fossils lasted for 86 years.
References
Further reading
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Gray, Elizabeth
1831 births
1924 deaths
Natural history collectors
Scottish collectors
Women collectors
People associated with the University of Glasgow
People from Girvan
Amateur paleontologists