Marjory (Stoneman) Douglas (1890 - 1998)

Born 7 Apr 1890 in Minneapolis, Hennepin, Minnesota, United States

Ancestors

Died 14 May 1998 at age 108 in Miami, Miami-Dade, Florida, United States

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Marjory (Stoneman) Douglas is Notable.

Marjory (Stoneman) Douglas was a part of the Suffragette Movement.

Marjory (Stoneman) Douglas was a centenarian, living to age 108.

Biography

• Marjory Stoneman Douglas was an American journalist, writer, feminist, and environmentalist known for her staunch defense of the Everglades against efforts to drain it and reclaim land for development. Moving to Miami as a young woman to work for The Miami Herald, Douglas became a freelance writer, producing over a hundred short stories that were published in popular magazines. Her most influential work was the book The Everglades: River of Grass (1947), which redefined the popular conception of the Everglades as a treasured river instead of a worthless swamp.
• Marjory Stoneman was born on April 7, 1890, in Minneapolis, Minnesota, the only child of Frank Bryant Stoneman (1857–1941) and Lillian Trefethen (1859–1912), a concert violinist.
• She married Kenneth Douglas in 1914 who turned out to be a con artist (who was 30 years her senior and already married to another woman) and she left him within a year. No children. No second marriage.

Quotes

"Be a nuisance where it counts. Do your part to inform and stimulate the public to join your action. Be depressed, discouraged, and disappointed at failure and the disheartening effects of ignorance, greed, corruption and bad politics—but never give up."

In 1917, Marjory, along with three other women, made the long trek from Miami to the Florida state capitol, Tallahassee, for the cause of women gaining the vote. She described the experience in a 1983 interview:

"We had to speak to a committee of the House, which we did. It was a big room with men sitting around two walls of it with spittoons between every two or three. And we had on our best clothes and we spoke, as we felt, eloquently, about women's suffrage and it was like speaking to blank walls. All they did was spit in the spittoons. They didn't pay any attention to us at all."

Although the 14th Amendment to the US Constitution was passed in 1920, allowing women the vote, Florida did not ratify that amendment until 1969.

Legacy & Honors

• Her book, The Everglades: River of Grass, has been continually in print since it was published in 1947, the same year the Everglades National Park was founded. The book is still considered a definitive work about the region. Stoneman Douglas was active in gaining National Park designation.
• In 1993, President Bill Clinton awarded Marjory Stoneman Douglas the Presidential Medal of Freedom at the age of 103. She donated the medal to Wellesley College, where she graduated in 1912, with a straight-A record and honored as Class Orator
• Inducted into the US National Women's Hall of Fame, 2000
• Posthumously admitted to the Everglades Coalition Hall of Fame upon its launch in 2003
• Also in 2000, Marjory was posthumously inducted into the National Wildlife Federation's Conservation Hall of Fame
• In a 2015 Earth Day Speech in the Everglades, President Obama announced that her Miami residence was being designated as a National Historic Landmark
• Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida is named in Marjory's honor. The activism of the Stoneman Douglas students after the mass shooting at the school on 14 Feb 2018, intentionally or not, is in the tradition of the school's namesake.
• Marjory was cremated and her ashes scattered in the Everglades.
• Her papers are maintained in a Special Collection at the University of Miami

Sources

• Find a Grave, database and images (accessed 05 September 2020), memorial page for Marjory Stoneman Douglas (7 Apr 1890–14 May 1998), Find A Grave: Memorial #10826431, ; Maintained by Find A Grave; Cremated, Ashes scattered, in Everglades National Park.
• greatwomen.org
• Wikipedia
• Geni.com profile
• Transcript of interview on National Public Radio, 1981

From behind the ancestry.com subscription wall

• US Census, 1900 (Taunton, MA)
• US Census, 1910
• New Jersey Marriage Index, 1914
• US Census, 1920 (Miami, FL)
• US Census, 1930 (Miami, FL)
• Florida State Census, 1935
• US Census, 1940 (Miami, FL)
• Florida Death Index, 1998
• US, Social Security Death Index, 1998