Florence Augusta Merriam Bailey
Florence Augusta Merriam Bailey was an American ornithologist and nature writer. She was born in Locust Grove, New York. The youngest of four children, she was the younger sister of Clinton Hart Merriam. She organized early Audubon Society chapters and was an activist for bird protection. She wrote what is considered the first bird field guide in the modern tradition, Birds Through an OperaGlass, published in 1890. Her extensive field work in the American West, often with her husband Vernon Bailey, was documented in several books, chief among them Handbook of Birds of the Western United States and The Birds of New Mexico.
Florence Augusta Merriam Bailey was born on August 8, 1863 in Locust Grove, near Leyden, New York. Her parents were Clinton Levi Merriam and Caroline Hart Merriam. The youngest of four children, Florences siblings were her brother Clinton Hart , sister Ella Gertrude , and brother Charles Collins. She grew up at her familys estate, Homewood, on a wooded hilltop above her grandparents home at Locust Grove. She and her brother C. Hart were encouraged to study natural history and astronomy by their mother, father, and aunt Helen Bagg the both of them became interested in ornithology at an early age. Florences father was interested in scientific matters and was in correspondence with John Muir after he had met him at Yosemite in the summer of 1871.
Source: Wikipedia