Edith Patch

Spiders in her hair and everywhere make Edith Marion Patch the scariest scarecrow in downtown Belfast or at least the most esoteric. 

She’s the Belfast Garden Club’s second scarecrow in recent years and undoubtedly the first entomologist to grace Post Office Square. Last year, BGC’s scarecrow was Catherine Furbish, an American botanist who collected, classified, and illustrated the native flora of Maine.  

Patch was the first woman scientist employed by the University of Maine. Arriving in Orono in 1903 to start the entomology department at the Maine Agricultural Experiment Station, she had to work for a year before the board would approve her salary amid doubts that a woman could do the job. She earned her Master’s degree at the UMaine in 1910 and her doctorate from Cornell University in 1911. She also earned the respect of her scientific colleagues, who elected her president of the Entomological Society of America in 1930.

Patch was also an early environmentalist, calling for limited use of chemical pesticides and advocating biological methods of controlling insect pests. Well before Rachel Carson was born, Patch warned that widespread use of pesticides would dangerously diminish beneficial insects and have a devastating impact on songbirds. She predicted a world in which farmers would need to truck in bees to pollinate their crops, and where refuges would need to be established to protect butterflies, birds, and other organisms threatened by human activities.

Her home called Braeside in Old Town, Maine was recently listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The Friends of Dr. Edith Marion Patch are developing an environmental research and education center at Braeside. Preliminary designs for outdoor learning and migratory bird study areas are in the works. Inside the house, there will be a museum and a resource collection for teachers. The barn will become a classroom and bird-banding lab.