Margaret R. Wood Bancroft (July 10, 1893, Glasgow, KentuckyAugust 30, 1986, San Diego, California), was an American naturalist and explorer of Baja California. She was also a social leader.

Biography

Born on July 10, 1893, in Glasgow, Kentucky, Margaret Wood was raised on a ranch in the San Diego back country and was briefly a silent movie actress (1913–1917), working with Hobart Bosworth, Dustin Farnum, Mack Sennett,

D.W. Griffith David Wark Griffith (January 22, 1875 – July 23, 1948) was an American film director. Considered one of the most influential figures in the history of the motion picture, he pioneered many aspects of film editing and expanded the art of the na ...

, and

Mabel Normand Amabel Ethelreid Normand (November 9, 1893 – February 23, 1930), better known as Mabel Normand, was an American silent film actress, screenwriter, director, and producer. She was a popular star and collaborator of Mack Sennett in their K ...

. She married ornithologist and oölogist Griffing Bancroft (son of historian Hubert Howe Bancroft) in 1917 and was active in the social and political life of San Diego County, with membership in the Red Cross, the Junior League, and the San Diego Society of Natural History. In 1930, she participated in a five-month journey to explore and document the bird and animal life of the Baja California coastline. The expedition included ornithologist

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(California School of Technology), zoologist

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(California School of Technology), F. S. Rogers ( San Diego Natural History Museum), Albert Kroeckel, and J. Elton Green (University of California, Berkeley); Griffing Bancroft published a memoir of the journey in 1932, ''The Flight of the Least Petrel.'' In 1935, Bancroft led a small expedition to search for the legendary lost mission of Santa Ysabel in the Sierra de San Pedro Mártir, Baja California. She discovered cave symbols that contributed to archaeological study of the migration of ancient Native American tribes. Bancroft traveled extensively on oölogical and archaeological expeditions to Baja California, Sonora, and the islands of the Gulf of California. Interested in many areas of natural history, Bancroft collected snake specimens for the herpetologist

Laurence Klauber Laurence Monroe Klauber (December 21, 1883 in San Diego, California – May 8, 1968), was an American herpetologist and the foremost authority on rattlesnakes. He was the first curator of reptiles and amphibians at the San Diego Natural History M ...

; in 1943, he named a new subspecies of ''Sonora semiannulata'' after her, ''Sonora bancroftae'' (San Telmo ground snake). From snake specimens Bancroft collected in 1932 on Isla San Geronimo, Baja California Norte, herpetologist Charles Shaw identified the species ''Anniella geronimensis'' (1940). In 1971, Bancroft donated the Griffing Bancroft Library, with significant volumes on the history of the West, California, and Baja California, to the University of California, San Diego. She died in La Jolla, San Diego, California, on August 30, 1986.

Legacy

Th
San Diego Natural History Museum Research Library
houses a significant collection of Margaret Wood Bancroft's personal scrapbooks, letters, writings, and photographs. The

Bancroft Library The Bancroft Library in the center of the campus of the University of California, Berkeley, is the university's primary special-collections library. It was acquired from its founder, Hubert Howe Bancroft, in 1905, with the proviso that it retai ...

at the University of California, Berkeley holds extensive archival material related to the Bancroft family including works by and about Griffing and Margaret Wood Bancroft.

Footnotes

Sources

* “2 women will ride burros into Mexico wilds to seek gold.” ''San Diego Sun'', November 4, 1935. * Bancroft, Griffing. Lower California: A Cruise: The Flight of the Least Petrel. New York, London: G.P. Putnam's sons, 1932. http://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/000276850. * “Bancroft, GriffingWikiName.” Islapedia. http://islapedia.com/index.php?title=BANCROFT,_Griffing. * “Bancroft, Margaret Wood (1893–1986).” San Diego Natural History Museum. https://www.sdnhm.org/about-us/history/bancroft-margaret-wood/ * Bancroft, Margaret Wood, Bancroft Library. Regional Oral History Office, James David Hart, Virginia M. Smith, and Willa K. Baum. Recollections of Hubert Howe Bancroft and the Bancroft Family : Oral History Transcript / and Related Material, 1977–1980. Berkeley: Regents of the University of California, 1980. https://archive.org/details/margaretwoodreco00bancrich. * “Griffing Bancroft Library donated to UCSD, March 11, 1971, University Communications & Public Relations Materials: News Releases." Special Collection & Archives, UC San Diego Library,” March 11, 1971. http://library.ucsd.edu/historyofucsd/index.html#ark:bb8704405q. * Hunt, L. E. (1983). A nomenclatural rearrangement of the genus ''Anniella'' (Sauria: Anniellidae). ''Copeia'', 1983(1), 79–89. http://doi.org/10.2307/1444700 * Klauber, Laurence M. “A new snake of the genus ''Sonora'' from Lower California, Mexico.�
''Transactions of the San Diego Society of Natural History''
10, no. 4 (December 30, 1943): 69–70. * “Margaret Bancroft, 93, dies; social leader, Baja explorer.” ''San Diego Union'', August 31, 1986. * "Mrs. Bancroft finds new clues to fabled mission." ''San Diego Sun'', January 4, 1936, pp. Al–A2. * "Two women to seek fabled lost mission." ''Los Angeles Times'', November 4, 1935.

External links

"History of the Museum: Bancroft, Margaret Wood (1893–1986)". San Diego Natural History Museum.

Finding aid to the Margaret Wood Bancroft Collection, Online Archive of California.
* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Bancroft, Margaret Wood 1986 deaths American film actresses 1893 births American naturalists American silent film actresses People from San Diego 20th-century American actresses People associated with the San Diego Natural History Museum 20th-century naturalists Social leaders