Augusta Foote Arnold

Augusta Newton Foote Arnold (October 24, 1844 – May 9, 1904) was an American author and naturalist who published three books – two cookery books under the pen name of Mary Ronald, and The Sea-Beach at Ebb-Tide, regarded as a seminal work on the intertidal biology of the United States.

Personal life

Augusta was born in Seneca Falls, New York. Her father was Elisha Foote, a judge, mathematician, inventor, and a commissioner of the US Patent Office. Her mother was Eunice Newton, who is considered the first female scientist to perform experiments in her own laboratory. Eunice Newton Foote described and explained the "Green House Gas Effect" in 1856, three years before Irishman John Tyndall who is widely credited with that research. Her mother Eunice was also a women's rights campaigner, one of the signers of the seminal Declaration of Sentiments in that effort. Her older sister was the artist and writer Mary Foote Henderson, who married U.S. Senator John B. Henderson, the co-author of the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution which abolished slavery. Augusta and Mary both carried on their parents' legacy of science. She was educated at private schools in Saratoga Springs, New York.

Augusta Foote married Francis Benjamin Arnold on March 6, 1869, in the nation's capital. He was the son of Benjamin Green Arnold (founding president of the Coffee Exchange in the 1880s) and Frances Snow, and the brother of Charlotte Bruce Arnold (1842–1924). The couple had two sons and a daughter: Benjamin Foote Arnold (1870–1896), Henry Newton Arnold (1873–1939), who served as Assistant Attorney General under George W. Wickersham in the Taft Administration, and Frances A. Arnold (1874–1975).