Mary Hanford Ford (née Finney; November 1, 1856 – February 2, 1937) was an American lecturer, author, art and literature critic and a leader in the women's suffrage movement. She reached early notoriety in Kansas at the age of 28 and soon left for the Chicago World's Fair. She was taken up by the society ladies of the Chicago area who, impressed with her talks on art and literature at the Fair, helped launch her on a new career, initially in Chicago and then across some States. Along the way she was already published in articles and noticed in suffrage meetings.
In addition to work as an art critic and speaker she wrote a number of books, most prominently a trilogy Message of the Mystics. Circa 1900 to 1902 Ford found the Baháʼí Faith through Sarah Farmer and Mírzá Abu'l-Faḍl, and helped form the first community of Baháʼís in Boston where Louis Bourgeois, future architect of the first Baháʼí House of Worship in the West, then joined the religion. In 1907 Ford went on Baháʼí pilgrimage, in 1910 she started writing Baháʼí books such as The Oriental Rose, and traveled with ʻAbdu'l-Bahá during some of his journeys in various places in Europe and then America.
Ford was blamed for a fiasco among UK suffragists but it was their own violence that got them in trouble. Ford spent the years of World War I in California following the first Baháʼí International Congress at the Panama–Pacific International Exposition, and then moved back to New York where she spent almost the next 20 years. Often she traveled to Europe for some months of the year and during this period introduced the religion to Ugo Giachery, later a prominent Baháʼí. Also in this period she was censored off a radio broadcast, helped develop the religion's community both in meetings she supported and literary efforts, before reducing her travels and speaking engagements in the early 1930s. She died with her daughter by her bedside in 1937.
Early days
Before 1884 Mary Hanford Finney was born on November 1, 1856, (though 1857 is often mentioned,) to a mercantile/banker family near Meadville, Pennsylvania. The family was noted a year later in Williamsport, Pennsylvania. The Kansas City Times obituary noted she had a brother, A.M. Finney, known from Charleston, West Virginia. That would make her father Asahel Clark Finney, who spent the last working decade of his life as a partner in a Pennsylvania lumber company before moving to Kansas City. Ford's mother was Elizabeth Mary Hanford Edson. In 1860, the US Census had the family in nearby Clearfield, Pennsylvania, where Finney was a banker with personal assets of about $2000 in 1860 dollars, and he was not the richest man on his block, though also not the poorest. Mary had an older brother Elmer, and a younger sibling Cynthia, and a live-in servant. Mother Mary was 11 years younger than A. C. By 1870, father A. C. was a cashier at a bank with mother and siblings with two livein servants, one a black man, Daniel Owen, from Virginia. Ford attended a private school or seminary and studied art and languages in Burlington, Vermont. It is not clear how or when Mary moved to the Kansas area ahead of her father in 1882. She married Smith Moses Ford about October 8, 1878, when she was known as Minnie Finnie and was living in Winfield, Kansas. She was his second wife. S.M. Ford was a former alderman, teacher, newspaper writer and eventually newspaper publisher. Their first child, Roland Ford, was born circa 1879.
It was after this that Mary Hanford Ford became visible as a member of clubs. Circa 1880, Ford was among a circle of women who formed the Friends Council Club in Kansas City, of an intentionally limited number of members, and focused on reviewing the history, literature, philanthropy, and art of early civilizations. For the June 4, 1880, US Census, the family was living on 7th St in Kansas City, Missouri, with her parents and siblings and their own children. Father Asahel C. and husband Smith M. were in real estate, as was her brother Elmer. There were also three black servants in the house and five boarders. Circa 1882, Ford was visible entertaining visitors. Another early club Ford was involved in was the Social Science Club; she was visible speaking at a regional conference in 1884. Ford's daughter Lynette was born on 1886.
Rising tide of visibility
1884 and 1885 was Ford's first known writing appeared in print. A short article, "What is Wanted", was fairly widely published including Illinois,*
Indiana,*
Iowa,*
Kansas,* Maine, Ohio,* and Pennsylvania. Ford pointed out that, in the past, people only needed or wanted food and shelter, but even though some still lacked these basic needs, growing spiritual needs were developed that required a home that provided a quiet and private space to develop one's individuality, away from gossip and criticism, a home should be a place where children can maintain their innocence and not grow up too quickly. She criticizes most Americans for having mere places to stay rather than true homes that foster love, thoughts, and morals and fail to recognize their home as a place of spiritual importance, with material possessions and obligations taking precedence over religious beliefs. "But the idea of a heart center, where love is cherished, thoughts are fostered and morals expanded, is apparently unheard of in their philosophy. Materfamilias goes to church on Sunday without an idea that she is leaving the holiest temple behind her, of which she is high priestess, and if you should dissect her brain you would find that in the corner devoted to 'necessities' the strata of clothes, cooks, sewing girls and roast turkey fill up all but the smallest crevice consciously set aside for religious belief and church membership." That same period, after having been an atheist for most of her life, Ford became a Spiritist and a believer in the afterlife when her father died in Kansas City.
In July 1888, Ford published the instructive article "Mrs. Diaz and the Woman's Exchange Idea" in a periodical. Her last child was born in September 1888, the same month an article in The York Daily describes her as being "recognized in the west as an authority on literary matters", and she was quoted saying, of the role of the US President's wife, "...By countenancing the suffrage movement she could make it more fashionable ..." In October, she was the only woman, among four vice presidents, elected for a newly founded Missouri and Kansas authors' organization. That year was also Ford's last birth.
In 1889 she was an officer of the Western Authors and Artists Club (WCCA) of Kansas City, writing various articles including a series for Edward Bellamy's The Nationalist,*
an article reviewing a book on artists for The Dial, and then a series of stories for Wide Awake, a children's magazine, a series that continued in 1890.
In 1891, now a member of the Kansas City Art association, she took part in the opening of an exhibit. This same year she wrote the book, Which will win? or Which wins?, and co-wrote a play. "Mary H. Ford ... says in her preface to the book that there are many men, like Wagner's Parsifal, whose eyes turn inward, who feel the sufferings of others so vividly that they will turn their backs upon worldly prosperity and sacrifice all worldly profit for the good of their fellow-creatures. With such men lies the possibility of the race for real reform, and they represent a proportion of humanity much larger now than at any other time, she thinks. ... " The book was dedicated to the Farmers' Alliance and covers life on farms and the effect mortgage systems had on it,* and specifically examined the ways a woman's inheritance could be taken away. It was well reviewed locally, in Chicago and beyond.*
From a Boston review: "although the work of an unknown author, is regarded ... as likely to arouse attention. Nothing is known of Mrs. Mary H. Ford of Kansas City, ... (but) a woman of extended acquaintance both in political and social circles. ... The didactic moral of the book is interwoven with a love-tale, the idea evidently being to reach the story reading public in the same way that Bellamy reached the public with his 'Looking Backward'." However another reviewer said "If the 'labor question' could be settled by writing weak or sensational novels concerning it, all difficulties would speedily vanish ... Which Wins, by Mary H Ford ... would be likely to interest the farmer more if it had less about Parsifal in it." A letter-to-the-editor campaign by George Ward supported it in several newspapers.*
One reviewer profiled Ford herself:
Mrs Ford is an Eastern woman by birth, and has spent a great deal of her life in Boston, where she is well known and esteemed for her superior capabilities. ... She possesses one of the finest libraries west of the Mississippi, which is rich in art works, rare translations from the Sanscrit, and the choicest editions of the poets. Her education is thorough to a remarkable degree ... Aside from her literary ability, Mrs. Ford is a practical newspaper woman, and can pen a political editorial with the crisp conciseness of a vertebral chief-of-staff. When that historical attempt to run all the emancipated slaves into Kansas was made, Mrs. Ford accepted a commission from the New York Tribune to investigate the matter, and her series of caustic and exhaustive letters attained a national importance.
The new play was called The Syndicate and it opened in November 1891. It was a local success by early 1892 and positives review were carried in various places*
but its sympathies with farmers and the Farmers' Alliance were controversial to some.*
That spring Ford hosted a tent of her own at a local fair.*
Transition to Chicago (1893–1894)
In March 1893, a man sued Ford's husband $50,000 for having "alienated the affections of his wife and caused her to desert him in 1887" and also for having abducted the couple's daughter in 1888.*
A week later, replacing a previously announced speaker, Ford gave an hour-long address at a mass meeting of the local suffrage movement to encourage women's interest in the upcoming municipal election. Ford continued to give lectures on Women's Suffrage, including one detailing the accomplishments the movement had effected in Missouri. In May she was again an officer of the WCCA. In June she attended the Chicago World's Fair, which ran from May 1, 1893, to October 30, 1893, where she was seen as a "strong believer in women" and "American art"* and gave a talk on "Woman in Art Today". She was later called a guide at the Exposition and the strength of her support for American art was still echoing in October when she again presented, this time on "The Old Masters and the New" (in art) and published an article in the Chicago Tribune covering impressionism at the Expo in October. By early December she and her children*
were "taken up" by the "society women" of Chicago. She was noted as an avid supporter of impressionism and American art, and was offering classes in her home in Chicago. She also hosted an exhibition in her home in December that was well received in the news and announced a series of lectures for the coming year for the "Arché Club" suggesting she had already traveled in Europe. The club would soon be a primary vehicle for Ford's talks.
In January 1894, she presented "Art and the Revolution" to the Sons of the American Revolution chapter in Chicago. "It was something entirely original, and was in itself almost a history of that time of struggle" and noted particularly Benjamin West and his painting The Death of Wolfe remarking that this was the first American artist to paint what people really wore and not classical garments.*