Smith, Erminnie, 1836-1886

Erminnie (Ermine) Adele Platt Smith was born on April 26, 1836, in Marcellus, Onondaga County, New York.

She was an American ethnologist and geologist. She graduated from Troy Female Seminary in New York in 1853. The mother of four sons, she spent their early years at home. When the family moved temporarily to Germany for the boys' schooling, she continued her studies in mineralogy and crystallography at the University of Strassburg and Heidelberg. She also attended the School of Mines in Freiburg. In 1866, the family moved from Chicago to Jersey City, where she founded the Aesthetic Society of Jersey City in 1876. From 1880 to 1885, she focused her studies on the Iroquois Nation reservations in New York and Canada and spent most of her time among the Tuscarora tribe, which bestowed upon her the name of "Beautiful Flower". She amassed their legends and obtained and compiled more than 15,000 words of the Iroquois dialect. Her research was done under the auspices of the Smithsonian Institution's Bureau of American Ethnology. Smith was the first woman inducted into the American Academy of Sciences. She was a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the New York Historical Society. She was also the first woman to become a Fellow of the New York Academy of Sciences (1877) and the London Scientific Society. Her publications include numerous scientific papers and Myths of the Iroquois (1883).

In 1855, she married Simeon H. Smith (1834-1916), a lumber dealer and merchant. She died of heart disease on June 8, 1886, in Jersey City, New Jersey.