Mrs. Hitchcock has been steadily at work for thirty-six years, whenever called upon to supply my numerous demands, famed scientist Edward Hitchcock wrote in the preface of one of his memoirs, recognizing the labor of his wife, Orra White Hitchcock.

It was a funny way of saying that, for over three decades, Orra had been providing the distinctly abstract illustrations that accompanied the American scientists geological findings in the mid-1800s. She drew the earths crust as a soft orb of salmon pink, fossil footprints as a chic wallpaper design, an octopus as an oddly sensual configuration of dots and swirls. Like educational posters on acid, they were used in Edwards lectures at Amherst College, where he was a professor and, later, the schools third president.

And that too without the slightest pecuniary compensation, or the hope of artistic reputation, Edward continued. For so large and coarse have been most of the drawings that she never felt flattered to have others told she was the author of them.

Orra never even signed them.

In the tribute, Orras lack of self-promotion is framed as modesty, her renouncement of payment is cast as true devotion to her craft, and her lack of professional ambition reads as honorable. Edwards speech, though probably well-intentioned and maybe even uniquely gracious for a powerful man of his time, hints at how women in the workplace have historically been rewarded for dreaming small.