Colgate, Mabel Hall, 1895-1985.

Mabel Hall Colgate was the only child of Edith Buckingham Hall and Samuel Colgate, a minister whose brothers had all gone into the family business, the Colgate-Palmolive-Peet Company. Following Samuel Colgate's death in 1902, Edith Colgate married Henry Bradford Washburn, then professor of church history at, and later dean of the Episcopal Theological School in Cambridge, Mass. They had two sons, Henry Bradford, Jr., and Sherwood Larned. Mabel was very close to her step-father and step-brothers, as well as her mother, and remained so throughout her life.

Mabel attended the Buckingham and Mary Winsor schools. Her brothers went to Groton and then to Harvard. During the first World War Mabel corresponded with a number of American soldiers--mostly boys she knew from Harvard--during their training and while they were at the front. She volunteered with the Red Cross in California and Washington, D.C. In Cambridge she was a member of the Sewing Circle League of 1916 and the Saturday Morning Club.

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