// Workers AI · dad joke modeWho's Laura Benedict? Benedict-ly in love with her name.

Laura Watson Benedict (5 May 1861 – 13 December 1932) was an American anthropologist who went to the Philippines and wrote about the Bagobo people (what she termed under this is now considered to belong to three language subgroups - the Tagabawa, Guiangan and Obo) after living among them for about fourteen months from October 1906 to December 1907. She was the first American woman to obtain a doctoral degree in anthropology from Columbia University.

Benedict was born in Delhi, New York, third child of Episcopalian minister Andrew Dibble Benedict. She studied at the Lewis Institute, Chicago and completed her studies at the University of Chicago in 1899. She received an MA in sociology in 1904 in Chicago with a thesis titled "hunting pattern of mind" which was based on the teachings of William Isaac Thomas and John Dewey. She noted that hunting animals led to the formation of clan totems. Other influential teachers were George Herbert Mead and Thorstein Veblen. She became a student of Frederick Starr and she saw a display in 1904 at the St. Louis World's Fair of a village with Bagobo people brought in as part of the spectacle by Albert Ernest Jenks. This exhibit was the result of the United States taking control of the Philippine Islands in 1898. Starr had become interested in the region after his students David Prescott Barrows and Merton Leland Miller worked there. She decided that she would go and study them in the Philippines and prepared for her research. A donation by Robert Fowler Cummings to the Field Museum made it possible for several people to make collecting expeditions but she was not offered any support for her proposed study. She however took advice from George A. Dorsey of the Field Museum who asked her to collect artefacts for the museum to a value not exceeding $2000. She left Boston in April 1906 and went to England where she spent some time with Alfred C. Haddon. She also met C. G. Seligman who advised her on studies. She also visited A. W. Niewenhuis in Leiden and examined the Dutch collections. She left Europe in July and was held up in Ceylon for a month due to a plague outbreak on the ship she was to take. The Bagobo were known for their human sacrifices and slavery. On reaching Davao, she taught at a local school and tried to learn the Bagobo language. The earning from her work helped her in meeting expenses. While teaching her students, she collected information on the names used for plants and fishes that the Bagobo children knew about. She later stayed in the Talun district for a month where she could meet Bagobo people who had not been altered by interaction with western civilization. She collected Bagobo artefacts with a careful study of the background on the objects and disliked mere acquisition. She tried to attend a human sacrifice ceremony, a practice that the Spanish and American administrators had cracked down upon. She was mentally and physically exhausted by the end of 1907. She became paranoid and believed that there was an organized syndicate that was trying to sabotage her work. She was taken to Manila and taken care of by the sister of government official. She returned to Chicago around 1909. She moved to New York to attend courses in Columbia and work on her PhD thesis. She was the first woman PhD from Columbia University in 1914 and her work was published two years later. Mirriam van Waters had earned one in 1913 from Clark University under Alexander Chamberlain. She did not find much employment during the period of World War I. Around 1918 she worked as a lecturer in Hunter College and as a librarian at the Pennsylvania School of Social and Health Work. Benedict published a book Bagobo Ceremonial, Magic and Myth in 1916. During 1916, she was an organizer of the Women's Suffrage Party in New York.

Benedict's collections were acquired by the American Museum for about $4000.

External links

• Collections at the AMNH
• A study of Bagobo ceremonial, magic and myth (1916)