Antin, Mary, 1881-1949

Variant names

Dates:

Birth 1881-06-13

Death 1949-05-15

Biographical notes:

Author.

From the description of Mary Antin correspondence, 1934. (Unknown). WorldCat record id: 79449541

Mary Antin was an author and immigration rights activist. Born to a Jewish family in Polotsk in the Russian Pale of Settlement, she immigrated to the Boston area with her mother and siblings in 1894. Antin was heralded as a success story of what "free education and the European immigrant could make of each other," and in 1899 her letters to an uncle describing this journey were published as From Plotzk to Boston. Proceeds from the book allowed her to attend Girls' Latin School. During a field trip sponsored by Hale House, a settlement house in Boston's South End, she met geologist Amadeus William Grabau, a doctoral student at Harvard, whom she later married. They moved to New York where Grabau joined the faculty at Columbia University and where Antin attended college, at Columbia Teachers College (1901-1902) and at Barnard College (1902-1904). Antin was best known for her autobiography, The Promised Land (1912), for her lectures and writings advocating immigration, and for her support of Theodore Roosevelt and his Progressive Party.

From the description of My Cuttyhunk journal, 1899 May 27-30. (Harvard University). WorldCat record id: 659326840