The second wife of Bassett Maguire of the New York Botanical Gardens, Celia K. Maguire accompanied the eminent botanist on many collecting trips to South America and Africa. "Oh it was wonderful! We sailed around the world on tankers. We went everywhere. I was often the only woman on board", she reminisced during an interview for the New York Times as she undertook the organising of her late husband's archive of 50 years' work at NYBG. The pair married in 1951, after Celia Kramer had been working at NYBG as a botanist's assistant for several years and had travelled with Maguire (then married to his first wife), on several field trips. Prior to this she attended Hunter College in New York, the city to which her family moved when she was five years old. Bassett and Celia Maguire never had children, nor, oddly for people in their occupation, did they take an interest in plants at home, according to Celia.