Erminnie A. Smith


Erminnie A. Smith, née Erminnie Adele Platt was a geologist and an anthropologist at the Smithsonian Institution's Bureau of American Ethnology. She has been called the "first woman field enthnographer" and she was elected the first female member of the New York Academy of Sciences on November 5, 1877.
Erminnie Smith published works on the Iroquois people, she was active in collecting their legends and employed John Napoleon Brinton Hewitt to assist in this work.

Life

Erminnie Adele Platt was born in 1836, graduating in 1853 from the Troy Female Seminary in Troy, New York. She married Simeon H. Smith. The Aesthetic Society of Jersey City was founded by her in 1876.
She died in May 1886.

Works