Mexía, Ynés 1870-1938

Ynes Enriquetta Julietta Mexia (1870-1938) was born on May 24, 1870, in Georgetown, Washington, D.C. She lived in Texas, Philadelphia, and Mexico City before she moved to San Francisco in 1908. She was a social worker before she went to the University of California at the age of 51. There, she developed an enthusiasm for botany. In 1925, she began a series of trips to remote locations in South and Central America, and Alaska. She collected over 150,000 specimens, and more than 500 species of plants. Many of the plants that she found were named after her. She died on July 12, 1938.

Botanist, explorer, and lecturer; daughter of Enrique Guillermo Antonio Mexía and granddaughter of José Antonio Mexía.

Mexía made extensive botanical collections from 1925-1938; she was involved in 4 expeditions to Mexico, 2 to South America, and 1 to Alaska.

Biography

Ynés Mexía was born May 24, 1870 in Georgetown, Washington, D.C., where her father, General Enrique A. Mexía, was serving as a representative of the Mexican government under President Porfirio Díaz. Her grandfather, José Antonio Mexía, was also a Mexican general, serving under President Antonio López de Santa Anna. Her mother, Sarah R. Wilmer of Maryland, was a descendent of Samuel Eccleston, Fifth Archbishop of Baltimore. Ynés Mexía spent her early childhood in Texas on a land grant where the town of Mexía, Limestone County, is now located. She attended private schools in Philadelphia and Ontario, Canada; St. Joseph's College, Emmetsburg, Maryland; and the University of California, Berkeley. As a young woman she lived in Tacubaya, Mexico, where she married Herman E. Laue in 1898. After his death, she married to Agustín Reygadas. This marriage ended in a divorce.

Her first collecting expedition was to Mexico in 1922, as a member of a group led by E. L. Furlong, Curator of Paleontology, University of California, Berkeley. The important collecting began in 1925 on her second trip to Mexico, with Mrs. Roxana S. Ferris, Dudley Herbarium, Stanford University. On subsequent collecting expeditions she went three more times to Mexico, once to Alaska, and twice to South America. She collected for the University of California and the United States Department of Agriculture. One trip to South America, lasting two and a half years, was initiated by her, and included a trip down the Amazon.

Her contributions to botany included a total of 8,800 numbers. She collected approximately 145,000 specimens. Two were new genera, Mexianthus mexicanus Robinson (Compositae) and Spulula quadrifida Mains (Pucciniaceae). The collections included approximately five hundred new species, primarily spermatophytes. Fifty species were named after her. Her plants were widely distributed and are now in leading botanical museums in the United States and Western Europe.

She was a member of the Sierra Club, California Botanical Society, Audubon Association of the Pacific, California Academy of Sciences, Sociedad Geografica de Lima, Perz, and an honorary member of the Departamento Forestal de Caza y Pesca of Mexico. In 1951, part of the remainder of her estate was given to the Save-the-Redwoods League, which purchased land in Northern California, west of Prairie Creek, containing a beach and Home Creek Canyon.

In 1938, during a collecting trip in the mountains of the State of Oaxaca, Mexico, she became ill. She returned to San Francisco in May, and died on July 12, 1938, at the age of 68.

Biographical Information

José Antonio Mexía

A Cuban, José Mexía came to Mexico in 1823. He was a federalist who rose to the position of general in the Mexican Army. Upon being sent by Montezuma, the commandante at Tampico, to punish Texas rebels, in 1832, Mexía changed his views concerning Texas and turned back to Tampico. He attempted to obtain help from New Orleans and returned to Mexico in November 1835 with three ships. He succeeded in capturing the port of Tampico but lost the town. While fighting against Santa Anna's troops at Acajete he was taken prisoner on May 3, 1839 and was executed three hours later.

José Antonio Mexía married Charlotte Walker, daughter of English parents, in Mexico City on August 5, 1823. Their children were: Adelaide Matilde, born in 1826; Enrique Guillermo Antonio born in 1829; and José Carlos.

Enrique Guillermo Antonio Mexía

Enrique Guillermo Antonio Mexía began his military career as a Second-Lieutenant in the Mexican army during the war with the United States, 1845-1847. During the war he was taken prisoner by U.S. troops. After his release, he lived in Mexico and Texas where he owned land inherited from his father.

Mexía took part in the Mexican three year war, "La Reforma" (1857-1860), fighting on the side of the liberal party, which was trying to establish a new constitution. During the European intervention that followed, Mexía served on several diplomatic missions for the exiled Juarez government. On one occasion he was commissioned to go to the United States to purchase arms for the Mexican army. He was also in charge of the defense of the ports of Tampico, Vera Cruz, and Bagdad (near the Texan border), where there were several conflicts with American troops. One of these conflicts included an attack made by African American troops in January 1866 when American authorities seized the property of Mexican citizens in the custom house at Brownsville, Texas.

After Emperor Maximilian's execution, Mexía was engaged chiefly in suppressing minor revolts against the Juarez government. During the period of turmoil following the death of President Juarez in 1872, Mexía was sent to the United States to purchase arms for the state of Puebla, loyal to Sebastián Lerdo de Tejada in his struggle with Porfirio Díaz for the presidency. During the period of 1880 to 1896, Mexía was occupied with improvements in Mexico such as railroads, electricity and steamship lines. He also was active in politics, serving as deputy from Temascultepec to the Mexican Congress.

Enrique Guillermo Antonio Mexía married Sarah Ramsey Wilmer from the United States in 1868.

Ynés Mexía

Daughter to Enrique Guillermo Antonio Mexía and Sarah Ramsey Wilmer, Ynés Mexía was educated in the United States, including at the University of California, Berkeley. She became an eminent botanist and collected specimens on field trips in Mexico, Central and South America, and Alaska for the University of California, Berkeley and the Smithsonian Institution.

Biographical note

Ynes Mexia, botanist, was born May 24, 1870 to General Enrique A. Mexia and Sarah R. Wilmer Mexia. Accounts vary on the place of her birth: some say Washington, D.C. and some say Limestone County, Texas. Historians agree that her father was a representative at the Mexican consulate in Washington, and that in 1871 the family moved to Limestone County on a land grant that is today Mexia, Texas. Very little is known of Mexia's early life. She attended private school in both Ontario, Canada and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She attended college at St. Joseph's College in Maryland.

In 1921, she enrolled in botany classes at the University of California, Berkeley. In July of 1925, at the age of 55, Mexia wrote to Alice Eastwood, Curator of Botany at the California Academy of Sciences, informing Eastwood that she was about to accompany Stanford's Assistant Herbarium Curator, Roxanna Ferris, on a collecting trip to Mexico. Mexia pointed out that she herself had lived for many years in Mexico, and she offered to collect duplicate botanical specimens for the Academy. Mexia made seven more collecting trips during the next twelve years, to Alaska, Mexico, Brazil, Peru, Ecuador, Chile, and Argentina.

When Mexia was home in San Francisco, she gave occasional lantern-slide lectures. One of these took place at the Academy in 1932. Notes on her travels appeared regularly in The Gull, newsletter of the Audubon Society of the Pacific, 1926-35. The Sierra Club Bulletin published two accounts of her adventures. Several accounts of her expeditions were published in Madrono, the journal of the California Botanical Society.

Mexia was a member of the California Botanical Society, the Sierra Club, the Audubon Association of the Pacific, the Sociedad Geografica de Lima, Peru, and a life member of the California Academy of Sciences. Over the course of her career she collected about 150,000 specimens. Her expeditions in Mexico (1925, 1926-27, 1929, and 1937-38), Alaska (1928), and South America (1929-32 and 1934-37) yielded over 500 new species, mostly spermatophytes, of which 50 are named in her honor.

In 1938, Mexia became ill during one of her trips to the mountains of Oaxaca and was forced to return home. Her health did not improve and she died on July 12, 1938 at her home in Berkeley, California. In her will, ahw bequeathed $3,000.00 to the California Academy of Sciences to employ her friend and specimen mounter from Berkeley, Nina Floy Perry Bracelin.