Abbie Lathrop

Abbie E. C. Lathrop (1868 – 1918) was a rodent fancier and commercial breeder who bred fancy mice and inbred strains for animal models, particularly for research on development and hereditary properties of cancer.

Biography Lathrop was born in 1868 in Illinois to schoolteachers. She was homeschooled until she was 16 and earned an Illinois teaching certificate after about two years at an academy. She taught elementary school before moving to a Granby, Massachusetts farm in 1900. After her poultry business failed, she started breeding rats and mice for hobbyists and pet owners. She also raised ferrets, rabbits, and guinea pigs. She was assisted by her friends Edith Chapin and Ada Gray. Lathrop started out with a pair of waltzing mice she obtained in Granby and her farm grew to hold over 11,000 mice at one point. Her breeding records later proved useful for researchers. Lathrop began selling rodents to scientific researchers, including Harvard University's Bussey Institute. The United States government purchased her guinea pigs to test for toxic gas in the trenches of World War I.

For the Granby Mouse Farm Lathrop sourced wild mice from Michigan and Vermont. She bred Japanese waltzing mice as well as fancy mice.

As early as 1908 Lathrop found that unusual skin lesions were developing in some of her mice. She sent samples to scientists and corresponded with experimental pathologist Leo Loeb, who identified the lesions as malignant. Lathrop began developing inbred strains around 1910. Loeb and Lathrop performed experiments at her farm and the pair authored 10 journal articles from 1913 to 1919, Karin Knorr Cetina wrote in 2009 that at least five of the primary strains of laboratory mice in use may derive from a single female from Lathrop.

Lathrop died of pernicious anemia in 1918. She was interred at West Cemetery in Granby, near her friends Chapin and Gray.