Mary Hemenway 1820-1894 Boston Mass. Philanthropist; 1927 Biography W Genealogy; With Tileston Family book plates; Rare!
Book is titled "A Memorial of the Life and Benefactions of Mary Hemenway 1820-1894.”
The book has 74 pages, and was privately printed in Boston in 1927 by family members.
Book has a number of b&w illustrations, mostly family portraits. There’s a genealogy section at the end of the book.
Mrs. Hemenway became a prominent Boston activist and philanthropist starting in Reconstruction and until her death in 1894.
Condition: Very Good, no writing, clean, moderate use.
Green cloth hardcover with abbreviated title on the front cover, Scuff marks beneath title on cover.
There are three paste—downs which add authenticity and make clear that this association copy was owned by the Tileston fzmily.
Inside front cover are the book plate of G. Tileston Wells Esq. and a printed slip naming and thanking the contributors in publishing this book. Here we learned that the book was arranged and edited by Mrs. John Bois Tileston.
Inside the back cover is a separate paste-down noting that the book was printed by McGrath-Sherrill Press for G.Tileston Wells.
Contents include a chronological list of Hemenway’s civic activities; a family tree, and bibliographical references.
As a philanthropist, Hemenway was interested and believed in physical education for females.
Details:
Mary Hemenway was born in New York, the daughter of a shipping merchant, Thomas Tileston and Mary (Porter) Tileston.
Daughter Mary went to a private school in New York and “was reared” as she said, on household duties, the Bible and Shakespeare.
On June 2, 1840, she married Augustus Hemenway, a successful merchant, and thereafter she was identified with Boston Mass:. Her husband died in 1876, but she survived him eighteen years, devoting her wealth and her energies to the development of numerous educational and philanthropical projects. She read carefully, loved pictures, and knew well leading writers and citizens. She was a member of James Freeman Clarke’s Church of the Disciples.
After the Civil War she helped to establish schools on the southern seaboard for both whites and blacks.
Later she made gifts to Armstrong at Hampton and Booker Washington at Tuskeegee for the further education of the freed men.
In the course of her welfare work for soldier’s families during the war she discovered that many soldier’s wives did not know how to sew. Accordingly, in 1865, she provided a teacher and materials for systematic instruction in sewing in a Boston public school. The experiment brought good results and the instruction was taken over by the city. In 1883 she started an industrial-vocation school in Boston and two years later in 1885 she opened a kitchen in a pubic school, the first venture of its kind in the United States.
In 1887, Mrs Hemenway started the Boston Normal School of Cooking, which after her death became the Mary H. Hemenway Department of Household Arts in the State Normal School of Framingham. Next for a year, she provided a hundred Boston school teachers free instruction in gymnastics using the Swedish system as best adapted to schoolrooms. In order to interest the public, she promoted in 1889 a conference on physical training, held in Boston which led to the introduction of gymnastics in the city’s public schools.
In 1889 also she established the Boston Normal School of Gymnastics which later became the Department of Hygiene and Physical Education of Wellesley College.
Inventory Shelf 12.