Biography of Dr. Thomas T. Waterman, written by his daughter Helen M. Waterman, in collaboration with her mother, Grace Goodwin Waterman

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Thomas Talbot Waterman was the youngest of ten children of his parents, and was born in Hamilton, Missouri on 23 April, 1885. He was named for Bishop Talbot, whom his father much admired. His father was an Episcopal Minister, and the family lived in Missouri and then in California. Thomas graduated from the University of California in 1907 with a major in Hebrew. A course in experimental phonetics and a field trip under P.E. Goddard recording California Indian dialects switched him to the field of Anthropology. He was a museum Assistant at the University of California from 1907 to 1909, and an instructor and Assistant Curator 1910-1914.

Grace Morris Godwin was the second child of a Baptist Minister, and was born in Dakota Territory (later South Dakota) on 12 September 1883. The family lived in Dakota, Illinois, and Arizona before coming to California. She graduated from the University of California in 1908 with a major in Mathematics and Physical Geography.

The couple met at UC, where she helped with him mathematics. They were married on 31, December 1910 and lived at various places in Berkeley near the campus and in San Francisco near the Affiliated Colleges where he was assigned for six months.

In August 2011, Professor Waterman began his association with Ishi, the famous and interesting Indian who was the last survivor of his Yahi tribe and lived into the twentieth century totally untouched by white man's civilization. Ishi's story has been admirably told in Mrs. Kroeber's book. Grace Waterman reports that even when he was first brought to Berkeley, emaciated and bewildered, he had an inate sense of dignity and tidyness that permitted him to fit in well. He lived for several weeks in the Waterman home, watching what Professor Waterman did, and doing the same.

During 1912 they built a house on Cherry Street in Berkeley, moving in on November 1, 1912. Their daughter was born at Alta Bates Hospital in Berkeley on 25 February 1913. The end of April, Thomas left for New York City, to finish the work for his PhD at Columbia University, where he has previously studied 1909-1910. He returned in August. In 1914, he was appointed Assistant Professor at the University of California. In May and June 1914, Professor Waterman, Doctor Kroeber, and Doctor Pope went on an extensive camping trip with Ishi to his old territory on Deer Creek, where Ishi showed them how he had hunted and other aspects of his old life, and extensive anthropological and vocabulary studies were recorded. In March and April, their daughter Helen was seriously ill with Nephritis. Ishi has been much distressed to see Dr. Waterman, his friend, handling human skulls in the course of his anthropological work, as this was "bad medicine", and he was positive that the daughter's illness was due to this. During the summer of 1915 Ishi lived with the Watermans. During the exposition in San Francisco in 1915, Grace remembers being thrilled at seeing her first airplane, but Ishi was not particularly impressed. "White man up there?", and he shrugged his shoulders. The Watermans believed that so much else about white man's civilization was so marvelous to him that this only one more example. (In his early days in the Bay Area he had been fascinated by a window-shade - - pull it down and it is there, and then jerk it and it disappears! He would operate his for long periods of time, chuckling each time.)

Their son Thomas Jr. was born 14 August 1916. In March 1917 the family moved into the