Marie Margaret Keesing

Marie Margaret Keesing (née Martin) (December 1, 1904 – July 13, 1961) was an anthropologist and educator with strong ties to the Pacific. With a degree in anthropology from the University of New Zealand, she spent most of her working life in the United States, where she worked closely with her husband, a fellow New Zealander and renowned anthropologist Felix Maxwell Keesing. She published a number of works, and co-authored several significant books with her husband, including Taming Philippine Headhunters: a Study of Government and of Cultural Change in Northern Luzon (1934) and Elite Communication in Samoa: A Study of Leadership (1956).

Born on December 1, 1904 in Auckland, New Zealand to parents Frederick Samuel Martin and Alice Maude Peart. Her parents described themselves as missionaries, but their lives and commitments were more complicated and nuanced than that label usually allows. Their work with the local indigenous communities included providing medical attention, as well as running a local store. As a result, Marie grew up with Maori friends and neighbors. She writes about her childhood in the posthumous book Hidden Valleys and Unknown Shores (Harcourt 1978). She attended the University of New Zealand and graduated with a BA in History in May 1926. She became engaged to Felix “Fee” Keesing that same month and they married in July 1928. During their engagement, setting a pattern she would follow throughout their lives, she collaborated with him as he rewrote his Master’s thesis for the 1928 publication The Changing Maori (Thomas Avery & Son). Whilst not acknowledged as a co-author, she was always described as an ever present co-interlocutor, collaborator and companion. Marie and Felix had two children: economist Donald Beaumont Keesing (b. 1933, London, died 29 Apr 2004 in Washington DC) and anthropologist Roger Martin Keesing (b 1935 Honolulu, died 1993, Canada). The family lived in Chicago, New Haven, London, Honolulu, Washington DC, before settling at Stanford University in the 1940s with Marie and Felix taking American citizenship in 1940s. Both Donald and Roger were undergraduates at Stanford University and maintained strong relationships with the institution throughout their lifetimes. Felix Keesing died of a heart attack whilst playing a game of tennis in April 1961 at Stanford. Marie Keesing died on July 13, 1961 after her husband’s untimely death three months earlier. As George Spindler, long time Stanford colleague of the Keesings put it “She gave up her life, in the agony of grief over his death, on July 13.” There is some speculation that she blamed herself for her husband's death and this, along with a bout of severe depression, drove her to suicide.

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