Eunice Stebbins

Archeological career

In 1927, Stebbins was awarded the Sophia Smith Fellowship from Smith College to continue her studies at the American School of Classical Studies in Athens (American School). Her goal in Athens was to continue her research on ancient coins in Greece.

When applying for the fellowship, Stebbins made a request. She asked the Fellowship Committee to allow her American School assignment of cataloguing the coins excavated at Corinth in 1927 to be her original work. This which would meet her Fellowship requirements for Smith College. If the committee declined, she offered to pursue an epigraphy project as her original work.

The committee turned down her request and she subsequently worked on an epigraphic project during her Fellowship year. The result of that work was an article published in the 1929 fall publication of the American Journal of Archaeology, "An Interpretation of the Prescript πολες αυται φορον ταχσαμεναι in the Athenian Tribute Lists,” (Oct.-Dec. 1929), pp 502–514. Stebbins's catalogue work on the 1927 coins was incorporated into a larger catalogue of work under the supervision of Professor Bellinger. "When the Corinth excavation coins were later published in 1935 there was no mention of Stebbins as a contributor to the study or the catalogue."

Stebbins met her future husband Herbert Newell Couch when they were both graduate students in classics at Johns Hopkins University. They both applied for membership in the American School within months of each other. Stebbins in October 1927 and Couch in February 1928. She was granted a Fellowship and he was admitted as an Associate Member of the school. They were married on May 12, 1928, at the British Consulate in Salonika, Greece. When they both left Greece in 1928, Stebbins no longer worked as an archeologist, but she continued her research in numismatics. She studied the coins of Argos, Greece for a number of years and planned on publishing her findings, but her work was never published.

Stebbins was a member of the American Numismatic Society for 65 years. At the end of her life, she donated her collection of ancient coins to the Center for Old World Archeology and Art at Brown University. Stebbins died at the age of 98, in July 1992 in Providence, Rhode Island.