ORRA WHITE HITCHCOCK (1796–1863), GEOLOGICAL ILLUSTRATOR: ANOTHER BELLE OF AMHERST

The daughter of a prosperous farmer in Amherst, Massachusetts, Orra White learned to draw as a child from private tutors and at girls' schools in South Hadley and Roxbury. She sketched flowers and other items from nature starting at age seven. By the time she became a teacher of drawing and science at Deerfield Academy and at Amherst Academy, she was an experienced artist; her first work was published in Philadelphia in 1818. During her time, being accomplished at art was acceptable for women, and Orra White also followed gender expectations by being a wife and mother. She married Edward Hitchcock in 1821; they had eight children, six of whom lived past infancy (two sons became geologists). After sojourns in New Haven and Conway, the Hitchcocks returned to Amherst. There Edward taught at and then became president of Amherst College. Orra White Hitchcock illustrated some of Edward Hitchcock's earliest geological papers, in the American Journal of Science in the 1820s, but was especially productive of drawings for his reports on the geology of the state of Massachusetts. Her plates for the state survey included fossils and scenes showing geological features and celebrating the New England landscape. She also created oversize paintings for use in her husband's classes. She was among the earliest women to take on the role of artist for American geology, but what is her heritage? Did she and her successors establish a line of women illustrators that culminated in professionals such as Cecelia Beaux, or did she establish a precedent that led eventually to women geologists such as Florence Bascom? Although Hitchcock herself deplored the notion of women geologists ("a shame for cows and women to be treated thus"), the Hitchcocks nonetheless encouraged the inclusion of science in the curriculum of the all-female school founded by Mary Lyon, which eventually became Mount Holyoke College.