Margaret Wood Bancroft

Margaret R. Wood Bancroft (July 10, 1893, in Glasgow, Kentucky – August 30, 1986, in San Diego, California), was an American naturalist and explorer of Baja California.

She married ornithologist and oölogist Griffing Bancroft (son of historian Hubert Howe Bancroft) in 1917. She was active in the social and political life of San Diego County, with membership in the Red Cross, the Junior League, and the San Diego Society of Natural History. In 1930, she participated in a five-month journey to explore and document the bird and animal life of the Baja California coastline. The expedition included ornithologist Adriaan Joseph van Rossem (California School of Technology), zoologist Donald Ryder Dickey (California School of Technology), F. S. Rogers (San Diego Natural History Museum), Albert Kroeckel, and J. Elton Green (University of California, Berkeley); Griffing Bancroft published a memoir of the journey in 1932, The Flight of the Least Petrel.

In 1935, Bancroft led a small expedition to search for the legendary lost mission of Santa Ysabel in the Sierra de San Pedro Mártir, Baja California. She discovered cave symbols that contributed to the archaeological study of the migration of ancient Native American tribes. Bancroft traveled extensively on oölogical and archaeological expeditions to Baja California, Sonora, and the islands of the Gulf of California.

Interested in many areas of natural history, Bancroft collected snake specimens for the herpetologist Laurence Klauber; in 1943, he named a new subspecies of Sonora semiannulata after her, Sonora bancroftae (San Telmo ground snake). From snake specimens Bancroft collected in 1932 on Isla San Geronimo, Baja California Norte, herpetologist Charles E. Shaw identified the species Anniella geronimensis (1940).

In 1971, Bancroft donated the Griffing Bancroft Library, with significant volumes on the history of the West, California, and Baja California, to the University of California, San Diego. She died in La Jolla, San Diego, California, on August 30, 1986.

Legacy The San Diego Natural History Museum Research Library houses a significant collection of Margaret Wood Bancroft's personal scrapbooks, letters, writings, and photographs.

The Bancroft Library at the University of California, Berkeley holds extensive archival material related to the Bancroft family including works by and about Griffing and Margaret Wood Bancroft.

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