author

Laura Estelle Watson Benedict

b. 1861

An early American anthropologist, she is best remembered for a landmark 1916 study of Bagobo ceremonial life, magic, and myth in the Philippines. Her work grew out of doctoral research at Columbia and still stands out for its close attention to ritual and oral tradition.

1 Audiobook

Philippine Folk-Tales

Philippine Folk-Tales

by Clara Kern Bayliss, Laura Estelle Watson Benedict, Fletcher Gardner, Berton L. Maxfield, W. H. Millington

About the author

Born in 1861, Laura Estelle Watson Benedict was an American writer and researcher whose surviving reputation rests mainly on her ethnographic work about the Bagobo people of the Philippines. Available catalog and archive records identify her as the author of A Study of Bagobo Ceremonial, Magic and Myth, and list the work under her full name with the birth year 1861.

That book was published in 1916 and had first been presented as her Columbia University doctoral thesis in 1914. It was also reprinted from the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, showing that her research circulated in both academic and library collections.

Some later museum and book records connect her name with Bagobo textile collections and with Philippine folk material, suggesting a broader interest in anthropology and traditional culture. I could not confidently confirm enough biographical detail beyond her authorship, research subject, and publication history to say more without overreaching.