Mrs. Watkins was a pioneer in the study of American Cultural history and material culture studies. Her career began with an intense curiosity about the past that inspired the young native Bostonian to collect, research and write about objects related to New England history. In the 1940s and 1950s, Mrs. Watkins donated to the Smithsonian significant examples of New England ceramics and the whole of her archeological collection--fragments of New England ceramics that she found at previously unexplored kiln sites.