Queer Places:
Vassar College (Seven Sisters), 124 Raymond Ave, Poughkeepsie, NY 12604
Radcliffe College, Harvard University (Ivy League), 2 Kirkland St, Cambridge, MA 02138
Canyon Rd, Santa Fe, NM 87501, United States
Abbot house, 24 Main St, Westford, MA 01886, USA
Mount Auburn Cemetery, Cambridge, Middlesex County, Massachusetts, USA

Marian Frances Winnek (October 3, 1883 - February 17, 1977) was born in Belmont, Massachusetts, on October 3, 1883, to Ansel and Nellie Hale Winnek. She was the great-granddaughter of Jonathan Varnum Fletcher, a prominent figure who helped incorporate Belmont and established the J.V. Fletcher Library in Westford. After her father left the family when she was young, Marian was raised in Massachusetts and spent her childhood summers with extended family at her grandfather’s Cold Spring Farm in Westford. She attended Miss Brown’s School for Young Ladies in Boston and initially enrolled at Vassar College. However, a severe case of asthma forced her to spend six weeks in the infirmary and return home. Undeterred, she retook her exams and entered Radcliffe College, earning an A.B. degree cum laude in 1909 and a Master of Arts in 1914. During her time at Radcliffe, she worked as a volunteer social worker for a Boston children’s agency, studied drama under Dr. George Baker, worked as a stage manager at Agassiz Theater, and became one of the first Radcliffe graduates permitted to take courses at Harvard University.

In the early 1920s, Marian moved to California to teach English and drama at the Bishop’s School for Girls in La Jolla. Unimpressed with her own teaching, she left after a single year and traveled to New Mexico with her friend Connie. Intrigued by the vibrant southwest culture and the artist colony in Santa Fe, she purchased an adobe house on Canyon Road and a horse named Badger. Marian lived in New Mexico for thirteen years, immersing herself in a social circle of famous writers and artists, including Witter Bynner, Mary Austin, Olive Rush, Gus Baumann, Willa Cather, and Maria Martinez.

During her time in Santa Fe, Marian belonged to an active subculture of lesbians and queer women. Local residents noted that a prominent group of lesbians frequented the La Fonda hotel, dining at the same table daily wearing mannish clothes and large hats. Marian regularly rode her horse into town to eat lunch at La Fonda with her circle of lesbian friends. She spent her afternoons planning and writing her novel, Juniper Hill, which was published by Bobbs-Merrill in 1932. The book was a thinly veiled fictionalization of her childhood summers at Cold Spring Farm in Westford, featuring real family members as characters, except for her mother, whom she invented for the story.

Throughout her life, Marian was defined by an adventurous, independent spirit. After purchasing a 1927 Model A Ford—the first year it was produced—she learned to drive on an airstrip outside Santa Fe. Over the next decade, she took solo road trips through Death Valley, along the remote coastal roads to Alaska, and back across the continent. She also embarked on extended backcountry camping trips on horseback with her companion Connie.

In 1935, Marian returned to Belmont to care for her diabetic mother. Following her mother’s death, she purchased the historic three-story Abbot house at 24 Main Street in Westford in September 1938. The day after the purchase, the Great New England Hurricane of 1938 struck. Marian undauntedly drove from Belmont through fallen trees and debris to inspect the property, only to find a massive tree had crashed into the front of the home. While repairs were underway, she stayed in the Adirondacks, and in July 1939, she traveled to Europe. When England declared war on Germany that autumn, she endured a perilous transatlantic voyage aboard the Samaria, arriving safely back into a darkened New York harbor in October 1939.

By the end of 1939, Marian settled permanently at 24 Main Street in Westford. During World War II, fuel shortages made her large house difficult to heat, prompting her to spend winters in a rented room on Commonwealth Avenue in Boston, where she maintained a seat at the Boston Symphony for forty years. In Westford, she became heavily involved in civic life, serving on the Westford Taxpayers Association and the Board of Library Trustees. Following her family's tradition of civic philanthropy, she funded the first children’s room at the J.V. Fletcher Library, bought adjacent land to expand the library’s lot, established student scholarships, and donated over thirty acres of land near Prospect Hill to the town to serve as a bird sanctuary.

Marian remained remarkably active into her later years. She was known to swim alone in local ponds well into November, continuing the habit until age eighty-six, and often drove home changing in her backseat with her swimsuit drying on her car antenna. In her final years, she donated a copy of Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique to the local library. She passed away on February 17, 1977, at the age of ninety-three at Nashoba Community Hospital in Ayer—an institution where the oncology unit was later named in her honor. Her ashes were interred alongside her family at Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge.

References:

Support this project
This website is a passion project researched, developed, and funded entirely by me. If you find the content valuable and would like to help support the ongoing research and hosting costs, any contribution is deeply appreciated.
Thank you for keeping this independent resource alive!

My books on Amazon: Elisa Rolle's books

BACK TO HOME PAGE