Margaret Sibella Brown

Margaret Sibella Brown (2 March 1866 – 16 November 1961), herein referred to as "Brown", was a Canadian bryologist specializing in mosses and liverworts native to Nova Scotia.
Family and early life.
Brown's grandfather, Richard Brown (1805 – 1882) was born in Lowther, England. In 1825, he moved to Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, to take an engineering position at the coal mines there, eventually becoming general manager. In 1834, he met Margaret's grandmother, Margaret Sibella Barrington (1836 – 1854, daughter of Captain Charles and Elizabeth Barrington) whom he married that same year. One of the couple's six children was Brown's father, Richard Henry (1837 – 1920), who took over as general manager of the mines when his father retired in 1864 and returned to England.
In 1864, Richard Henry married Barbara Davison (1842–1898) in Pictou. They resided in Sydney Mines where they raised a family and where Richard was elected the town's first mayor. Margaret had a twin sister (Elizabeth Purves), and three younger siblings: Annie (1869 – 1918), Richard Charles (1872 – 1951), and Lillian Seward (1878 – 1967). 
Brown had a paternal aunt who was also named Margaret Sibella Brown (1836–1854). Sibella Annie Barrington was a distant cousin. The name Sibella or Sibyl in the Brown family is traced back to Isabella French (born about 1731 or 1732), wife of John Barrington.
Education.
Brown attended the Anglican School for Girls in Halifax. She earned a B.A. at Kings' College. She attended the Anglo-German Institute finishing school in Stuttgart, Germany. After returning to Nova Scotia in 1885, she attended the Victoria School of Art and Design.
Scientific career.
Brown's career in bryology was mostly dedicated to collecting and classifying mosses and liverworts native to Nova Scotia. The majority of her work was in Cape Breton, but also collected specimens from Trinidad, Puerto Rico, Spain, France, and Jamaica. 
There is little contemporaneous record of Brown's scientific career. There is one known paper she published in 1937, in which she categorized a collection of moss samples gathered in Syria by William Bacon Evans.
She is known to have worked with Elizabeth Gertrude Britton, Nathaniel Lord Britton, and Joseph Edward Little, as co-collectors of specimens. One expedition to Puerto Rico with Elizabeth and Nathaniel Britton was undertaken in January 1922, with a planned duration of ten weeks. The results of that expedition were presented in April of that year.
Society and board memberships.
Brown was a member of the Moss Exchange Club (later known as the British Bryological Society) and the Sullivant Moss Society (later known as the American Bryological and Lichenological Society). She was president of the Halifax Floral Society. Before she died at the age of 95, she was the oldest living member of the Nova Scotian Institute of Science.
Brown served on the board of the Victoria School of Art and Design (later known as the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design), and was a member of their education committee. During World War I, she was honorary secretary of the Halifax Branch of the Canadian Red Cross Society.
Awards.
Brown was awarded an honorary M.A. from Acadia University on May 16, 1950, at the age of 84. She had been offered an honorary Ph.D., which she declined and accepted the M.A. instead. In 1934, she was awarded an honorary diploma from the Victoria School of Art and Design. Brown was inducted into the Nova Scotia Scientific Hall of Fame in 2010.
Collections.
The E.C. Smith Herbarium at Acadia University contains her collection of 1779 mosses, 858 hepatics, and 53 lichens. Other of her specimens are in the collections of the British Museum, New York Botanical Garden, Dalhousie University, the New Brunswick Museum, the Nova Scotia Museum of Natural History, the Devonian Botanical Garden at the University of Alberta, the Yale University Herbarium, and the Harvard University Herbaria.