Elizabeth H. Clark

Elizabeth H. Clark was only age 18 when she became a sorter and classifier of marine specimens at The Museum of Comparative Zoology in Cambridge. Seven years later, about 1880, she became personal assistant to Alexander Agassiz, son of the founder of the museum, Louis Agassiz.

Shortly after the death of his father in 1873, Alexander acquired a small peninsula in Newport, where he built a substantial house – now the Inn at Castle Hill – and a laboratory for use as his summer residence. Clark traveled back and forth between Agassiz’s two labs. Since Agassiz spent much of his time away on exploratory expeditions, Clark was responsible for his zoological interests both at his Cambridge and Newport laboratories during his frequent absences.

Clark lived with her mother and never married, but in the early 1890s, her sister-in-law died and her brother brought his children to them to care for. According to family reports, Agassiz said to her “Miss Clark, I have some extra furniture. Why don't you build a house for your mother and the girls over on the island?” Clark hired Charles L. Bevins, a noted Jamestown architect, and built a home for herself and her four nieces and nephews on Walcott Avenue. When Agassiz died in 1910, he left her $25,000 – more than $600,000 in 2018 dollars – plus $5,000 a year for life.