Sarah Fraser Robbins (December 27, 1911 – February 9, 2002) was an American writer and educator in the field of natural history and a dedicated environmentalist.
She spent many years before and after that time exploring the dwellers of the waters, littoral zone, and sky near her house in Gloucester, Massachusetts.
Sarah Fraser was the youngest of five children, one boy and four girls, of George Corning Fraser (born February 25, 1872, in New York City, died November 15, 1935, in Dallas, Texas) and Jane Gardener Tutt (born August 4, 1874, in Danville, Kentucky, died December 25, 1936, in New York City).
[2] Sarah was educated at Brearley School in New York City, became a debutante, and was honored at a dinner and dance given by her older sisters in November, 1930.
At the time of Chandler Robbins's death, he was described as “assistant to the president in charge of research and development” for the Bates Manufacturing Company.
[6] Sarah's greatest friend and traveling companion was Dorothy Addams Brown, a summer and later full-time resident of Eastern Point.
While working at the museum in 1971, she gave an introduction to Physical Geology, a 6-session presentation on the “Living Landscape of Essex County,” and a 2-session in-service teacher training at the Massachusetts Audubon center in Gloucester on the physical geology of Essex County, Massachusetts, including the sea shore.
In 1973, she and Clarice Yentsch co-authored The Sea is All About Us, a guidebook to the marine environments of Cape Ann and other northern New England waters.
In 1974, she ran a 5-week marine science program for almost one hundred children of Gloucester and neighboring Rockport, Massachusetts, overseeing a staff of eight teachers.
In 1976, she spent some time in New Guinea; she became editor of Aquasphere, the magazine of the New England Aquarium; and she gave a 4-session course in Oceanography for the United States Power Squadrons.
In 2003, in her memory, the Peabody Essex Museum established the Sarah Fraser Robbins Directorship of the new Art & Nature Center.
This center features original exhibits that investigate the interconnection between people and nature through contemporary art, historical objects and interactive experiences.
In 1970, the University of Massachusetts Amherst bought the defunct Consolidated Lobster Company buildings at Hodgkins Cove on the northwest side of Cape Ann to set up a marine research station to study the “basic productivity of marine water.” [10] That same year, Charles Yentsch arrived to serve as the director, and brought his wife Clarice.
[11] On June 21, 2014, Maritime Gloucester presented the first Sarah Fraser Robbins Environmental Award to Dr. Molly Lutcavage, director of research at the University of Massachusetts Large Pelagics Research Center–in absentia, because she was in Hawaii establishing a cooperative satellite tuna tagging project.
In 1973, she was the senior author of a book, co-authored by Clarice Yentsch, entitled The Sea is All About Us, which was based on fifty of the articles that Sarah had contributed to the Audubon Society's magazine with added material.
The guidebook and the two education centers are concrete reminders of Robbins's legacy as a provider of programs which brought natural history to thousands of people.
She was an early example of a “citizen scientist.” The Sarah Fraser Robbins Environmental Award, first given by Maritime Gloucester in 2014, is established in her name to commemorate this legacy.