Agnes Marion Ayre (1890-1940)
8. Proceed up Military Road to #120, the home of Agnes Marion Ayre, a noted botanical artist.
Agnes Marion Ayre was the third of four children born to a well-off St. John's family of Mary Morrison and Lewis Miller. The children were encouraged to be creative, educated and politically minded, especially regarding women's right to vote and hold office. Agnes and her sister Janet continued this activist tradition, joining the Ladies Reading Room and the Women's Franchise Movement and campaigning for women's suffrage.
Agnes married businessman Charles Ayre in 1913 and they had four children. She had a lifelong interest in botany and nature, often taking long walks with her art materials to sketch plants. During the 1920s, Agnes collected and identified many Newfoundland botanical specimens and developed important connections to botanists in Canada and internationally. Remarkably, she collected five-sixths of the then known flora of the province.
In 1935, Agnes published Wild Flowers of Newfoundland, Part III. This book was the only volume of a planned series of five to be published. She had completed 1,000 life-sized watercolour paintings with a historical record of each species. However, due to a lack of money, a break-in at the office she was using, and then her own illness with cancer, she only managed to get one volume to print. In the end, to save money and to get the book published, the paint was washed off her illustrations and the historical notes were cut considerably.
In 1936, she published a booklet entitled Newfoundland Names, a compilation of the history and origins of local community and personal names. In addition to her scientific and suffrage work, Agnes was a founding member of the Newfoundland Historical Society and the Newfoundland Art Society.
Agnes Ayre died of cancer in 1940. After her death much of her work - paintings, pressed flowers and field notes - was not properly stored and was lost. What remains has been donated to Memorial University and can be viewed by appointment at the Agnes Marion Ayre Herbarium.
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