Author talk:Mary Alice Marshall

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Obituary

Miss Mary Alice Marshall, a member of the Society since 1906 and its Vice-president from 1920 to 1924 inclusive, died in Cambridge. Mass., March 29, 1925. Marshall's home from early childhood was in the village of Still River, a part of the town of Harvard, Mass. It was a stimulating atmosphere in which she grew up, where the parents were alive to all beauty in nature and to the best thought of their time; where books and flowers abounded and a compound microscope stood ready for use; and where children were trained to observe carefully and describe accurately what they saw.

After her schooling was over, she spent a few years in teaching, and later was a proof-reader in the office of the Manchester, N. H., Mirror. This work she left because of her mother's failing health, and for many years was kept at the old home, caring for both parents. Always she studied the life of the fields and woods within her reach; and she was a good gardener. But what those who knew her will remember, more than what she did, is that she was the finest, sanest, most loyal friend, and that Emerson's phrase about one "who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude" seemed made for her.

Miss Marshall's herbarium, consisting largely of local ferns collected by herself and containing the interesting specimens of proliferous ebony spleenwort from the basement of a school building which she once described in the Journal, was bequeathed by her to the Society. — American Fern Journal, Vol. 15.