Mary Gray Peck’s name is familiar to me. A copy of her biography of Carrie Chapman Catt is on display in Pi Beta Phi Headquarters. I am almost certain that she is standing next to Catt in the photo taken on the White House lawn when the portrait of Grace Goodhue Coolidge was given to the United States in April of 1924. I did not know, however, that she was a member of Gamma Phi Beta. How elated I was to discover this fact.
Peck was born on October 21, 1867 in Seneca Castle in the Finger Lakes region of upstate New York. In 1889, she graduated from Elmira College. She headed to the University of Minnesota to do post-graduate studies in philology. There that fall, she became a member of the Kappa Chapter of Gamma Phi Beta.
Kappa Chapter Directory, The Crescent of Gamma Phi Beta, June 1905
Peck graduated from the University of Minnesota in 1890. Volume 5 of The Crescent of Gamma Phi Beta (1905) noted that she was granted a year’s leave of absence. She headed to England to study at the University of Cambridge. Her friend and colleague Frances Squire Potter as well as Potter’s children accompanied her.
A Directory of University of Minnesota faculty members published in 1924 noted:
The next notable woman’s name in the faculty list is that of Mrs. Frances Squire Potter, a graduate of Elmira College, New York. She came to the university as instructor in English in 1900, and was later advanced to a professorship. During her incumbency she, and her friend and co-worker, Miss Mary Gray Peck, were outstanding figures in the college life. Their classes were crowded with enthusiastic students and their home was a center of hospitality alike to students and faculty.
A 1907 The Crescent of Gamma Phi Beta included this information:
We recently had occasion to be very proud of one of our Kappa alumnae, Mary Gray Peck, under whose direction the old Elizabethan play, ‘The Knight of the Burning Pestle,’ was given in chapel by her class in ‘Modern Drama.’ Its presentation marks an epoch in our university drama, as every detail was carried out in true Elizabethan fashion. In every respect the play was a marked success, and interest in it extended far beyond college circles.
In 1908, it was reported that she returned to her English department teaching duties “after a pleasant summer at her home in Seneca Castle, New York.”
She left Minneapolis in 1909 and headed to New York. There she joined the National American Woman Suffrage Association as corresponding secretary. Working closely with Carrie Chapman Catt, she was on the front lines of the women’s suffrage movement. With her skills and her knowledge of her subject, she wrote a biography of Pi Beta Phi Carrie Chapman Catt, published in the 1940s.
She was a member of many organizations. A 1917 publication of the Association of Collegiate Alumnae (later known as AAUW) reported:
Several lines of activity have been started by the Mohawk Valley Branch of the Association of Collegiate Alumnae. One is that of “Better Films for Young People.” The chairman of the committee in charge corresponded with many experiments in this field in other cities. It was found that all kinds of organizations were concerning themselves with the moving picture problem and that all considered it a most important and worthy work for us to undertake. Through the National Committee on Films for Young People we secured Miss Mary Gray Peck who, on Feb. 8th, lectured on this subject before an audience comprising representatives of many organizations concerned with social betterment throughout the Mohawk Valley. As a result of this meeting there will be appointed a local committee to affiliate with the National Committee in furthering this work in our vicinity.
Peck died on January 12, 1957 at the home of her niece in Jenkintown, Pennsylvania at the age of 89. She is buried in Seneca Castle, New York.
