Dewson, Mary (Molly) Williams, 1874-1962

From the guide to the Papers, 1893-1962, (Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute)

Mary ("Molly") Williams Dewson (February 18, 1874 - October 21, 1962) was born in Quincy, Massachusetts, to Edward Henry Dewson and Elizabeth Weld (Williams) Dewson. After earning her A.B. degree from Wellesley College (1897), Dewson was hired as secretary of the Domestic Reform Committee of the Women's Educational and Industrial Union in Boston. She left this position in 1900 to become the superintendent of parole at the Massachusetts State Industrial School for Girls, Lancaster, where she remained until 1912. There she met Mary ("Polly") G. Porter (1884-1972). Porter, a student at the Boston School for Social Workers, began an internship under Dewson's supervision in 1909. When her internship ended, she withdrew from school, choosing to remain at the Industrial School as a volunteer. By 1910, Dewson and Porter had come to think of their relationship as a "partnership"; it was to last for 52 years.

After a brief stint running a small dairy farm with Porer, Dewson returned to reform work, a field that occupied her for the next two decades. She was particularly active in the woman's suffrage movement, and in the National Consumers' League's campaign to secure passage of minimum wage laws for women and children. During World War I Dewson and Porter spent 15 months with the American Red Cross's Bureau of Refugees in France. Between 1917 and 1938 the two women lived in New York City, spending summers at the Porter family's house in Castine, Maine. While she was working in various reform movements, the independently wealthy Porter bred and raised Sheltie dogs at a kennel Dewson owned in Connecticut.

By the late 1920s, Dewson became convinced that needed reforms could best be accomplished from within organized political parties; she therefore initiated efforts to increase the number of women active in the Democratic Party. She organized women to work in Alfred E. Smith's presidential campaign (1928); and for Franklin D. Roosevelt's New York State gubernatorial race (1930), and his subsequent bids for the presidency. In 1933, thanks to the influence of Eleanor Roosevelt, her political ally and personal friend, she was appointed to head the Women's Division of the Democratic National Committee. She is credited with securing leadership positions for many women within the Democratic Party and the Roosevelt Administration. In 1937 she was appointed to the Social Security Board, but she resigned from the position the following year.

Dewson and Porter spent the early years of their retirement in Castine, Georgetown (Connecticut), and New York, but eventually established permanent residence in Castine (1952), where Dewson died in 1962.

For additional biographical information, see Notable American Women: The Modern Period (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1980), Who Was Who in America (1961-68), and Partner And I: The Life of Molly Dewson, New Deal Politician, by Susan Ware (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987). See also the Dewson papers (A-60) at the Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe College. Her papers at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library, Hyde Park, New York, document mainly her involvement with the Democratic Party.

From the guide to the Albums, ca., 1861-1962, (Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute)