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1. Annie Heloise Abel: Groundbreaking Historian
- University of Nebraska Press
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1 annie heloi s e abel Groundbreaking Historian Suzanne Julin [35.175.174.36] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 20:22 GMT) after annie heloise abel died in 1947, one of her sisters, Rose Abel Wright, wrote to one of Abel’s colleagues that Annie “was in the truest sense of the word, a research student.”1 Indeed, Abel’s career and publications are most often associated with her tenacious research methods and her nearly obsessive attention to detail and documentation ; her work as a researcher overshadows her years in academia. Abel’s publications about American Indians and Indian policy during the Civil War era and her edited editions of the journals of fur traders and explorers broke new ground in the topics they addressed and provided new primary sources to other scholars and the public. They continue to stand as important contributions to the history of the American West and its Native peoples. Born in Fernhurst, Sussex, England, on February 18, 1873, Annie Heloise Abel spent her childhood in England and her adolescence and adult life in the United States. Her parents, George and Amelia Anne (Hogben) Abel, immigrated to Kansas in 1871 but became disillusioned and returned to England before the birth of Annie, their third child and first daughter. The couple had four more children before returning to Kansas in 1884, where George Abel began work as a gardener. Annie remained in England for a year after her parents’ departure, then joined her family in the United States in 1885.2 After graduating from high school in 1893 and teaching at the high school level for two years, Abel attended the University of Kansas, receiving her bachelor’s degree in 1898. Two years later she earned her master’s, after defending her thesis, “Indian Reservations in Kansas and the Extinguishment of Their Title.” Abel’s interest in American Indians began as a child in England, when she read her brothers’ books about adventures on the American frontier. That interest deepened when her thesis director, Frank Heywood Hodder, gave her an 1. (Opposite) Annie H. Abel-Henderson, ca. 1898. Gift of Rose Abel Wright. Courtesy of University Archives, Spencer Research Library, University of Kansas Libraries, Lawrence ks. 48 Julin assignment that introduced her to the study of U.S. policy toward the country’s Native peoples and stimulated the studies she would continue throughout her career. Deeply impressed by Abel’s talents as a historian, Hodder encouraged her to pursue a doctorate at Cornell University, and Abel studied there for a year. Apparently constrained by a lack of funds, she returned to Kansas and taught high school in Lawrence for two years while taking additional history courses at the University of Kansas.3 Abel’s fortunes changed when she won a Bulkley Fellowship in 1905. The prize made possible her full-time study at Yale University under Edward Gaylord Bourne. The attention she received as the first woman to receive this award, however, colored her attitude about publicity and about her position as a woman scholar. In particular, she was irritated by a newspaper article about her winning the Bulkley that referred to her as a “coed.”4 The thirty-year-old Abel, with a reputation as a gifted student and years of financial struggle behind her, hardly considered herself a coed. Further, she resented the implication that her achievement was some sort of aberration. Decades later, she wrote to a colleague, “I have had ever since an extreme aversion to the sight of my name in a newspaper.”5 Abel’s accomplishments as a doctoral student confirmed her abilities . She earned a doctorate in 1905. Her dissertation, “The History of Events Resulting in Indian Consolidation West of the Mississippi,” based on research in the Indian Office and congressional records, won the American Historical Association’s Justin Winsor Prize in 1906 and was published that year in the association’s Annual Report.6 After accepting the award at the American Historical Association’s 1906 meeting, Abel visited a seriously ill Edward Gaylord Bourne. Delighted that his student had won the Winsor Prize—it was the first time the award had come to a Yale student since its inception in 1896—Bourne urged her to continue her studies in Indian policy. In particular, he encouraged her to investigate the treatment of American Indians in California under the mission system. The pertinent records, held by the Indian Office, had never been perused by a researcher. For the...