Marian

Quieter and less outgoing than her sisters, as a girl Marian often looked to her older sister Rose for guidance. Marian attended Radcliffe College and graduated magna cum laude in 1899. Two years after her graduation, she opted to continue her education at Newnham College at the University of Cambridge for a term.

When summering at the family’s home in Cornish, New Hampshire, Marian enjoyed a variety of outdoor activities, such as hiking, golfing, and horseback riding, having honed her equestrian skills in Boston at the New Riding Club. She also had a great love of driving and she spent many summer days out in the Studebaker roadster that her nephew Sidney taught her to operate. Marian’s appreciation for driving was such that she owned a car for almost all of her adult life. Her first car was a Maxwell, which she eventually gifted to her mother, and in 1929 she made the exciting major purchase of a new Chrysler.

Marian possessed a social consciousness that drove her to advocate for a number of causes, including improving the status of women and the working class. She could often be found at the Massachusetts State House, where she lobbied for the adoption of legislative reforms. A newspaper article dubbed her “Joan of Arc of the civil services,” and her friends called her the “champion of the underdog.” She served as the secretary for the Women’s Auxiliary of the Massachusetts Civil Service Reform Association for almost 20 years and was a special examiner for the U.S. Civil Service Commission and chair of the Civil Service Department of the Massachusetts Federated Women’s Clubs. She also served on legislative committees in the Massachusetts State Federation of Women’s Clubs, the Boston City Federation, and the Women’s Educational and Industrial Union.

Her passion for reform eventually led to her decision to run as an independent candidate for Ward 8 of the Massachusetts legislature in 1920. She filed the paperwork for her candidacy on a September morning, just one month after the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment, and that afternoon marched in a parade to celebrate women’s suffrage. Her campaign slogan was “Public Office is a Public Trust,” and in the lead-up to the election, she rented an office on the corner of Joy and Mount Vernon Streets. Although her campaign was unsuccessful (she lost to Henry Lee Shattuck, a Harvard-educated lawyer and long-serving member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives), she is remembered as one of the first women to run for office in Massachusetts.