1875-1970

American Explorer

Although Delia Akeley was not the first woman to explore the African continent alone, her solo expeditions were remarkable. She traveled through areas where few non-Africans had journeyed. Initially accompanying her husband on safaris, Akeley acquired skills and experience, hunting wildlife for museum specimens. She sublimated this knowledge to investigate African animals and their habitats and to study natives and their cultures. Her observations provided zoologists and anthropologists with frameworks for future scientific research.

Information about Akeley's childhood is vague, primarily because Akeley disliked her family and was ashamed of her impoverished origins. Most sources state that she was born on December 5, 1875, on her parents' farm, near Beaver Dam, Wisconsin. The daughter of Irish immigrants Patrick and Margaret Denning, Akeley resented their incessant demands for her to perform domestic chores and ran away to Milwaukee at age thirteen. In 1889 she married...