Eloise Butler and Her Wild Flower Garden
algae and seaweeds in the country. Eloise and Cora made three trips to Jamaica from 1891 to 1901 to collect seaweeds for him. This was 30 years before it became a tourist destination and the conditions were most primitive. Another collector, Dr. J.E. Humphrey, who was there during this period contracted "island fever" and died in two days. The seaweeds were carefully salted, packed and shipped to Collins in Malden. Only 31 species were known from Jamaica when they first went, but Eloise and Cora added 190 species and varieties to that number. Though he credited their collections, the papers he wrote only bore his name and he named all the new species found.
As the city of Minneapolis grew and spread over the surrounding countryside, Eloise became more and more upset about the destruction of native wild flower habitat. She several times over the years had petitioned the City Park Board and the University of Minnesota to develop preserves for their protection. Such requests from her were politely and sometimes not so politely ignored. Finally, understanding that they would never listen to just her, she spent the winter of 1906-1907 drumming up support from the citizens of Minneapolis. She called on every woman she knew to try to get her husband to sign the petition. In the spring, with nearly every prominent woman's signature and a few of their husbands, she was able to get the Park Board to grant her three acres in an existing park to "save in a natural condition the wild things already established in the garden and to extend the flora to include that of the whole state". The most important reason for their agreement was that they already owned the land and Eloise was volunteering to do the work. It would only cost them the price of fencing the three acres.
Over the years Eloise labored to catalog, maintain and extend the collection. The Park Board unwillingly followed her lead, expanding the garden slowly to nearly fourteen acres before she died. The site chosen was mostly bog and the surrounding slopes. As the garden grew and Eloise retired from teaching, the Woman's Club of Minneapolis petitioned the Park Board to name her curator and pay her a salary. They did and set the salary at $50 a month for the "season". Her duties included collection and culture of 600 species of Minnesota plants still to be obtained,
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