With the financial independence gained through an inheritance from her father in 1887, Adela C. Breton began to pursue her interests in travel and archaeology. Born into a well to do family in Bath, England, in 1849, Breton had never married, spending most of her adult life caring for her ailing parents. However with the death of her father, she tossed aside her home-bound life for over thirty five years of almost continual travel, wedding trips for pleasure with a growing professional involvement in Mesoamerican archaeology.

Between 1894 and 1908, the intrepid Breton took thirteen excursions to archaeological sites in Yucatan, where she became an important part of the budding Mayanist community. Alfred P. Maudsley encouraged her to use her skills as a watercolorist to document the fragile and rapidly deteriorating archaeological sites, and her illustrations of Chichén Itzá (especially the Temple of Jaguars), Acancéh, and Teotihuacán provide irreplaceable evidence of the original colors and appearance of the murals and other artwork. Breton also contributed work on Mayan languages and was an energetic contributor to professional organizations, particularly the International Congress of Americanists. Although health was often an issue during the last decade of her life, she continued to travel well into her seventies. In 1923, however, after attending the International Congress of Americanists in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, she fell ill and died, leaving her brother in shock. "For the last 30 years and more," he wrote, "Adela has so often left England and returned safe if not sound that it is only the sight of her watch on a table in the dining room here that makes me realize that she will never come back from Rio -- that fatal trip."

The Breton collection consists of photocopies of 100 letters addressed to Ella Lewis of Philadelphia, Adela C. Breton's friend and relative. Purely personal in nature, 94 of these were written by Breton, and 6 (all written after her death) by her brother Harry, and although they offer little insight into Breton's archaeological or artistic interests, they do provide a glimpse of her personality and her opinions on everything from American immigration law to the First World War, the malice of Germans, and her experiences traveling in western Canada.

Provenance

The photocopies were donated to the APS by Clifford Lewis III, grandson of Ella Lewis, in 1976 (accn. 1977-1077ms).

The originals of the Breton Papers are now housed at the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University (Accession no. 976-63, 45-5, 2001.7).

Preferred citation

Cite as: Adela C. Breton Papers, American Philosophical Society.

Processing information

Recatalogued by rsc, 2003.

Related material

The Franz Boas Papers (Mss.B.B61) contain 15 letters between Boas and Breton, 1907-1912, mostly relating to Breton's work for the 18th International Congress of Americanists.

The Bristol City Museum and Art Gallery houses a collection of Adela Breton's watercolors of Mayan archaeological sites in Mexico.

Bibliography

Geographic Name(s)

• Canada--Description and travel.

Personal Name(s)

• Breton, Adela, 1849-1923
• Breton, Harry Dietrich
• Lewis, Ella

Subject(s)

• Women archaeologists
• World War, 1914-1918