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The Blue Book of Iowa Women A History of Contemporary Women

Compiled by Winona Evans Reeves, 1914.

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Miss Carrie Harrison

Miss Carrie Harrison, a plant expert of national reputation, was born in Fayette county, Iowa, the daughter of C. C. and Louisa Ray Harrison.  After graduating from the Upper Iowa University, she attended the normal school at Valparaiso, Ind., was graduated from Wellesley College and took further work at Cornell University, N. Y.  When she was sixteen years old she taught a country school.  At the age of seventeen she managed a farm in Fayette county, and during those two years began her interest in plants.  She began making collections of Iowa plants.  She then did curator work for the national herbarium, collecting a half million specimens.  She visited the largest herbaria in Europe and secured from Germany for the U. S. government the most complete collection of plants from Porto Rico, to be found any place.  She is now a resident of Washington, D. C., filling an important position in the bureau of plant industry in the United States Department of Agriculture.  She is an extremely clever woman, aside from her knowledge of plants, as was demonstrated during the Boxer uprising in China, when she was the means of getting a cablegram through to the American legation, in Peking, which probably saved all the foreign embassies in China.  Miss Harrison is a member of the Woman's National Press Association, the Washington Wellesley Club, and the College Women's Equal suffrage League.  She says her original equipment for the study of plants was a botany, a horse on which to ride and a dog for a companion;  with these she spent long summer days studying Iowa plants, from that beginning she has gained a knowledge of the plants of every land.

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