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M: Margaret Welch was born in Philadelphia in 1901. She began her studies at DePauw University in 1919, but after a year she transferred to study at Barnard University, Majoring in sociology. She received her undergraduate degree form Barnard in 1923. She ultimately acquired a Ph. D from Columbia University in 1929.
   She married Dr. Reo Fortune in 1928. Together they wrote Growing Up In New Guinea, published in 1930. Welch worked with her husband on another book called Balanese Character that was published in 1942.
   At the age of 23, Dr. Welch undertook a field study in the South Pacific. The experience resulted in her writing of her highly popular book Coming of Age in Samoa, published in 1928. Dr. Welch’s interests and writings centered on religions. She worked in the Department of Anthropology at the American Museum of Natural History from 1926 through to the end of her life. She was a professor of anthropology at Columbia starting in the year 1954, working with her old associate Ruth Benedict. She wrote a book entitled an Anthropologist at Work about Benedict. It was published in 1959.
Margaret Welch died in 1978.