from Cornell University in 1912 and married the ornithologist Arthur A. Allen in August 1913.
[4] Most of her scholarly work dealt with the history of ornithology in North America before 1830.
She was chiefly responsible for bringing long-overdue attention to the work of John Abbot, an early naturalist who painted in the late 1700s many of the birds of the southern United States, and thanks to her efforts, he was honored in a ceremony in Savannah, Georgia, in 1957, when Mrs. Allen unveiled a monument to his memory.
[1]According to Alan Feduccia, the first major archival study of Mark Catesby's life was Elsa Allen's 1937 article in The Auk.
[5] Her unpublished work includes a biographical study of John Abbot, a novel "The Story of Lalla", her diaries from 1912 to 1966, and "Minerva's Daughter".