Partner Mary Askew Mather

Queer Places:
1212 Gilpin Ave, Wilmington, DE 19806, USA

Alice P. Smyth (February 28, 1860 - April 10, 1954) was born on February 28, 1860, and lived until April 10, 1954. She formed a lifelong partnership with Mary Askew Mather, living and working alongside her in Wilmington, Delaware. Together, Smyth and Mather engaged extensively in social causes and reform work, serving as founders of the Wilmington New Century Club, members of the Young Women's Christian Temperance Union, and suffragists with the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA). In 1911, both women participated in a suffrage delegation sent to the Delaware legislature.

In all of Mather's reformist work, Alice P. Smyth was her intimate partner and co-worker. After her parents' deaths, Mary Mather sold the family home at 1021 Madison Street, purchasing the large historic house, "Timberton" at 1212 Gilpin Avenue, where she lived with Alice the remainder of her life. Locals routinely referred to the house as "their home"; it was the site of receptions and fund-raisers for the causes that engaged the couple's concerns.

The two women maintained a very public "Boston marriage" in Wilmington, framing their deep bond as a close friendship with an implied asexual relationship. This public presentation was a deliberate choice, shaped partly by Mather’s earlier experiences with social policing and the suppression of queer desire during her youth at Smith College, where intense relationships between female students faced strict scrutiny and warnings against exclusivity. By conforming to gendered expectations of femininity and maintaining a transparent, devoted companionship that was above reproach, Smyth and Mather successfully deflected suggestions of sexual abnormality while remaining openly dedicated partners. They never hid their relationship, and Smyth even accompanied Mather to her fortieth college reunion in 1923 as a special guest, posing in reunion photos alongside Mather and her former classmate, Frona Brooks.

Following Mather's death in 1925, Smyth decided to honor her partner's life and lifelong efforts toward establishing and maintaining library systems. Smyth provided a public donation to establish a memorial fund that founded the New Castle County Free Library in 1927, which honored Mather's memory by extending library services to rural areas through a bookmobile.

At her own death in 1955, Alice Smyth donated their home and $5,000 to the YWCA, bequeathed $1,000 to maintain the Browsing Room at the (former) Women's College, and gave $20,000 to the New Castle County Free Library fund, to help sustain the rural traveling book service "in memory of my deceased friend Mary H. Askew Mather."

References:

Public Faces, Secret Lives by Wendy L. Rouse

Other references:

• Biographical Sketch of Mary H. Askew Mather (Published via Alexander Street Documents / Women and Social Movements in the United States, citing primary and secondary references on Mather and Alice P. Smyth's life, domestic partnership, and civic work)
• Votes for Delaware Women by Anne M. Boylan (Newark: University of Delaware Press) – detailing women's suffrage efforts, political delegations, and prominent Delaware figures
• "'Abracadabra': Intimate Inventions by Early College Women in the United States" by Susan Van Dyne (Feminist Studies 42, no. 2, 2016) – examining early college networks, diaries, and romantic friendships among women
• The New Castle County Free Library 1927 – 1933 by Barbara Walker Baumgartner (Excerpt from Delaware History, Vol. XIII, 1986, pages 46–56) – detailing the establishment of the county free library system and memorial efforts
• University of Delaware Archives and Records Management (Hullihen Papers, Presidential Reports, and Trustees' Minutes regarding Smyth Hall, book collections, and memorial donations)
• Delaware Women’s Hall of Fame Collection (Biographical documentation regarding Mary Askew Mather, Alice P. Smyth, and their joint philanthropic contributions to education and libraries in Delaware)

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