[5] (Although several printed sources, including her death certificate, give Akeley's birth year as 1888, the 1880 census and records at the Bryn Mawr College Archives confirm the 1878 date.
[6] Jobe attended Scio College from 1893 to 1897, graduating with a bachelor's degree, after which she taught at the elementary and high school level in Uhrichsville, Ohio.
There she heard of a distant mountain northwest of Mount Robson that had been glimpsed by members Samuel Prescott Fay and Donald 'Curly' Philips.
[13][14][15] In 1915, she took a commission from the Canadian government to explore and map the Fraser River in British Columbia and the Mount Sir Alexander glaciers.
[16] She was joined by fellow ACC member Caroline Hinman; they again hired Curly Philips as a guide, as well as several of his staff as cooks and porters.
[18]: 2 [19]: 5 A 1916 advertisement in Scribner's Magazine promised campers experience with backcountry camping, boating, swimming, horseback riding, dancing, music, drama, and field athletics.
[18]: 5 In addition to giving girls first-hand experience with the outdoors, the camp was visited by famous explorers and naturalists of the day such as Vilhjalmur Stefansson, Herbert Spinden, George Cherrie, and Martin and Osa Johnson.
[19]: 5 In a brochure for the camp, Jobe wrote that "girls find health, happiness and their highest development out-of-doors, where they leave behind them the artificialities of towns and cities for the joyous realities of the wooded hills and seashore.
Delia and Carl concluded a bitter divorce in 1923, and Jobe married Akeley on October 28, 1924, at All Souls Episcopal Church in New York City.
[2][20][23] She completed the expedition, mapping parts of the Belgian Congo as well as Kenya and Tanzania, and collecting plant specimens, taking hundreds of photographs.
[3] Upon her return to the United States, the museum named her to be her husband's successor as the Special Adviser to the development of their African Hall, a role she held until 1938.
Following the end of the expedition, Akeley collaborated with Belgian zoologist Jean Marie Derscheid to complete a report on the park.
[8]: 298 [10] On the 1926 trip to the Congo, her husband Carl was in the process of developing a gorilla scene for the American Museum of Natural History.
"[10] She describes Akeley's photographic style as "straight-forward... direct and powerful," as well as "stable and balanced," documenting the people and places she encountered on her expedition.
[25] Lions, Gorillas, and their Neighbors (1932) also lists Carl as a co-author and also covers their expedition, using the story to convey a message of conservation, noting the decline in large animal populations over the previous 30 years.
A review in the Times of London of the book tells a thrilling tale of the hunt, but emphasizes that their purpose was scientific, not thrill-seeking.
The reviewer writes, "they show how greater and more lasting pleasure [can] be had by restrained and intelligent hunt than by indiscriminate killing... the big game of Africa is presented as something of real value to the human race.
[28] Historian Jeannette Eileen Jones identifies the "Eden" of the book's title as part of Carl and Mary Akeley's campaign to challenge the public perception of Africa as "hellish" or "dark.
[19]: 12 Akeley lived her last years at the former site of Camp Mystic, decorated with souvenirs of her African adventures, retaining an independent spirit despite illness and a "failing mind.
"[19]: 12 She died of a stroke in 1966 at the Mary Elizabeth Convalescent Home in Mystic, Connecticut[3][9]: 106 [18]: 11 [22] Although she had expressed a wish to be cremated and buried next to her late husband on Mt.
Her papers are held in the Mary L. Jobe Akeley Collection at the Mystic River Historical Society,[16] the American Museum of Natural History,[31] and at Connecticut College.