Sara Yorke Stevenson (1847–1921)

Sara Yorke Stevenson was born in Paris, France, to a wealthy, well-connected American couple from Philadelphia. Her father owned a cotton plantation in Louisiana and also worked as a cotton broker. It was probably in Paris, among the great collections of the Louvre Museum, that Sara developed her life-long interest in ancient Egypt. When she was 10 years old, her parents returned to the USA, leaving Sara and her sisters in boarding school in France. In 1862, she joined her family in Mexico, where she attended many social gatherings of the new Emperor Maximilian and Empress Carlotta. Sara later wrote an account of court life and her experiences there that provides insight into the inner workings of that doomed empire. The family relocated to the USA in 1867, and in 1870, Sara married Cornelius Stevenson, a successful Philadelphia lawyer with whom she a son. She joined the city's cultural elite, which included scholars, anthropologists, and educators, and became known as an "armchair archaeologist." She gave popular lectures in Egyptian subjects and in 1894 was the first woman to speak at the Peabody Museum. She served as president of the Pennsylvania Chapter of the Archeological Institute of America, and was a founder and officer of the University Archaeological Association, the American Folk-Lore Society and the American Exploration Society. She was named a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1895. In the late 1880s, she was among the prominent Philadelphians appointed to help organize the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. Despite her lack of formal training, she served as the curator of the Egyptian and Mediterranean section of the museum from 1890 to 1905.
She also developed one of the first college-level courses in the USA to train museum professionals, which she taught at the Pennsylvania Museum and School of Industrial Art (now known as The University of the Arts). She also wrote a column for the Philadelphia Public Ledger under the pen names "Peggy Shippen" and "Sally Wistar." A feminist and supporter of women's suffrage, she established the Equal Franchise Society of Pennsylvania.