Mary Ann Allard Booth (1843–1922): America's First Woman Microscopist

Mary Ann Booth, of Longmeadow, Massachusetts, was America's first professional female microscopist (Figure 1). She began explorations in microscopy in 1877, maintained a sales catalog of skillfully mounted microscope slides for over thirty years, and gained respect as a proficient photomicrographer among her colleagues. Booth's knowledge of microscopy led her to become the microscopy section editor for the magazine The Observer and Practical Microscopy [1]. She was also a regular contributor to The American Monthly Journal of Microscopy, beginning with its first issue in January 1880. In 1889, she was elected to the executive committee of the American Microscopical Society [2]. Mary Ann Booth traveled about the northeastern United States and Canada, lecturing about photomicrography, illustrating the presentations with projected lantern slides of her making. Most often, she was a guest of scientific societies, where she exhibited trays of microscope slides from her sales catalog (Figure 2). Mary Ann Booth was also a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and regularly attended its conferences. Internationally, Booth was elected a fellow of England's Royal Microscopical Society and the Royal Photographic Society of London [3]. Few women of her time can claim standing in these nineteenth-century male-dominated organizations. Mary Ann Allard Booth (1843–1922), America's first professional woman microscopist. Courtesy of the Lyman and Merrie Wood Museum of Springfield History. A tray of microscope slides prepared by Mary Ann Booth. The slides were found in the private collection of Jacob Dolson Cox (1828–1900), American Civil War general, U.S. Secretary of the Interior under President Grant, Governor of Ohio, and President of the American Microscopical Society. At the 1884–1885 New Orleans World Industrial and Cotton Centennial Exposition, Mary Ann Booth was honored with a bronze plaque for her high-quality entomological microscope slides. At the St. Louis Exposition in 1904, she received a Medal of Accomplishment for working to advance the field of microscopy [4,5]. The high quality of Mary Ann Booth's slides still captures recognition in the demanding environment of contemporary microscopy. In 2019, Mary Ann Booth's slide of cleaned Polycystina tests (cage-like structures) from Barbados won an honorable mention in Nikon's Small World International Photomicrography Competition (Figure 3). A, Polycystina from Springfield Estate, Barbados, mounted by Mary Ann Booth. Polycystina is a class of one-celled marine plankton that form complex supporting structures from seawater-derived silicon dioxide. The cage-like structures, termed tests, are chemically stable but physically fragile. In 1847, when Dr. John Davy (1790–1868), a microscopy enthusiast and brother of the famous chemist Sir Humphry Davy (1778–1829), discovered a geological sedimentary stratum holding mainly intact polycystine tests on the Caribbean island of Barbados, he recognized their value and shipped quantities to his London address. Later, Davy sold samples internationally by mail via ads placed in scientific journals. B, Davy's discovery is the source of the raw material used by Mary Ann Booth for her award-winning microscope slide. Mary Ann Booth considered a photomicrograph of a flea to be her most publicly notable achievement. During an interview with the Boston Globe, she stated that the flea picture was sent to U.S. Surgeon General Rupert Blue in 1910 while he was in California working to forestall another outbreak of bubonic plague. Blue used Booth's flea photograph in a government brochure to educate the public about rats, sanitation, and bubonic plague (Figure 4). Mary Ann Booth signed the back of the photograph along with comments written in her hand. The photomicrograph was acquired from an antiquities dealer at the annual San Francisco Vintage Paper Fair. Mouse flea – Velox print by Mary Ann Booth. The photograph is of a female Leptosylla segnis, an eyeless flea with cosmopolitan distribution. Xenopsylla cheopis (Oriental rat flea) was the notorious vector spawning San Francisco's bubonic plague outbreaks, an eyed flea accidentally introduced from East Asia but not taxonomically described until 1903. Xenophylla is closely related to Pulex irritans, the human flea. Velox paper was unique because the U.S. Postal-approved postcard format was printed on its reverse side. This design allowed photographers to send their photographs as postcards. However, Mary Ann Booth's handwriting overlaps the official postcard format, rendering it un-mailable (Figure 5). Thus, it must have been sent in a larger envelope, most likely with other materials. The reverse side of the mouse flea photomicrograph. Mary Ann Booth's handwritten comments about the photomicrograph of a flea. She writes: This is a fairly good print, but by mistake, I made the (wider) margin at the top instead of the bottom. Note the great amount of detail. Now that it has been determined that parasites transmit germs of plague, etc., they are becoming pretty important agents in medical affairs! – M. A. Booth. The 1916 edition of the National Cyclopedia of American Biography describes Mary Ann Booth as using a wheelchair for her first thirty years. No diagnosis for her incapacitation can be found other than the catch-all “chronic invalidism.” However, after age thirty, she no longer used a wheelchair but did state to a reporter in 1902 that she could only work on microscopy when her health permitted (Figure 6). Nevertheless, she did travel widely. Her obituary in the Springfield Republican states her to be one of the first women in Massachusetts to own an automobile—a Bailey Electric—a type of car that did not need cranking by hand to start it running [4,5]. Mary Ann Booth at work with her photomicrography apparatus. The picture accompanied an article describing her microscopy work in an article titled “The Irregulars of Science,” by William H. Dearden, Illustrated World (24) December 1915. Mary Ann Booth died at the age of seventy-nine. The press described her passing as from an apoplectic attack, another fcatchall diagnosis, while photographing squirrels in the backyard of her Springfield home. In addition to scientific endeavors, Mary Ann Booth was a member and staunch supporter of the Women's Suffrage Association. This organization remembered her in a kindly worded obituary by the Secretary of its New Jersey Chapter [6]. Her latest photographs were those of a family of busy little squirrels who made their home in a neighboring tree and who had learned to know and love the good friend who cared for them so faithfully. Indeed, as was a fitting close for such a lover of nature, her last act on earth was the carrying of the evening meal to these little creatures, and in the great out-of-doors, at the close of a September day, surrounded by these appreciative friends, she passed into the great beyond. — Elizabeth (Bessie) Perrault Titus (1871–1930), New Jersey Woman's Suffrage Association In her final will, Mary Ann Booth left her collection of photomicrographs and mounted microscope slides to the Springfield Science Museum, Springfield, Massachusetts, where they are currently archived [7].

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