Margaret Sibella Brown

Margaret Sibella Brown's parents were Richard Henry Brown (1837–1920) and Barbara Davison (1842–1898).[6][7] Margaret Sibella had a twin sister (Elizabeth Purves), and three other siblings (Annie, Richard Charles, and Lillian Seward).[7][8] The Brown family lived in Sydney Mines, Nova Scotia.[7]

Brown had a paternal aunt who was also named Margaret Sibella Brown (1836–1854).[9] Sibella Annie Barrington was a distant cousin.[10] The name Sibella or Sibyl in the Brown family is traced back to Isabella French (born about 1731 or 1732), wife of John Barrington.[11]

Brown attended the Anglican School for Girls in Halifax. She earned a B.A. at Kings' College.[4] She attended the Anglo-German Institute finishing school in Stuttgart, Germany.[8] After returning to Nova Scotia in 1885, she attended the Victoria School of Art and Design.[8]

There is little contemporaneous record of Brown's scientific career. There is one known paper she published in 1937, in which she categorized a collection of moss samples gathered in Syria by William Bacon Evans.[12]

She is known to have worked with Elizabeth Gertrude Britton, Nathaniel Lord Britton, and Joseph Edward Little, as co-collectors of specimens.[13] One expedition with Elizabeth and Nathaniel Britton, to Puerto Rico, was undertaken in January 1922, with a planned duration of ten weeks.[14] The results of that expedition were presented in April of that year.[15]

Brown was a member of the Moss Exchange Club (later known as the British Bryological Society)[16] and the Sullivant Moss Society (later known as the American Bryological and Lichenological Society).[8] She was president of the Halifax Floral Society. She was a member of the Nova Scotian Institute of Science; when she died at the age of 95, she was the oldest living member.[8]

Brown served on the board of the Victoria School of Art and Design (later known as NSCAD University or Nova Scotia College of Art and Design), and was a member of their education committee.[8] During World War I, she was honorary secretary of the Halifax Branch of the Canadian Red Cross Society.[8]

Brown was awarded an honorary M.A. from Acadia University on May 16, 1950, at the age of 84.[4][8][17] She had been offered an honorary Ph.D., which she declined and accepted the M.A. instead.[8] In 1934, she was awarded an honorary diploma from the Victoria School of Art and Design.[8] Brown was inducted into the Nova Scotia Scientific Hall of Fame in 2010.[8]

Yale University Herbarium catalog card. Text reads: Lejeunea patens Lindb. / On rocks. New Brunswick / Long Island, Kennebecaisis / (Collected by) M. S. Brown July '23

The E.C. Smith Herbarium at Acadia University contains her collection of 1779 mosses, 858 hepatics, and 53 lichens.[8] Other of her specimens are in the collections of the British Museum, New York Botanical Garden, Dalhousie University, the New Brunswick Museum, the Nova Scotia Museum of Natural History, the Devonian Botanical Garden at the University of Alberta, the Yale University Herbarium, and the Harvard University Herbaria.[8][18][19]

• Biography of Sibella's grandfather, Richard Brown. Vernon, Charles William (1903). Cape Breton, Canada, at the Beginning of the Twentieth Century. Toronto: Nation Publishing Co. pp. 16 – via Internet Archive.