Rich in Good Works: Mary M. Emery of Cincinnati (Ohio History and Culture)

Although she was a member of Newport, Rhode Island, and Cincinnati society during the nineteenth century¹s ³Gilded Age,² she lived apart from the conspicuous consumption so characteristic of her times. At the death of her husband in 1906, Mary Muhlenberg Emery (1844-1927) became one of the richest women in the United States. Recognizing her ³vast responsibility,² as she wrote in a letter to the American author, Dorothy Canfield Fisher, she embarked on a philanthropic program that endowed or initiated children¹s programs, hospitals and medical institutions, orphanages, colleges and universities, an art museum, a zoological park, various cultural agencies, and other causes that benefited humankind. Mary Emery¹s most costly benefactions were directed to the founding of Mariemont, Ohio, a planned community near Cincinnati, and to the formation of a major collection of paintings. Her paintings by such old masters as Titian, Mantegna, Van Dyck, Gainsborough, and Hals were bequeathed to the Cincinnati Art Museum.