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Grace Brown Gardner — A Tribute
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Grace Brown Gardner
A Tribute 1880 - 1973
by Emil Frederick Guba, Ph.D. THIS WRITER met Grace Brown Gardner in 1934. He was escorted to her home by the late Grace Wyatt, then the natural science director of the Nantucket Maria Mitchell Association. My interest was in the fungi and fungous diseases of the wild plants of Nantucket.
He came to know Grace Brown Gardner even better by his research of Nantucket history which brought him to her home on Milk Street frequently to consult her volumes of newspaper clippings. Her hospitality and help were generous and most cordial. On one occasion she counselled him that the early grave sites on the island are burying grounds, not cemeteries. Correctly so according to the early maps and I accepted her information with warmth.
Grace Brown Gardner wrote The Nantucket Flora, Chapter 13, pp. 245-268 for Dr. R.A. Douglas-Lithgow's book, Nantucket, A History (1914). It is a survey of the flora of Nantucket of different habitats and seasons and a catalogue of island plants following the nomenclature and classification in Gray's Manual of Botany, 7th edition. The publication of this manual in 1908 and the founding of the Nantucket Maria Mitchell Association in 1902 stimulated the study of systematic botany on the island. The Nantucket Flora, Chapter 13 is based largely on Miss Gardner's own wild flower collections in her herbarium which she donated to the Nantucket Maria Mitchell Association. This list of Nantucket plants of Chapter 13 was a great improvement over the first one by Mrs. Maria L. Owen's Catalogue of Nantucket Plants (1888).
In the same period Eugene P. Bicknell of the Brooklyn Botanic Garden was botanizing on the island and publishing his classic papers Ferns and Flowering Plants of Nantucket, the first in 1908 and the 20th in 1919 all of them in the Bulletin of the Torrey Botanical Club (New York). Then in 1921 George Putnam's Sons came out with Alice Owen Albertson's Nantucket Wild Flowers. These contributions brought the fame of Nantucket as a botanist's paradise to public attention. The herbarium of the Nantucket Maria Mitchell Association with all of the data pertaining to each mounted specimen is a treasure to natural science. It is scheduled for publication. The name of Grace Brown Gardner identifying her specimens will reveal her prominence in the study of the wild plants of Nantucket.
GRACE BROWN GARDNER—A TRIBUTE 31
Grace Brown Gardner's other major Nantucket accomplishment was her vast collection of newspaper clippings on subjects relating to Nantucket, a total of 48 volumes, plus 7 supplementary volumes; Volumes 1 and 2 Churches, Volumes 8-11, Marine Subjects; Volume 20 Quakerism; Volumes 44-48, Whaling; etc., etc. identify the character cf this great project. Here is a vast source of information on Nantucket for one engaged in researching history or seeking information on any particular subject relating to Nantucket's past.
With the encouragement and foresight of her parents especially of her father with continental origin and background, Grace Gardner departed from the island for a broad higher education. She attended Cornell University and Brown University.
She began her long teaching career at the Framingham State Normal School (Framingham State College) in 1918. The college year book The Dial 1930, p. 31. states that she taught biology, microbiology and nature study. In 1930 she addressed a quotation from Emerson to the graduating class of 1930 reading "Beware what you set your heart upon for it surely shall be yours!".
Grace Brown Gardner at Framingham, served on the faculty of the Biology Department with Dr. William H. D. Meier, the Head and noted biologist-educator, native of Illinois, educated at Illinois State Normal University and Harvard University, principal and superintendent of public schools in Illinois and botany instructor at Harvard University. He joined the Framingham faculty in 1911. Grace Brown Gardner could not have had a nicer professional association.
A Waltham friend who was a student at Framingham Normal kept her book of notes of Grace Brown Gardner's lectures. She described her as a gracious, quiet mannered teacher with the quality of imparting a strong interest in her students in the natural sciences. "I loved her and respected her." A few years ago when the late Frank MacKeever of the New York Botanic Garden was studying the plants of the island and enthusiastically popularizing Nantucket botany by his weekly news articles in the Inquirer and Mirror, Grace Brown Gardner gave him her valuable personal copy of Mrs. Maria L. Owen's Catalogue of the Wild Plants of Nantucket published in 1888. Such a token of respect certainly added encouragement and stimulation to Frank MacKeever's dedicated effort of advancing our knowledge of the flora of Nantucket. He treasured this gift.
Grace Brown Gardner's father, Arthur Hinton Gardner, was born in San Francisco in 1854, the son of Captain William B. Gardner of
32 HISTORIC NANTUCKET
Baltimore and Charlotte (Coffin) of Nantucket. Her mother Mary M. Brown was born in Nantucket in 1355, the daughter of George F. Brown and Sarah M. (Nerberth) of Nantucket. George F. Brown died in San Francisco in 1873. Arthur H. Gardner and Mary M. Brown were married in Nantucket in 1879, he giving his occupation as editor, age 25 years.
George F. Brown was the son of George Brown and Lydia (Folger) of Nantucket. Sarah M. Nerberth was the daughter of Edward Nerberth and Emeline (MeCleave).
William B. Gardner was the son of Samuel Gardner and Elizabeth Morin of Baltimore. Charlotte Coffin was the daughter of George Coffin and Sarah Calder of Nantucket.
Grace Gardner's earliest Gardner ancestry went back to Richard Gardner and Sarah (Shattuck) by son Nathaniel Gardner and Abigail (Coffin) (d. of James Coffin, s. of Tristram). Her earliest Brown ancestry runs to John Brown and Rachel (Gardner) d. of Capt. John Gardner, brother of Richard. John and Rachel were married in Salem. This marriage and the close association of Browns and Gardners in Salem brought the Browns to Nantucket in 1680. John Brown was the grandson of John Brown 1st and Sarah (Walker) who came in the first Puritan arrivals to Salem from England.
