Florence Augusta Merriam Bailey

Florence Augusta Merriam Bailey was born in Locust Grove, New York on August 8, 1863.  Her interest in nature began in her early childhood and when she entered Smith College she was specializing in ornithology.  Florence published her first book, Birds Through a Looking Glass in 1889. Several years later she headed west in hoping that a milder climate would help her tuberculosis.  The next three years were spent travelling through Utah, Arizona, and finally California observing western birds.  Upon returning home she turned her experiences in the west into three more bird books.  Her travels did result in an improvement in her health and eventually resulted in several other books. Her experiences in Utah, Southern California, and Arizona were chronicled in My Summer in a Mormon Village (1894), A Birding on a Bronco (1896), and Birds of Village and Field (1898).  

In 1899 she married Vernon Bailey who worked for the U.S. Biological Survey where her brother was director.  They traveled to New Mexico for Vernon’s work but Florence took great advantage of the time and published the classic Handbook of Birds of the Western United States in 1902.

The Baileys spent more than thirty years walking and riding through the Dakotas, the Southwest, the Pacific Northwest and Texas collecting and identifying specimens. Florence was the first woman to receive the Brewster Medal of the American Ornithologists Union and then in 1933 she was given an honorary L.L.D. degree from the University of New Mexico.