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Inventory to the papers of Ynes Mexia at the California Academy of Sciences
MSS.326
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Title: Mexia (Ynes) photographs
Date: 1870-1938
Collection number: MSS.326
Repository:
California Academy of Sciences, Special Collections
55 Music Concourse Drive
Golden Gate Park
San Francisco, CA 94118
Languages: Materials are in English.
Physical Description:
2.63 Cubic feet
5 archives boxes, 2 flat archives boxes, 2 photograph boxes
Abstract: The collection consists mostly of photographs taken by Ynes Mexia throughout her lifetime. The collection includes photographs,
negatives, memoirs, correspondence, photo lists, photo notes, and field notes. The collection also includes numerous photo
albums and Mexia's plant press.
Creator:
Mexia, Ynes , 1870-1938
Ynes Mexia, botanist, was born May 24, 1870 to General Enrique A. Mexia and Sarah R. Wilmer Mexia. Accounts vary on the place
of her birth: some say Washington, D.C. and some say Limestone County, Texas. Historians agree that her father was a representative
at the Mexican consulate in Washington, and that in 1871 the family moved to Limestone County on a land grant that is today
Mexia, Texas. Very little is known of Mexia's early life. She attended private school in both Ontario, Canada and Philadelphia,
Pennsylvania. She attended college at St. Joseph's College in Maryland.
In 1921, she enrolled in botany classes at the University of California, Berkeley. In July of 1925, at the age of 55, Mexia
wrote to Alice Eastwood, Curator of Botany at the California Academy of Sciences, informing Eastwood that she was about to
accompany Stanford's Assistant Herbarium Curator, Roxanna Ferris, on a collecting trip to Mexico. Mexia pointed out that she
herself had lived for many years in Mexico, and she offered to collect duplicate botanical specimens for the Academy. Mexia
made seven more collecting trips during the next twelve years, to Alaska, Mexico, Brazil, Peru, Ecuador, Chile, and Argentina.
When Mexia was home in San Francisco, she gave occasional lantern-slide lectures. One of these took place at the Academy in
1932. Notes on her travels appeared regularly in The Gull, newsletter of the Audubon Society of the Pacific, 1926-35. The
Sierra Club Bulletin published two accounts of her adventures. Several accounts of her expeditions were published in Madrono,
the journal of the California Botanical Society.
Mexia was a member of the California Botanical Society, the Sierra Club, the Audubon Association of the Pacific, the Sociedad
Geografica de Lima, Peru, and a life member of the California Academy of Sciences. Over the course of her career she collected
about 150,000 specimens. Her expeditions in Mexico (1925, 1926-27, 1929, and 1937-38), Alaska (1928), and South America (1929-32
and 1934-37) yielded over 500 new species, mostly spermatophytes, of which 50 are named in her honor.
In 1938, Mexia became ill during one of her trips to the mountains of Oaxaca and was forced to return home. Her health did
not improve and she died on July 12, 1938 at her home in Berkeley, California. In her will, ahw bequeathed $3,000.00 to the
California Academy of Sciences to employ her friend and specimen mounter from Berkeley, Nina Floy Perry Bracelin.
The collection consists mostly of photographs taken by Ynes Mexia throughout her lifetime. The collection includes photographs,
negatives, memoirs, correspondence, photo lists, photo notes, and field notes. The collection also includes numerous photo
albums and Mexia's plant press.
Frozen negatives are unavailable for handling; however, many negatives have been digitized. Please contact the archivist for
access to digitized copies of the frozen negatives.
Subjects and Indexing Terms
Bracelin, N. Floy, 1890-1973
California Academy of Sciences. Dept. of Botany.
Pringle, Cornelia
Sierra Nevada (Calif. and Nev.)
Botanists--California--Archives.
Botany
Photograph albums.
Yosemite
Women in science
Botanists
Scientific expeditions
Scientific expeditions--Alaska.