Emma Cole facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Emma Jane Cole
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| Born | January 23, 1845 Ohio, U.S.
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| Died | April 25, 1910 (aged 65) |
| Occupation | Botanist, teacher, curator |
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Notable work
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Grand Rapids Flora: A Catalogue of the Flowering Plants and Ferns Growing Without Cultivation in the Vicinity of Grand Rapids, Michigan |
Emma Jane Cole (born January 23, 1845 – died April 25, 1910) was an American teacher, botanist, and museum curator. She is famous for writing Grand Rapids Flora, a book about plants in Michigan. In 2007, she was honored by being added to the Michigan Women's Hall of Fame.
Early Life and Education
Emma Jane Cole was born in Ohio on January 23, 1845. When she was a child, her family moved to a place called Vergennes Township, which is close to Grand Rapids, Michigan. She went to school there, attending Lowell Union School and Grand Rapids High School.
Her parents were Andrew and Jerusha Cole. She had three siblings: two brothers, John and Hugh, and a sister, Mary Cole Altman.
In 1876, Emma Cole started studying at Cornell University in New York. This was a big deal because Cornell had only recently started allowing women to attend. She studied botany, which is the science of plants, at Cornell in 1876-1877 and again in 1879-1880. Even though she took many classes, she didn't officially get a degree.
Her Work as a Botanist
Emma Cole spent a lot of her life working as a teacher. She was also one of the first women to join the Kent Scientific Institute. This institute later became the Grand Rapids Public Museum. She even became the vice president and the botanical curator there. A curator is someone who manages and cares for a collection, in this case, plant specimens.
Cole is best known for her book, Grand Rapids Flora: A Catalogue of the Flowering Plants and Ferns Growing Without Cultivation in the Vicinity of Grand Rapids, Michigan. She wrote this book in 1901. Emma realized that she needed a good local guide for the plants in her teaching. So, she decided to record all the vascular plants (plants with special tissues to carry water and nutrients) found in Grand Rapids and the areas around it.
To create this important plant guide, she collected plant samples from 1892 to 1900. Her hard work resulted in a detailed list of nearly 1300 different kinds of plants found in the greater Grand Rapids area.
As a professional botanist, Emma Cole wrote letters to many other famous botanists and scientists of her time. These included Benjamin Lincoln Robinson, Merritt Lyndon Fernald, and Charles Sprague Sargent.
Later Life and Lasting Impact
Emma Cole passed away on April 25, 1910, in San Antonio, Texas, after a trip to Mexico. She died due to health problems related to her kidneys. She is buried in Bailey Cemetery in Lowell, Michigan.
Emma Cole left money in her will to support several important projects:
- The University of Michigan's plant and animal science department gives an award called the Emma J. Cole Fellowship in Botany to a graduate student.
- The Grand Rapids Board of Education received money to buy equipment for botany classes at Central High School.
- The Emma J. Cole Flower Fund paid for "flower services" twice a year at eight churches in Grand Rapids. These services were special events celebrating flowers. The Grand Rapids Public Library has a collection of items that tell the story of these "flower services."
Even today, plant samples collected by Emma Cole are used for research and study. You can find them in special plant collections called herbariums at places like the University of Michigan Herbarium, the Michigan State University herbarium, and the Albion College herbarium.
A type of hawthorn tree that Emma Cole discovered was named after her: Crataegus coleae. Charles Sprague Sargent wrote about this honor:
It is a pleasure to associate with this handsome shrub the name of its discoverer, Miss Emma J. Cole of Grand Rapids, Michigan, the author of The Grand Rapids Flora, and a careful and industrious student of the plants of central Michigan, where she has made a number of other important discoveries.
In 2007, Emma Cole was recognized for her achievements and inducted into the Michigan Women's Hall of Fame.
From 2014 to 2018, a project at Calvin University worked to revisit and check all the locations described in Emma Cole's book, Grand Rapids Flora.
