Hearst, Phoebe Apperson, 1842-1919

Phoebe Elizabeth Apperson Hearst (December 3, 1842 – April 13, 1919) was an American philanthropist, feminist and suffragist.[1] Hearst was the founder of the University of California Museum of Anthropology, now called the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology, and the co-founder of the National Parent-Teacher Association.

he was born Phoebe Elizabeth Apperson in St. Clair, Missouri, in Franklin County, the daughter of Drucilla (Whitmire) and Randolph Walker Apperson. In her early years, Phoebe studied to be a teacher. Her childhood consisted of helping her father with finances at his store, learning French, and playing the piano.[2] In 1860, businessman George Hearst met Phoebe when he returned to St. Clair to care for his dying mother. When they married on June 15, 1862, George Hearst was 41 years old, and Phoebe was 19.

Soon after their marriage,[3] the couple left Missouri and moved to San Francisco, California, where Phoebe gave birth to their only child, William Randolph Hearst. As a very successful miner who later became a U.S. senator, George often left Phoebe alone during his work.[2][4] She and her son were close and had many similar interests, including art and design.[5] After Phoebe's death in 1919, William inherited a $10 million fortune.[2]

In the 1880s, she became a major benefactor and director of the Golden Gate Kindergarten Association[6] and the first president of the Century Club of California.[7] In 1902, Hearst funded the construction of a building to provide teacher training and to house kindergarten classes and the association's offices. The association had 26 schools at the time of the San Francisco earthquake in 1906.[8] Hearst was a major benefactor of the University of California, Berkeley, and its first woman regent, serving on the board from 1897 until her death. That year, she contributed to the establishment of the National Congress of Mothers, which evolved eventually into the National Parent-Teacher Association. In 1900, she co-founded the all-girls National Cathedral School in Washington, DC. A nearby public elementary school bears her name.[9] Hearst funded the Hearst Library in Anaconda, Montana, in 1898. She maintained it until 1904.[10]

Hearst became a close friend of Dr. William Pepper, provost of the University of Pennsylvania, who was also a medical doctor who treated her for a heart condition. In 1896, in her first major act of museum philanthropy, she donated more than two hundred objects to the Penn Museum, many of them items such as Anasazi ceramics excavated from the Cliff Palace site of Mesa Verde, Colorado.[11][1] Later, she also funded a Penn Museum expedition to Russia, and sent the Aztec specialist, Zelia Nuttall, to Moscow for this purpose.[12]

In 1901, Phoebe Hearst founded the University of California Museum of Anthropology, later called the Robert H. Lowie Museum of Anthropology and renamed the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology in 1992. The original collection comprised 230,000 objects representing cultures and civilizations throughout history.

She died at her home, Hacienda del Pozo de Verona,[38] in Pleasanton, California, aged 76, on April 13, 1919, during the worldwide influenza epidemic of 1918–1919, and was buried at Cypress Lawn Memorial Park in Colma, California.[4][39][40]