Mary Tileston Hemenway

Mary Porter Tileston Hemenway (Dec. 20, 1820 – 6 March 1894) was an American philanthropist. She funded Civil War hospitals, numerous educational institutions from the Reconstruction era until the late 1880s, founded a physical education teacher training program for women, and funded research for the preservation of culturally valuable historical sites. Early years Mary Tileston was born in New York City the daughter of Mary (née Porter) and Thomas Tileston (1796-1864), a wealthy shipping merchant. She was educated in private schools. On June 25, 1840, in New York City, Tileston married Harvard graduate Edward Augustus Holyoke Hemenway (1803–1876), a multi-millionaire Boston sea merchant some seventeen years older than her. The couple then moved to Boston to establish their family mansion at 40 Mt. Vernon Street in Beacon Hill. Mary Hemenway was a member of the abolitionist James Freeman Clarke's Church of the Disciples. The couple had several children: Charlotte Augusta Hemenway (1841-1865), Alice (d. in infancy, 1845-1847), Amy Hemenway (1848-1911); and Edith (1851-1904). Their only son, Augustus Jr. (1853–1931), married Harriet Lawrence. After her husband died in 1876, Mary Tileston Hemenway maintained his family name until her death. She apparently inherited $15,000,000. Career During the Civil War Hemenway helped to fund the Sanitary Commission, a private relief agency to aid sick and wounded soldiers. They established and staffed hospitals, and housed recovering Union soldiers. In 1864 she donated $25,000 to the new Washington University in St. Louis, followed by other installments of $50,000 for the history department.