Name Caroline Kennard | Died 1937 | |
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Caroline Augusta Kennard, née Smith (15 January 1827 - 24 October 1907) was an American amateur scientist and advocate of women's rights. In correspondence with Charles Darwin she challenged his views on the inferiority of women.
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Life
Caroline Augusta Smith was born on 15 January 1827 in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. She was the daughter of James Wiggin Smith and Eliza Folsom, who lived first in Exeter, New Hampshire and later in New York City. She married Martin Parry Kennard (1818-1903), a businessman in Boston, Massachusetts, in July 1846. Martin Kennard was an anti-slavery activist, who moved to Brookline, Massachusetts in 1854. He helped the black sculptor Edmonia Lewis apply for a passport in 1865.
In 1882 Caroline Kennard entered into correspondence with Darwin, arguing against women being judged intellectually inferior to men.
Kennard was listed in the 1885 Scientist's International Directory as interested in the botany of ferns and mosses. She published a biography of Dorothea Dix in the late 1880s.
On Kennard's death a science scholarship at Radcliffe College was established in her memory by her sister, Mrs Martha T. Fiske Collord.
Kennard's son Frederic Hedge Kennard (1865-1937) was an ornithologist.