Mary Catherine McIntire Pacheco (; January 22, 1842 — November 5, 1913) was an American novelist and playwright. The wife of California governor Romualdo Pacheco, she was First Lady of California during her husband's term in 1875.
Early life Mary Catherine McIntire was born in Madison, Indiana (or possibly Danville, Kentucky), the daughter of David McIntire and Sarah J. Handley McIntire. She moved to California in the late 1850s, with her mother and sisters, after her father died.Mary Pacheco, First Ladies of California, California State Library.
Career She published a novel, Montalban, in 1874, which placed her "among the first of the women writers of California".Ella Sterling Mighels, The Story of the Files: A Review of California Writers and Literature (Cooperative Printing Company 1893): 343. Theatrical works by Pacheco include plays Betrayed, Loyal Til Death, Incog, Malisoff, To Nemesis; or, Love and Hate, American Assurance (later revamped as Nothing But Money), Don Roberto,Mary Penfield, "Women Playmakers of To-Day" Peterson Magazine (September 1895): 964-966. Tom, Dick, and Harry, Loyal Unto Death, The Leading Man,"At the Theatres" The Capital (October 3, 1898): 10.Brenda Murphy, ed., The Cambridge Companion to American Women Playwrights (Cambridge University Press 1999): 29. The Two Johnnies,"Women as Playwrights" The Sketch (June 8, 1898): 256. and Three Twins (1908, a musical).Karl L. Hoschna, Otto Harbach, Charles Dickson, Mrs. Romualdo Pacheco, Three Twins (M. Witmark 1908).
In her life as a politician's wife, Pacheco lived in Sacramento and was, for ten months in 1875, the First Lady of California. (Her husband became the state's first California-born governor when he finished the term of Newton Booth.)"Governor Romualdo Pacheco" National Governors Association. She hosted a literary salon in San Francisco, drawing "all that were worth knowing in California", according to Western writer Bret Harte.Bret Harte, "Mrs. Romualdo Pacheco" Overland Monthly (January 1914): 23. She was a member of the Pacific Coast Women's Press Association.
Personal life Mary Catherine McIntire married Romualdo Pacheco in 1863, at St. Mary's Cathedral in San Francisco. They had two children, Maybella Ramona (later Mrs. William S. Tevis) and Romualdo Jr. Their son died at age 6 in 1871. Mary Pacheco was widowed in 1899, and died in 1913, aged 71 years, in Oakland, California."Wife of Ex-Governor Pacheco Dies Suddenly" San Francisco Call (November 6, 1913): 14. via California Digital Newspaper Collection
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