Plant Hunters: Edith Van Allen Murphey

More plant hunters! This year I'm focusing on women collectors in the Western United States. Our first report is about the self-taught ethnobotanist, Edith Van Allen Murphy (1879-1968), who worked in the Intermountain National Forest lands within Utah, Nevada, western Wyoming, and southern Idaho; and later in California. I first learned about Ms. Murphey while reading Lester Rountree's Hardy Californians (see Plant Hunters: Lester Rountree). In the forward, Judith Larner Lowry describes Murphey as a seed-gathering woman who was contemporaneous with Rowntree, and collected in Mendocino County in California.

Edith Van Allen-Murphey (Sojourn Magazine Winter 96-97)

Edith Van Allen was born in 1879 in New York state. She attended Melvil Dewey's library school at Albany, New York (Dewey invented the Dewey Decimal system of library classification). In 1902 she was recruited to catalog rare books for the University of California at Berkeley and moved across country. In around 1903, failing eyesight prevented her from continuing the work. She moved to the redwoods near Sherwood, just north of Willits, to homestead. She married a neighboring homesteader but divorced two years later. During this time she learned how to live off the land from nearby Pomo natives.

Over the next 25 years, she married two more ranchers, Sanford Lee Redwine of Round Valley and then Will Murphey of Covelo. Both marriages were happy, but left her a widow. While living on these primitive California ranches, she fell in love with Mendocino and developed a passion for rare native flowers. Between chores, she collected specimens, and corresponded with botanist Carl Purdy (1861-1945) of Ukiah, sending them to him for identification and learning from his responses. In 1906, Mrs. Phoebe Hearst commissioned her to collect the best of Northern California Indian basketry for the University of California. In 1925 her third husband, Will Murphey, died and Murphey sold their ranch.

Sam Young (Hayfork Wintu), Edith Van Allen Murphey, and Lucy Young (Lassik)

Murphey realized she was free to follow her passion for plants. From 1925 to 1935 she worked for United States Bureau of Indian Affairs. Their primary interest was to identify and eliminate stock-poisoning plants on Indian cattle and sheep ranges. During this time she lived and worked with eleven Indian tribes gathering data, as the United States Indian Service's only range botanist. The contacts that Ms. Murphey made during her research for the BIA, enabled her to document plant use by indigenous people groups throughout the Intermountain region and the West, and to publish Indian Uses of Native Plants. 

Detail from the Mendocino County History Mural, painted by Judy Pruden
Left to right: Carl Purdy, Sam Young, Edith Murphey, and Lucy Young

In 1927, at the age of 48, she headed to the Mendocino high country in hopes of being a plant collector for John Purdy, who collected and sold California seeds and bulbs all over the world. He refused to hire a woman as a plant collector, but hired her as a cook instead. She was still able to collect plant specimens from spring through fall, and met many visiting botanists during her time with Purdy. From 1935 until her death in 1968, she spent her days in Covelo, California advocating for both native Americans and the amazing biodiversity of California's plants. Artist Judy Pruden included Carl Purdy, Sam Young, Edith Van Allen Murphey, and Lucy Young as botanists on the Mendocino County History Mural, in Ukiah, California.

Learn More

• Edith Van Allen Murphey, Sojourn Magazine Premier Issue, Winter 1996-1997. Written by Liz Helenchild, using original wording by Ms. Murphey where possible. https://creation-designs.com/gracemillennium/sojourn/premiere/html/ed_murphey.html

• Edith Van Allen Murphey Papers, University of Nevada, Reno (microfilm; the originals are in Covelo, California). https://archive.library.unr.edu/public/repositories/2/resources/139
• Indian Uses of Native Plants. Edith Van Allen Murphey (Meyerbooks, Illinois, 1990; and Mendocino County Historical Society, 1958, 1987). Ethnobotanical uses of native plants by indigenous people of the Intermountain area. https://www.amazon.com/Indian-Native-Plants-Edith-Murphey/dp/0916638154

• Hardy Californians, Lester Rowntree (University of California Press, Berkeley, 2006). The forward includes the article, "Lester Rowntree's Horticultural Legacy", by Judith Lowry. On page lxvii, Lowry writes that plant collecting contemporaries Rowntree, Edith Van Allen Murphey, and Willis Linn Jepson loved the freedom and adventure of the automobile while plant collecting. She also notes that Murphey longed to meet Rowntree. https://www.amazon.com/Hardy-Californians-Womans-Native-Plants/dp/0520250516/

• The Lily Man of Ukiah, NYBG LuEsther T. Mertz Library, Plant & Research Guides, Nursery and Seed Catalogs: Carl Purdy and the Bulbs and Wild Flowers of California. Explores the nursery catalogs and professional career of Carl Purdy, who saw and understood the flora of California with an unmatched acuity. Edith Van Allen Murphey served as apprentice and cook for Purdy. https://libguides.nybg.org/c.php?g=655017&p=4597876

Note: search this article for "Edith Murphey: A disciple of Carl Purdy". The side bar article provides more information about Ms. Murphey and her life experiences.

• Lucy Young, Round Valley, podcast: Parts 1 - 7. KZYX Mendocino County Remembered, read by Linda Pack. The saga of a 10-year old Wailaki Indian girl in 1862 who fled from soldiers and from white men who trafficked in Indian children. In 1939, when Lucy was in her 90s, she told her story to her friend and neighbor in Covelo, the ethnobotanist Edith Van Allen Murphey. Lucy Young wanted the truth to be told. https://feeds.transistor.fm/kzyx-mendocino-county-remembered (search for "Lucy Young").

• Mendocino County Historical Mural, painted by Judy Pruden. This mural runs the length of an entire city block on the north wall of the Ukiah Valley Conference Center in downtown Ukiah, California. Panel 25 is devoted to Ukiah botanist and horticulturist Carl Purdy, Covelo ethnobotanist Edith Van Allen Murphey, and Native botanical experts Lucy Young (Lassik) and her husband Sam Young (Hayfork Wintu). https://historymural.com/sections/six/remembrance/#botanists