Historical records matching Mary Pickard Winsor
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About Mary Pickard Winsor
- Mary's birth, photograph, and death information are available at https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/181226650/mary-winsor
- Mary's photograph is used courtesy of L.P., Find A Grave ID 51187699.
- Founder, The Winsor School (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winsor_School)
- A Brief Biography of Mary Pickard Winsor, by Jane Hoeffel Otte '57, P'84, '86, Archivist
- Mary Pickard Winsor was born October 31, 1860, in Salem, Mass., the second oldest of seven children. Her father, Frederick, was a doctor; her mother, Annie Ware Winsor, a teacher and head of school.
- Mary Winsor grew up in Winchester and attended Winchester private schools, starting in her own mother's. She went on to Miss Ireland's in Boston for college preparation.
- After one year at Smith College (class of 1883) from 1879-1880, she left to take over her mother's school in Winchester. It was while she was running the school for 20 boys and girls that her cousin asked her to start a six-month school in Boston, on Beacon Hill, for eight little girls, 8-10 years old. At the end of the second year, Mary Winsor took over the complete management of the school, and it soon became a nine-months' school called Miss Winsor's School. Over the next two decades, the School occupied various locations on the Hill. In 1900 the student body numbered 99; by 1908 it was over 200.
- In 1908 a group of Boston parents formed a corporation to establish a new school for girls. They bought land in the Longwood area, commissioned the school building and asked Miss Winsor to serve as its head. The incorporators wished to name the school for her, knowing how highly respected she was as an educator. She resisted the idea until her alumnae and students insisted that it be the Winsor School. She was very involved with the details of building and furnishing the new school, loaning or donating hundreds of items, ranging from desks and chairs to framed prints. She agreed with Harvard President Charles Eliot's suggestion of a school motto: "Mens sana in corpore sano." In 1908 the Corporators chose to adopt it in English as part of the School seal.
- In the fall of 1910 the Winsor School opened with 225 students. The tuition ranged from $225 to $325, and Miss Winsor's salary was $7,500 a year. She asked the incorporators to "use as the name of her office the word 'director' instead of 'principal.'" She made a commitment to high academic standards and hoped the School would produce "competent, responsible, generous-minded women." Her bold, almost revolutionary thinking is reflected in her message to graduates in the 1915 edition of the Graduate Directory where she wrote "if women are in these days to be self-respecting they must also have it within their power to be self-supporting."
- The School flourished. In the early 1920s the student body was quite stable at 264 with a faculty of about 40. Miss Winsor was a vivid presence, at once revered and somewhat intimidating. She had begun to lose her hearing as a young woman and it became progressively worse over her lifetime, but nothing stood in the way of her complete involvement in the School. She was as devoted to her graduates as they were to her; she designated a Graduates' Room in the School for their use, welcomed them back to Winsor for activities and programs of all kinds, and kept careful track of their changes of address and marital status in her address book.
- Miss Winsor retired in March of 1922, turning the directorship over to Miss Katharine Lord, who had joined the faculty in 1914. " I do not like to go," she wrote the trustees. "My relation to the School has been so happy… that our parting will be hard, but the School is in good running order… and I believe that I shall not be missed except by old friends."
- In the years after her retirement in a rare degree she was still a beloved part of the life of the School-coming to all School occasions, sharing her birthday ["Founder's Day" on Halloween] with the School, following the careers of her academic grandchildren and enjoying the widening interests and activities of the School." This from a tribute to her in the 1951 Winsor Graduate Bulletin.
- She died September 1, 1950, at her home in Newton.
- Three of Mary Winsor's siblings became heads of schools-Frederick founded the Middlesex School; Elizabeth Winsor Pearson co-founded the Eliot-Pearson School with Winsor graduate Abigail Eliot '10. Annie Winsor Allen founded the Roger Ascham School in Scarsdale, N.Y. Her older brother Robert, a principal at Kidder Peabody, offered advice and financial support to her at a crucial time and was instrumental in establishing the Pigeon Hill School, predecessor of the Meadowbrook School.
- This brief biography is printed in hopes of eliciting additional information and any corrections. I am always eager to have memories and memorabilia for the archives. Please get in touch with me at (617) 912-1369 or jotte@winsor.edu.
- The Winsor Bulletin, Spring 2002
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Mary Pickard Winsor's Timeline
| 1860 |
October 30, 1860
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Salem, Essex County, Massachusetts, United States
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| 1950 |
September 1, 1950
Age 89
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Newton, Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States
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| ???? |
Linwood Cemetery, Weston, Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States
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