Doherty, Mary Louis

Mary Louis Doherty (1896-1995) is at present best known as a friend of Katherine Anne Porter and as one of the models for the character of Laura in Porter's short story "Flowering Judas." Because of her relationships with the photographers Edward Weston and Tina Modotti and her connections with important twentieth-century Mexican artists and politicians, Mary Louis Doherty is an important figure in her own right. As an expatriate American who was committed to the ideals of the Mexican Revolution, Doherty observed Mexican politics and politicians at close range during much of the twentieth century. Her training and experience as a journalist and economist enabled her to make incisive observations about Mexico in colorful, informative, lengthy letters. Her friends and family often urged her to collect her correspondence for publication. She herself must have long contemplated that endeavor; on August 5, 1922, she wrote to Katherine Anne Porter, "I am at last doing my Xochimilco letters and will send them to you and perhaps some other sketches. It would be thrilling if you could get them published now I have the time and the peace of mind to do them." Forty years later, on August 30, 1963, Porter wrote to Doherty: "You write the kind of letters that make people who read them say, 'But she should have been a writer !' and I say, 'But look at her letters, she is a writer.'"

Mary Louis Doherty was born on October 30, 1896, in Williamsburg, Iowa, where she received her primary and secondary education. In June 1918, she graduated from the University of Wisconsin at Madison with a B.A. in economics and journalism. She was one of seven college graduates selected in competition and trained to work out a special sales promotion experiment for watch manufacturer William H. Ingersoll's dollar-watch business which was based in New York, New York. After one year, Doherty resigned to take a position as a community organizer on Staten Island with the New York Community Councils of the City Parliament of the City of New York; during this time she took courses at Columbia University.

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