SCIDMORE, ELIZA RUHAMAH

born Oct. 14, 1856, Madison, Wis., U.S. died Nov. 3, 1928, Geneva, Switz. American travel writer and photographer many of whose books and magazine articles featured her perspective on travel and culture in Asia. Scidmore attended Oberlin (Ohio) College in 187374 and then moved to Washington, D.C., where she contributed letters on Capitol society to newspapers in New York and in St. Louis, Missouri. A short time later she journeyed to Alaska and published a collection of her magazine articles on that distant territory as Alaska, Its Southern Coast and the Sitkan Archipelago (1885). Her appetite for travel whetted, Scidmore scarcely stopped after that. She spent long periods in Asia, particularly in Japan. Her articles on travel, manners, and politics appeared in such magazines as Outlook, Century, Harper's Weekly, and World Today. She was a member of the National Geographic Society from 1890, serving at various times as corresponding secretary, associate editor, foreign secretary, and member of the board of managers of the society. Her articles for the National Geographic magazine were generally illustrated with her own photographs. She wrote numerous books, including Jinrikisha Days in Japan (1891), Java, the Garden of the East (1897), China, the Long-Lived Empire (1900), Winter India (1903), and As the Hague Ordains (1907). When she died in 1928, the Japanese government requested that her ashes be interred in Yokohama.