Sargent was born in Chicago, Illinois on 31 Mar 1875 to Homer Earle Sargent and his second wife Rebecca E. Wheaton. His father had become extremely wealthy in the railroad business in Chicago and Detroit. Homer was trained as an electrical engineer at MIT and Yale University.
"In September 1904 [ethnologist] James Alexander Teit guided Homer E. Sargent, a wealthy Chicago consulting engineer, on a sheep-hunting expedition to the Cariboo [region of British Columbia, Canada.] During this trip Sargent learned much about Teit's ethnographic work for [Franz] Boas and in March 1907 he offered to donate funds to it. With this support Teit undertook field research in 1908 and again in spring 1909 in Washington State, Idaho, and Montana among the Salishan- and Sahaptin-speaking peoples. . . Sargent, a collector of aboriginal artifacts, was particularly interested in basketry and requested that some of his funds be directed towards more acquisitions. In response, Teit began in 1909 to assemble a large British Columbia basket collection, which he deposited in 1910 and 1911 at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago . . . Sargent continued to finance Teit's field research liberally until Teit's death in 1922."
In 1920 Sargent lived with his wife at 222 Arroyo Terrace, in Pasadena, California. In 1930 he is a widower, his wife Helen White having died in 1925, in the same house, that is valued at $95,000 (an enormous sum at the time.) Most of Sargent's extensive collection of Indian artifacts and material went to the Field Museum in Chicago. Homer died in Pasadena, California on 15 Nov 1957.
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in old burying-ground by the Skungamug River, on road to Andover.
In Memory of
Mrs Mary Kings
bery, Daughter
to Capt Ebenezer
and Mrs Priscilla
Kingsbery who
Died Novr ye
20th 1761 in
(probably in CT)