Marriott Morris’s third cousins Mary Morris, George, and William Vaux lived near the Morris home in Germantown, PA. Their father (George Vaux Sr.), was a prominent Philadelphia lawyer.
Mary and George Jr. visited the Morris’s home ‘Avocado’ on the oceanfront at Crescent Park in Sea Girt in the mid 1880s. George and Marriott attended Haverford College together.
Mary was four years older than George, but remained unmarried, as her mother had passed away in 1880. As the only daughter, she was left to care for her father and brothers.
Marriott and his family were adventurous and they took the Vaux’s on jaunts all over the shore. Allaire Park, Twin Lights in Navesink, train and boat trips. Mary used some of the time to work on her watercolors. Her mother had gifted Mary a painting set shortly before her death. This image of summer flowers is one of the earliest of over 700 floral paintings Mary contributed to the Smithsonian, and dates to the days she visited Sea Girt.
George Vaux Jr. at Crescent Park behind Avocado 1888
William (seated) Mary (standing) and George (with bowler) awaiting the train to come to Sea Girt in 1886.
George Sr. was nearly drown on a transatlantic trip, so he forbade his children from traveling to Europe. Instead, he sent them “out west” each summer.
They visited the geysers of Yellowstone in 1885, and then in 1887 when the Canadian Pacific Railway opened, they visited British Columbia and the Illecillewaet glacier, in the newly created Canadian Glacier National Park. They had such a good time, they planned a return visit.
In 1894 they were shocked at how much the glacier had retreated in just seven years. They compared their earlier photos for proof. A 300 year cooling period, sometimes called the “little ice age” ended around 1850, and warmer winters were melting the ice.
By then Swiss mountaineers had been hired to help tourists hike the glacier. William, who had become an engineer, wanted to measure the retreat, and as the Vaux siblings returned each summer they recorded the glaciers steady shrinkage. They lugged heavy photographic equipment and surveyors tools up the moraine.
William died in 1908 and George Jr. was busy with his law profession. Mary continued to return to the glacier alone for another 20 years. She would photograph fixed points and landmarks to ensure accurate measurements. She also sunk metal plates into the ice to measure the iceflow. She would write to her father who encouraged her studies. The edge of the glacier retreated miles from the railway.
Her pictures, and logs are important evidence to climate and glaciologists. She was a pioneer in the field.
Mary waited until she was 54 in 1914 to get married to paleontologist Charles Doolittle Walcott. Her father was upset, and against the union, but he died in 1915. Shortly after, Walcott became the Secretary of the Smithsonian, a position he held for 20 years.
Mary continued to travel to the West. In 1921 the friends repaid their cousin Marriott Morris for his hospitality 35 years earlier. Despite being 61 years old, Mary led the team up the Victoria Glacier near Banff and Lake Louise. Marriott brought his daughter Janet and son Marriott Jr. A few of Marriott’s pictures from that trip are below. All are courtesy of the Library Company of Philadelphia.
Summer 1886 painting by Mary M Vaux. Many of her North American Flowers were published in five volumes by the Smithsonian.
George Vaux (center) along with photographic equipment and a picnic lunch at Twin Lights Sandy Hook. 1887
Marriott Jr, & Janet Morris and guide 1921 at Victoria Glacier
Mary Vaux and brother George led the Morris’ up the glacier.
The team navigating the moraine in July 1921.
Mary as taken by her husband Charles Doolittle Walcott (Smithsonian photo)