Mary Ridgely Brown Lee (1881-1922)
MSA SC 3520-2226
Official Hostess of Maryland, 1895-1896
These photographs were found, unlabelled, in the Frank
Brown Collection [MSA SC 778], which houses an assortment of
letters, newspaper clippings, papers, and photographs from the Brown
family. I consulted the Director of Photography of the
Maryland State Archives, and we compared the photographs in question
with a precatalogued picture of Mary Brown Lee as a child,
pictures of Mrs. Lee from newspaper clippings,
and a precatalogued picture of her mother, Mary
Preston Brown. The
facial structures of the portrait photograph shown with the biographical
profile and the women in the following pictures appear
close enough to identical to suggest that they are the same woman.
The dress in the portrait photograph is typical of the time
period around 1910, a time that Mrs. Preston Brown would not have lived
to see. Though it is difficult to compare the facial
structure of a child with that of an adult, the child's structure appeared
closer to Mrs. Lee than to Mrs. Brown. The shape of the eyes further supported
the connection between the portrait of the child, Mary Ridgely Brown, and
the later pictures of Mary Ridgely Brown Lee. The man in the following
pictures appears to be Merwyn Ketcham Lee, Mary's third husband, when compared
to a newspaper picture of him at the time
of their wedding. This is further supported by the fact that a series of
photographs, which appear to have been taken around the same time,
based on the type of film and appearance of picture,
were found in an envelope from the Homestead Pharmacy in Hot Springs,
VA., dated June 12, 1920. Mary and Merwyn took their honeymoon in Hot Springs
in June 1920. These may be pictures from that honeymoon. The man dressed
in a white
serving suit in the third picture may be Samuel Distance, a servant
of Mary Lee during these last years of her life. She left him
one thousand dollars in her will.
Mary Ridgely Brown Lee
Merwyn Ketchum Lee
Mary Lee and Samuel Distance
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