Laura Estelle Watson Benedict

Laura Watson Benedict (May 5, 1861 – December 13, 1932)

Anthropology research After graduating with her master's, Benedict began studying under Frederick Starr, whose focus had turned to tribes in the Philippines when his former students David Prescott Barrows and Merton Leland Miller took posts in the Philippine Commission. , and introduced Benedict to the Bagobo tribe, which she soon began to study in earnest. She continued taking Starr's seminars and conducted research in fall 1905 at the Field Museum under George A. Dorsey. Benedict was intent on traveling to the Philippines to study the Bagobo for at least one year; while she requested funds from several museum curators, including William Henry Holmes at the National Museum of Natural History and Clark Wissler at the American Museum of Natural History, she was unable to obtain sponsorship.

After the Field Museum received a donation of $20,000 in March 1906 by Robert Fowler Cummings specifically for ethnological research in the Philippines, Dorsey authorized Benedict to travel to the Mindanao region of Davao with a budget of $2,000 to obtain a collection of material objects and skeletons. Benedict also began learning the Bagobo language with the help of a young boy.

Benedict's mental and physical health began to deteriorate, and she ultimately returned to Chicago in fall 1908, where she presented her collection of Bagobo items to Dorsey. He valued the collection as over $2,000 and purchased only a single skull. After much negotiation, her collection of over 2,500 items was acquired by the American Museum of Natural History for about $4,000, later donating an additional 50 items to offload her personal collection. In 1911, she published an article in the museum's journal describing the collection and her experiences in Davao. She received her degree in 1914, and in 1916, her thesis, Study of Bagobo Ceremonial, Magic and Myth was published.

Her thesis was well-received by American Anthropologist and Man, but largely ignored in contemporary anthropology, and Benedict struggled to find funding for additional fieldwork or even academic employment, particularly during World War I. Beginning around 1918, she lectured on social service at Hunter College and library methods at the University of Michigan, and was both a lecturer and librarian at the Pennsylvania School of Social and Health Work.

Personal life and death She was also involved with the Woman Suffrage Party in New York around 1916. In 1920, she moved in with her sister in Franklinville, New Jersey, and on December 13, 1932, passed away from a heart attack in Philadelphia.