Anna Botsford Comstock

Who was Anna Botsford Comstock?

Anna Botsford Comstock, was an American artist, educator, conservationist, and a leader of the nature study movement, born in Otto, New York, to Marvin and Phebe Irish Botsford.

Comstock grew up on her parents' farm, where she and her Quaker mother spent time together examining the wildflowers, birds, and trees.

Comstock attended the Chamberlain Institute and Female College, a Methodist school in Randolph, New York, then she returned to Otto and taught for a year.

In 1874, Comstock entered Cornell University in Ithaca, New York where she was a member of Kappa Alpha Theta. She left Cornell after two years. In 1878, at the age of 24, she married John Henry Comstock, a young entomologist on the Cornell faculty who got her interested in insect illustration.

Throughout her life, Comstock illustrated her husband's lectures and publications on insects. She had no formal training in this illustration; she would study an insect under a microscope then draw it. While her husband was chief entomologist in the U.S. Department of Agriculture from 1879 to 1881, she prepared the drawings for his 1880 Report of the Entomologist on citrus scale insects.