Maria Wilman was the first Director of the McGregor Museum

McGregor Museum

The McGregor Museum in Kimberley, South Africa, originally known as the Alexander McGregor Memorial Museum, is a province-aided museum established in 1907.- Overview :...

 in Kimberley

Kimberley, Northern Cape

Kimberley is a city in South Africa, and the capital of the Northern Cape. It is located near the confluence of the Vaal and Orange Rivers. The town has considerable historical significance due its diamond mining past and siege during the Second Boer War...

, South Africa

South Africa

The Republic of South Africa is a country in southern Africa. Located at the southern tip of Africa, it is divided into nine provinces, with of coastline on the Atlantic and Indian oceans...

.

Born in Beaufort West on 29 April 1867, she matriculated at the Good Hope Seminary in Cape Town before going on to complete a natural science tripos in geology, mineralogy and chemistry at Newnham College, Cambridge, in 1888.

On the staff of the South African Museum

Wilman's museum career began when she worked as a volunteer in the Geology Department at the South African Museum

Iziko South African Museum

The Iziko SA Museum is a South African national museum located in Cape Town. The museum was founded in 1825, the first in the country. It has been on its present site in the Company's Garden since 1897...

 in Cape Town.

In 1906 she undertook an important journey up to Kimberley, the Vryburg region and further north, collecting specimens, and amassing data on rock engravings which was the start of a project culminating nearly three decades later in her publication Rock engravings of Griqualand West and Bechuanaland, published in Cambridge.

Director of the McGregor Museum in Kimberley

Wilman was appointed in 1908 as the first Director of the newly founded McGregor Museum in Kimberley.

She retired from the museum in 1953 and went to live in George.

Wilman died in George on 9 November 1957.