Roberta Cowing

Roberta Cowing was born to William Jackson Cowing (1832–1893) and Matilda Helen Crupper Cowing (1837–1896) in October of 1860, in Rushville, Rush County, Indiana, USA.^[2] She had one older brother, Frank Myrtle Cowing (1857–1894).^[2]

Cowing was employed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries^[1] to paint watercolors of fruit and nut varieties, as part of the USDA's Pomological Watercolor Collection. The collection includes paintings of Prunus salicina (Japanese plum), Pyrus communis (pears), and Rubus (brambles).^[3][4][5]

She made illustrations of plants collected in an 1891 botanical survey of Death Valley; the work was published in an educational journal.^[6]

Collections from the U.S. National Herbarium published twenty-one drawings of plants collected in Death Valley in their November 1893 issue, seventeen of which were signed by Roberta Cowing.^[7]

Today, Cowing's work can be found in Carnegie Mellon University's Catalogue of the Botanical Art Collection at the Hunt Institute: Public Domain Images, as well as in several USDA government publications:

• Bulletin No. 1-29, U.S. Government Printing Office, 1888^[8]
• Peach Yellows: A Preliminary Report, Department of Agriculture, Botanical Division, 1888^[9]
• Bulletin, U.S. Government Printing Office, 1888^[10]
• Yearbook of Agriculture, U.S. Government Printing Office, 1889^[11]

Cowing was active in Washington, D.C. from 1887 to 1920.^[12]

She resided at 1311 13th Street N.W. Washington, D.C.^[13]

Roberta Cowing married Ernest Throckmorton at her parents' residence, on December 27, 1892.^[14] Together, they had two sons, Robert W Throckmorton (1893–1952) and set designer Cleon Francis Throckmorton (1897–1965).^[2][15]

Roberta Cowing Throckmorton died at the age of 63, at George Washington University Hospital,^[16] on July 31, 1924, and she was buried in Rock Creek Cemetery in Washington, D.C.^[2]