Grace de Laguna

Who was Grace de Laguna?

Grace de Laguna was an American philosopher who taught at Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania.

Grace Mead Andrus, as she was born, was of Connecticut ancestry, her father Wallace R. Andrus, having served in the 17th Connecticut Volunteers in the Civil War; he was later a land agent for the Northern Pacific Railway. Her mother was Annis Mead. She was raised in the Oregon Territory.

She attended the Sage School of Philosophy at Cornell University, where she received her Ph.D. and met Theodore de Laguna, an instructor there, whom she married.

Grace and Theodore both taught philosophy for many years at Bryn Mawr, starting in 1907. She became chair of philosophy at Bryn Mawr after Theodore's death in 1930.

In the 1940s, she accompanied her daughter, the anthropologist Frederica de Laguna, on anthropological field trips in Arizona and among the Salish people of the Pacific Northwest.