Queer Places:
University of Minnesota, 240 Williamson Hall, 231 Pillsbury Drive SE, Minneapolis, MN 55455
University of Cambridge, 4 Mill Ln, Cambridge CB2 1RZ
Whitney Cemetery, Co Rd 4, Seneca Castle, NY 14547, United States
Mary Gray Peck (October 21, 1867 – January 11, 1957) was born on October 21, 1867, in Seneca Castle, Ontario County, New York, to Henry Jones Peck and
Mary Diantha (Gray) Peck. She grew up alongside her two older brothers, Dr. Frederick Burritt Peck and James Ingraham Peck.
She pursued higher education at Elmira College, earning her Bachelor of Arts degree in 1889. Following her undergraduate studies, she completed post-graduate work in philology at the University of Minnesota and studied early English and Middle English at the University of Cambridge in England. During her 1905–1906 sabbatical at Cambridge, she was accompanied by her friend Frances Boardman (Squire) Potter and Potter's children.
Peck built an extensive career in academia, journalism, and social reform. She served as an Assistant Professor of English at the University of Minnesota for eight years (from 1899 to 1909). In 1909, she resigned from her academic position to dive fully into suffrage work and journalism. Relocating to New York City, she became the headquarters and corresponding secretary for the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) across 1909 and 1910. She also worked closely as the secretary and biographer of prominent suffrage leader Carrie Chapman Catt, later publishing Carrie Chapman Catt: A Biography in 1944.
Throughout her active years in the suffrage and club movements, Peck held numerous leadership roles. She chaired the Drama Sub-Committee for the General Federation of Women's Clubs, served as a charter member of the College Equal Suffrage League at the University of Minnesota, acted as a fraternal delegate from the Women's Trade Union League to the Sixth Conference of the International Woman Suffrage Alliance in Stockholm in 1911, and was the press chair for the Ohio Woman Suffrage Association during its 1912 constitutional amendment campaign. Furthermore, she worked as a special correspondent for publications like the Boston Evening Transcript and contributed various research articles, fiction, and verse to industrial and academic periodicals.
Her broad organizational affiliations included the Gamma Phi Beta sorority, National Women's Trade Union League, Woman Suffrage Party, Geneva Political Equality Club, Chicago Women's City Club, Modern Language Association, and the Drama League of America.
Regarding personal connections within the suffrage movement, Carrie Chapman Catt maintained a life partner relationship with Mary Garrett Hay. During the first decade of the twentieth century, when Mary Gray Peck expressed an attraction to Catt, Catt cautioned her regarding Hay's protective and dominant role in ownership of affection. Peck herself never married.
In her later years, Peck resided in New Rochelle, New York, from 1929 until late 1953, after which she moved to Jenkintown, Pennsylvania, to live in the home of her niece, Mrs. James F. Koehler. She passed away there on January 11, 1957, at the age of 89, and was buried at Whitney Cemetery in Seneca, New York.
References:
 Sapphistries: A Global History of Love between Women (Intersections, 15) Paperback – January 28, 2011 by Leila J. Rupp |
Other References:
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