Mary Flinn Lawrence

Last updated

Mary Flinn Lawrence (1877 - October 29, 1974) was deeply involved in politics, activism and philanthropy her entire life. Daughter of Pennsylvania Senator William Flinn, and long-term supporter of the Republican Party, Lawrence was politically active throughout her life supporting women's suffrage and going on to make her own mark in politics, particularly in the area of electioneering and in appointed political positions. She was noted for her work on the Gifford Pinchot gubernatorial campaign in 1922. She was also a philanthropist, social reformer and a conservationist involved with more than 250 organizations. Her home, Hartwood, is now an Allegheny County Park.

Contents

Early life

Mary Flinn Lawrence was born in 1877, the first of seven children by William Flinn and Nancy Galbraith Flinn of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. William co-owned a construction company Booth and Flinn that built many Pittsburgh landmarks including some well-known Pittsburgh tunnels such as the Mount Washington Transit Tunnel and the Liberty Tunnels. He rose through the ranks of the Republican Party serving as a ward boss, a member of the Pennsylvania state legislature, eventually becoming a state Senator. He was a personal friend of President Theodore Roosevelt and was the power behind the Flinn/Magee political machine that ran politics in Pittsburgh for two decades at the end of the 19th century. [1]

Mayr Flinn was raised at her family's estate on highland Avenue in Pittsburgh. Educated at the Thurston School in Pittsburgh and then at Briarcliff College, she started her benevolent work raising funds for the city's Industrial Home for Crippled Children. Influenced by her father's involvement in politics, in 1904, she helped found the Allegheny County Equal Franchise Federation. [2] [3]

Suffrage, activism and philanthropy

She engaged in a wide variety of philanthropic activities throughout her lifetime supporting more than 250 organizations including the Red Cross, The Home for Convalescent Mothers and Babies, the Pittsburgh Symphony Society, the YWCA, the Twentieth Century Club and many others. [1] Conservation was another of her key interests. She was the second woman to serve on the Pennsylvania State Forestry Commission, appointed in 1920 and serving under three governors. She also served on the advisory committee of the Pennsylvania Parks Association and on the Garden Club Federation of Pennsylvania. [4]

She was especially active in the area of suffrage and politics. Alongside Jennie Bradley Roessing, Mary Bakewell, and Lucy Kennedy and Eliza Kennedy Smith, she organized the Allegheny County Equal Franchise Federation, an organization she went to serve as President in 1912. In 1911, she was one of four Pittsburgh delegates to the National Women's Suffrage Convention. [4] [5] One of Lawrence's major activities during the suffrage movement was lobbying politicians for the vote, specifically to support a constitutional suffrage amendment. [1]

During WWI she worked with other Pittsburgh suffragettes to form the Suffrage Red Cross, an association that lobbied for the vote while undertaking traditional Red Cross work such as fundraising, organizing supplies, and nursing. [6] With the passing of the 19th amendment, suffrage efforts transformed into voter support efforts with the founding of the Allegheny County League of Women Voters. [1] She was also appointed by the governor to serve on the Women's Republican Committee of Pennsylvania and served on the Pennsylvania State Council of Republican Women. Within this organization she worked with Gifford Pinchot to enact election reform focused on corrupt election practices.

This work, and her personal friendship with Cornelia Bryce Pinchot, [4] led to her supporting Gifford Pinchot in his successful 1922 gubernatorial election. Her involvement in this successful campaign drew national attention with one North Carolina paper reporting "Woman's Hand Directs Crushing Blow, Wrecks Political Machine." [7] It also led to her appointment as Secretary of the Commonwealth, as one of two women in Pinchot's cabinet. She later served as Chief State Forester under Governor William Sproul. [1] She continued to work with a number of Republican organizations and to support campaigns including that of Presidential hopeful Alf Landon against Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1936.

Personal life

Mary Flinn married John Lawrence, an employee of the London and Liverpool Globe Insurance Company who had ties to her father's construction firm, in 1914. John Lawrence served in both World War I and World War II. The couple adopted two sons - John (in 1938) and William (in 1941). [2] [8] [3] Because both of her sons were adopted, at the time of her death in 1978, there was a contentious estate case connected to a trust that had been set up in her name by her father in 1923. Eventually reaching the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, the case focused on the issue of the status of adopted children when it came to inheritance. [8]

In addition to the trust, at the time of Mary's father's death in 1924, she received a large inheritance that she used to fund the purchase of the Hartwood property where the family built a Tudor mansion and riding stables. Because of their interest in conservation, the Lawrences made several notable changes to the property, for example planting 96,000 pine tree seedlings to address soil conservation. She also hired the first licensed female architect, Rose Greely, to design the property landscape in 1938. This large estate with formal gardens and riding trails encompassed several hundred acres and was eventually purchased by the Allegheny Parks Commission and was opened for public use in 1976. [3] [4]

Mary died October 29, 1974 and was buried in Homewood Cemetery. Her personal papers, including an extensive collection of letters chronicling both Pittsburgh life and World War I, are held at the Heinz History Center. [3]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gifford Pinchot</span> American forester and politician (1865–1946)

Gifford Pinchot was an American forester and politician. He served as the fourth chief of the U.S. Division of Forestry, as the first head of the United States Forest Service, and as the 28th governor of Pennsylvania. He was a member of the Republican Party for most of his life, though he joined the Progressive Party for a brief period.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Amos Pinchot</span> American lawyer

Amos Richards Eno Pinchot was an American lawyer and reformist. He never held public office but managed to exert considerable influence in reformist circles and did much to keep progressive and Georgist ideas alive in the 1920s.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">William Flinn</span> American politician

William Flinn (1851–1924) was a powerful political boss and construction magnate in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. Along with Christopher Magee (1848–1901), his political partner, the two ran the Republican Party machine that controlled the city for the final twenty years of the 19th century.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hartwood Acres Park</span> County park in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania

Hartwood Acres is a 629-acre (255 ha) county park in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania in the United States. Hartwood is considered the crown jewel of the county's 12,000-acre (4,900 ha) network of nine distinct parks.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Christopher Magee (politician)</span> American politician

Christopher Lyman Magee was a powerful political boss in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. Along with William Flinn (1851–1924), his political partner, the two ran the Republican Party machine that controlled the city for the last twenty years of the 19th century. He was also a leading philanthropist and hospital patron.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Grey Towers National Historic Site</span> Home of Gifford Pinchot, founder of U.S. Forest Service, outside Milford, Pennsylvania

Grey Towers National Historic Site, also known as Gifford Pinchot House or The Pinchot Institute, is located just off US 6 west of Milford, Pennsylvania, in Milford Township. It is the ancestral summer home of Gifford Pinchot, first chief of the newly developed United States Forest Service (USFS) and twice elected governor of Pennsylvania.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bob Cranmer</span> American businessman and politician

Robert Wesley "Bob" Cranmer is a veteran, businessman, author, and politician, best known as a former Republican County Commissioner of Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, from 1996 to 2000. He is the author of the horror novel The Demon of Brownsville Road.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Daisy Elizabeth Adams Lampkin</span>

Daisy Elizabeth Adams Lampkin was an American suffragist, civil rights activist, organization executive, and community practitioner whose career spanned over half a century. Lampkin’s effective skills as an orator, fundraiser, organizer, and political activist guided the work being conducted by the National Association of Colored Women (NACW); National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP); National Council of Negro Women and other leading civil rights organizations of the Progressive Era.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Elsie Hillman</span>

Elsie Hilliard Hillman was a Pittsburgh based philanthropist and a former Republican National Committeewoman. She was the wife of billionaire industrialist Henry Hillman. During her life, Hillman helped to advance the careers of a number of moderate Republican politicians to state and national offices. Among the politicians whose careers she fostered are President George H. W. Bush, Senator John Heinz, and Pennsylvania governors Dick Thornburgh and Tom Ridge.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">1930 Pennsylvania gubernatorial election</span>

The 1930 Pennsylvania gubernatorial election occurred on November 4, 1930. Incumbent Republican governor John Stuchell Fisher was not a candidate for re-election. Republican candidate and former governor Gifford Pinchot defeated Democratic candidate John M. Hemphill to win a second, non-consecutive term as Governor of Pennsylvania.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lucy Dorsey Iams</span>

Lucy Dorsey Iams was an American welfare worker and reform legislation leader based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She played a critical role in the drafting of a 1903 Pennsylvania tenement law.

Ruth Pickering Pinchot was an American writer, critic, and activist.

Jennie Bradley Roessing was a leader in Pennsylvania's women's suffrage movement during the early 1900s. She was an active participant in the women's suffrage movement and various Pittsburgh-area organizations.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hannah J. Patterson</span> American suffragist

Hannah Jane Patterson was an American suffragist and social activist. She was a key member of the women's suffrage movement in Pennsylvania and worked for the National American Woman Suffrage Association. During World War I Patterson was a member of the Woman's Committee of the Council of National Defense. For her service, she was awarded with a Distinguished Service Medal. Patterson graduated from Wilson College and studied at both Columbia University and the University of Pennsylvania.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Women's suffrage in Pennsylvania</span>

The women's suffrage movement in Pennsylvania was an outgrowth of the abolitionist movement in the state. Early women's suffrage advocates in Pennsylvania wanted equal suffrage not only for white women but for all African Americans. The first women's rights convention in the state was organized by Quakers and held in Chester County in 1852. Philadelphia would host the fifth National Women's Rights Convention in 1854. Later years saw suffragists forming a statewide group, the Pennsylvania Woman Suffrage Association (PWSA), and other smaller groups throughout the state. Early efforts moved slowly, but steadily, with suffragists raising awareness and winning endorsements from labor unions.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Marion Margery Scranton</span> American politician

Marion Margery Warren Scranton was a 20th-century women’s suffrage activist and leading member of the Republican Party in the United States. Known as “the Duchess and the Grand Old Dame of the Grand Old Party,” she was described in Life magazine as “the woman Pennsylvania politicians still remember as ‘Margery,’ and ... the only woman who could wear two orchids through a coal mine and get away with it.”

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cornelia Bryce Pinchot</span> American politician

Cornelia Elizabeth Bryce Pinchot, also known as “Leila Pinchot,” was a 20th-century American conservationist, Progressive politician, and women’s rights activist. She was the wife of Gifford Pinchot (1865-1946), the renowned conservationist and two-time Governor of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, and was also a close friend of U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt. She was the maternal great-granddaughter of Peter Cooper, founder of Cooper Union, and daughter of U.S. Congressman and Envoy Lloyd Stephens Bryce (1851–1917). She played a key role in the improvement of Grey Towers, the Pinchot family estate in Milford, Pennsylvania, which was donated to the U.S. Forest Service in 1963 and then designated as a National Historic Landmark in 1966

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lucy Kennedy Miller</span> American politician

Lucy Kennedy Miller (1880–1962), also known as Mrs. John O. Miller, was a prominent 20th-century American suffragist who became the president of the Equal Franchise Federation of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and the first president of the Pennsylvania League of Women Voters (PLWV). In 1919, the League of Women Citizens of Pennsylvania called her "the woman to whom, more than to any other" was "owe[d] the triumph of" women's suffrage in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Eliza Kennedy Smith</span> American suffragist, civic activist, and government reformer

Eliza Kennedy Smith, also known as Mrs. R. Templeton Smith, was a 20th-century American suffragist, civic activist, and government reformer in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Upon her death in 1964, The Pittsburgh Press described her as "a relentless, tenacious watchdog of the City's purse strings" who "probably attended more budget sessions over the years than anyone else in Pittsburgh either in or out of government".

Mary "Molly" Ella Bakewell was an American suffragist, author and social activist from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The eldest of three daughters in the prominent Bakewell glassmaking family, she devoted her life to advocacy and reform. Originally she was an advocate for kindergartens, as a member of the International Kindergarten Union. In the early 20th century she devoted herself to women's suffrage working with Eliza Kennedy Smith, Lucy Kennedy Miller, Jennie Bradley Roessing, Mary Flinn Lawrence and Hannah Patterson. Later in life she attended Hartford Theological Seminary and took up the cause of female clergy. She also authored three books and an unpublished manuscript.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 Lamendola, Lauren M. (Summer 2011). "Mary Flinn Lawrence - a Machine". Western Pennsylvania History: 22–34.
  2. 1 2 "Lawrence, Mary Flinn (1887-1974) · Jane Addams Digital Edition". digital.janeaddams.ramapo.edu. Retrieved 2024-05-14.
  3. 1 2 3 4 "Guide to the Papers of Mary Flinn Lawrence, 1903-1963," MSS 185, 2013, Heinz History Center, Pittsburgh, PA.
  4. 1 2 3 4 Filipek, Jaime (2023-03-20). "Women's History Month - Celebrating the Life and Legacy of Mary Flinn Lawrence". Allegheny County Parks Foundation. Retrieved 2024-05-14.
  5. "Pennsylvania Women and the Vote". Heinz History Center. Retrieved 2024-05-14.
  6. "Suffrages Organize for Red Cross". Pittsburgh Post. January 15, 1918. p. 12.
  7. "Woman's Hand Directs Curshing Blow; Wrecks Political Machine". The Durham Morning Herald. July 2, 1922. p. 16.
  8. 1 2 "Estate of Flinn". Justia Law. Retrieved 2024-05-14.