Frances Theodora Smith Dana Parsons

Writing Through Grief

Cover of How to Know the Wild Flowers by Mrs. William Starr Dana

I pulled How to Know the Wild Flowers by Mrs. William Starr Dana from the top shelf of my bookcase and wondered how hard it might be to work back from her husband’s name to find out who she was.

I was pleasantly surprised and a bit relieved that my search immediately brought forth a Wikipedia article with “all you’d want to know” about Frances Theodora Smith Dana Parsons, who wrote her first book using her married name, even though by the time her book was published she was a widow.

Her Biography

Frances was born in 1861 in New York City. Her parents, N. Denton Smith and Harriet Shelton Smith sent her to the “exclusive” Miss Comstock’s School. While searching for information about the school, I discovered that Corinne Roosevelt Robinson, sister of U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt, was born the same year as Frances and also attended Miss Comstock’s School. They would have been classmates. In looking for more information about the school, I found information about Granger Place School which was run by Caroline Comstock during the time Frances would have been in school. Maybe it was the same school with a different name?

Frances married William Starr Dana, a Commander in the U.S. Navy in 1884. He died in 1890 from the flu. While in mourning, Frances went on long walks with her friend, the illustrator Marion Satterlee. According to Wikipedia:

These outings prompted her to write her first and most important botanical work, How to Know the Wild Flowers (1893), which was the first field guide to North American wildflowers. The book was quite successful, with the first printing selling out in five days. How to Know the Wild Flowers garnered favorable responses from Theodore Roosevelt and Rudyard Kipling, among others.

In 1896, Frances married her second husband James Russell Parsons, Jr., “a professor and author in the field of education, treasurer of the University of the State of New York at Albany, a politician in New York State and later a diplomat—Consul General at Mexico City under President Theodore Roosevelt, a friend of Frances’ family since childhood.”¹

They had two children, a son, Russell, and a daughter, Dorothea, who died as a toddler. James died in 1905 in an automobile accident in Mexico City. Frances then returned to live in New York City where she was active in politics and women’s suffrage. She did not remarry and died in 1952 at the age of 90.

Her Books

Her books are published under two names.

Her first three books were published with the name Mrs. William Starr Dana and included:

• How to Know the Wildflowers (1893). New York: Charles Scribner's Son's. Illustrations by Marion Satterlee and Elsie Louise Shaw.

• According to Season (1894). Illustrated by Elsie Louise Shaw.

• Plants and Their Children (1896). Illustrations by Alice Josephine Smith.

Her last two books published with the name Frances Theodora Parsons were:

• How to Know the Ferns (1899). Illustrated by Marion Satterlee and Alice Josephine Smith.

• Perchance Someday (1951). Autobiography, privately printed.

A Deeper Dive Into Her Books

Frances wrote her third book, Plants and Their Children as a book to be used throughout a school year. She starts the preface with:

“A child’s reading book, it seems to me, should secure for the child three things—practice in the art of reading, amusement, and instruction.” - Mrs. William Starr Dana

I think that is excellent advice for children’s books! She goes on to explain how the book was intended to be used throughout a school year, beginning in the fall. You can read this book online via Google Books.

Her second book, a series of essays titled According to Season, is also fully available on Google Books.

Her fourth book, How to Know the Ferns, was supposedly written because her husband had financial problems, and they needed income from her books. You can also read this book on Google Books.

Her Memoir

I could not find her memoir, Perchance Someday, online or otherwise, but I did find a reference to it in As It Was: A Memoir by Robert M. Pennoyer (2015). I clipped what Google Books would show me.

from As It Was: A Memoir by Robert M. Pennoyer (2015)

And What Else Is There To Know?

When I started researching Frances's life, I had no idea that I would run into a childhood friend as famous as Theodore Roosevelt!

Per Find-a-Grave, Frances was buried in Albany, New York. Via the description on that website, I realized that one of her granddaughters was the wife of Robert Pennoyer, whose book references Frances’s privately published memoir.

I’m sure the more I dig, the more I’ll learn about this fascinating author, who I thought would be hard to find. But let’s bring this back to the wildflowers, the subject of her most famous and well-read book.

“The pleasure of a walk in the woods and fields is enhanced hundredfold by some little knowledge of the flowers which we meet at every turn.” - Mrs. William Starr Dana

And so is the pleasure of reading a book enhanced when one has a little knowledge of the author and who she was. I hope you find this is true for this week’s Lost Lady of Garden Writing, Frances Theodora Smith Dana Parsons.

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I’ll return with the next Lost Lady of Garden Writing article in two weeks. In the meantime, you can find me in several places: my website and blog, The Gardenangelists podcast, and my new weekly newsletter, In the Garden With Carol.

1. For another biography check out https://ejournals.sierracollege.edu/jscnhm/v6n1/parsons.html