Bertha Knight Landes - Early Years

Early Years

Landes was born in Ware, Massachusetts to Charles Sanford Knight and Cordelia Cutter. Her father, a veteran of the Union Army, moved the family to Worcester in 1873. She attended Indiana University, where she received a degree in history and political science in 1891.

After three years of teaching at the Classical High School in Worcester, Massachusetts, she married geologist Henry Landes, who she had met as a student at Indiana University. The couple had three children, one of whom was adopted. Landes moved to Seattle in 1895 when her husband Henry became a member of the University of Washington faculty. He would later become Dean of the College of Sciences there.