Fletcher Steele, Landscape Architect: An Account of the Gardenmakers Life, 1885-1971
by Robin S. Karson
Queer Places:
298 Beacon Street, Boston
1940 Medfield Town, Norfolk, Massachusetts, United States
Mount Auburn Cemetery
Cambridge, Middlesex County, Massachusetts, USA
Mary Fay Dabney (July 30, 1888 - August 17, 1978) was one of Fletcher Steele's closest friends in Boston, whom he had originally met in Rochester through Mary's first cousin Uhrling Sibley, of the prominent Rochester department store family; Uhrling would later marry O'Donnell Iselin,, eventually Steele's best friend. During graduate school and after, Steele was a frequent guest at the Fay's home on Beacon Street. Mary was cultivating a career as a singer and apparently not much interested in romance, but Steele's letters convey deep, although veiled, affection. May Fay once confided to her daughter, Caroline, that Fletcher Steele had proposed marriage to her many years before and that she had turned him down. Nevertheless, Steele assumed a central role in the family after Mary married Tom Dabney in 1921. He was a regular Sunday dinner guest, a travel partner (with the Iselins), a godfather to Mary's first child, Lewis Stackpole Dabney (1922–2014), and a treasured potstirrer.
Mary Fay was the daughter of Henry Howard Fay (1848–1920) and Elizabeth Elliott Spooner (1851–1945). She married George Bigelow "Tom" Dabney (1880–1939) in 1921.
References:
|
Fletcher Steele, Landscape Architect: An Account of the Gardenmakers Life, 1885-1971 by Robin S. Karson |
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