Jane Gray autograph collection

Jane Lathrop Loring Gray:

Jane Lathrop Loring was born on August 27, 1821, to Charles Greely Loring, a prominent Boston attorney, and Anna (Pierce) Brace Loring. Though the family lived in Boston, Jane spent a good deal of time with her mother’s family in Litchfield, Connecticut. After her mother’s death in 1836, Jane ran her father’s house in Boston. She married Harvard botanist Asa Gray on May 4, 1848 and lived with him at a house in the Harvard Botanic Garden in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Jane suffered from poor health for most of her life. She and Asa never had children, but she took an active interest in her husband’s work and accompanied him on most of his voyages, chronicling their travels in letters to her family. While living in Cambridge, she was a member of the Female Humane Society of Cambridge, which was founded to assist indigent women. She also corresponded with many botanists and their families. After Asa’s death in January 1888, she devoted herself to memorializing him, preparing his letters for publication and contributing funds toward the establishment of the Asa Gray Professorship. She continued to live at the Botanic Garden until her death in 1909.

Sources Dupree AH. 1959. Asa Gray. Cambridge (MA): The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.

Asa Gray

Often called the “Father of American Botany,” Asa Gray was instrumental in establishing systematic botany as a field of study at Harvard University and, to some extent, in the United States. His relationships with European and North American botanists and collectors enabled him to serve as a central clearing house for the identification of plants from newly explored areas of North America. He also served as a link between American and European botanical sciences. Gray regularly reviewed new European scientific works and was an early proponent of Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection.

Asa Gray was born in Sauquoit, New York, on November 18, 1810, to Roxana Howard Gray and Moses Wiley Gray. He attended grammar school in Clinton and continued his education at Fairfield Academy, enrolling in Fairfield’s College of Physicians and Surgeons in 1829. Gray’s interest in botany developed during this time and he began corresponding with botanists Lewis Caleb Beck and John Torrey.

Gray completed his M.D. in 1831 and accepted a teaching position at a boys’ school in Utica, New York. For the next few years he divided his time between teaching, collecting, and working as Torrey’s assistant. His first publications appeared in the winter of 1834-1835. In 1836 he became curator at the New York Lyceum of Natural History. He also began work on a North American flora with Torrey. The first volume of “Flora of North America”was published in two parts in 1838.

Gray was appointed botanist of the United States Exploring Expedition under Charles Wilkes in 1836 but withdrew after the expedition was delayed. In 1838 he accepted an appointment as Professor of Botany at the University of Michigan on condition that he first be allowed a year of study in Europe. He departed in November 1838 and spent the next 12 months visiting herbaria and meeting prominent botanists in Great Britain, France, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, and Austria. Complications at Michigan prevented Gray from starting the professorship there. Instead he returned to New York to work on the second volume of “Flora.”

In 1842 he moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts, to accept the newly endowed Fisher Professorship at Harvard. He remained in that position for the rest of his life. In addition to teaching Gray assumed responsibility for the Harvard Botanical Garden and built a herbarium and library. He was a prolific correspondent and writer. His 1848 “Manual of the Botany of the Northern United States” became the standard field manual for botanists in the Northeast and his textbooks were used in classes across the U.S.

In 1848 Gray married Jane Lathrop Loring. She assisted him in his work and accompanied him on trips to Europe, the Allegheny Mountains, and to the American West.

Gray died in Cambridge on January 30, 1888.

Sources Deane W. 1888. Asa Gray. Bull. Torrey Bot. Club. 15(3):59-72. Farlow WG. 1895. Memoir of Asa Gray. 1810-1888. Biogr. Mem. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 3:161-175. Gray A. 1894. Autobiography. In: Gray JL. Letters of Asa Gray. Boston (MA): Houghton, Mifflin and Company.