Mary Duke Biddle Trent Semans

Mary Duke Biddle Trent Semans (February 21, 1920 – January 25, 2012) was an American heiress, activist, politician, and philanthropist. She was the granddaughter of Benjamin N. Duke and the great-granddaughter of Washington Duke, both tobacco and energy tycoons who helped start Duke University. Semans supported the arts and humanities through various philanthropic entities. She was a dedicated civil rights activist, and ran for the Durham City Council on a platform dedicated to increasing voter registration among African-Americans. She was the first woman to serve as mayor pro tempore of Durham.

Life Early life Mary Duke Biddle was born in 1920 in New York City to Mary Lillian Duke Biddle and Anthony J. Drexel Biddle, Jr., and she lived a comfortable early life as the daughter of wealthy and prominent parents. Her mother was an aspiring opera singer and her father a retired World War I captain and a US ambassador. As a girl she learned to play the piano and attended the Hewitt School in New York. When she was fourteen years old, her parents divorced and she moved to Durham, North Carolina, to live with her grandmother.

College and later life In 1935 she enrolled at Duke's Women's College where she met Josiah Charles Trent, a then medical student who eventually became the chief of Duke Hospital's Division of Thoracic Surgery. Mary and Josiah married in 1938 and together they had four daughters. The next year, Mary graduated from Duke, receiving a degree in Art History. However, just nine years later in 1948, Josiah died of lymphoma, leaving Mary a widow with four girls.

Pushed by her mother and with the support of her childhood governess, Mary went back to Duke University as a student for three more semesters. While back at Duke, she met James Hustead Semans, a urologic surgeon visiting from Atlanta. Five years later Mary remarried to James, who that year joined Duke's medical faculty. Together they had three children.

Exposure to the arts Later in life Semans was known for her support of the arts, a love for which she said she had had her entire life.

Growing up in New York City, Semans listened daily to her mother's opera singing and took private piano and dance lessons of her own. This exposure to music, along with frequent trips with her governess to opera houses, theatres, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art gave Semans an appreciation for art at an early age. While at one point she considered becoming a professional pianist, Semans stopped playing in college, a decision she said she later regretted.

From 1953-55 she then served as Durham's mayor pro tempore, again Durham's first woman elected to such a post. While in office, she spent much of her time pushing for civil rights, funding for the arts, and affordable housing and healthcare.

Philanthropy Semans created and supported many institutions at Duke University, in her hometown Durham, and in the larger State of North Carolina.

Duke University

Mary Semans financially supported many projects at her alma mater Duke University throughout her life. She spent many years as chair of the Mary Duke Biddle Foundation, started by and named after her mother, and she served 45 years as a trustee of The Duke Endowment. In 1982 she became the Endowment's first female chair, a position she retained until 2001. Through her position she started the Josiah Charles Trent Memorial Foundation, the Josiah Charles Trent Collection of the History of Medicine, and the Mary Duke Biddle Scholarship.

These projects were named after Josiah Trent, Semans's first husband, and Mary Duke Biddle, Semans's mother. She was also instrumental in the creation of the Duke University Museum of Art

Support for the arts Growing up surrounded by the arts but finding herself in a city and area lacking them, Mary Semans and her husband concentrated much of their philanthropic energy towards supporting the arts. In 1956 Semans's mother, Mary Duke Biddle, started the Mary Duke Biddle Foundation, and the next year Semans became trustee. A few years later in 1960, Mary Duke Biddle died and Dr. and Mrs. Semans became chairman and vice-chairwoman of the foundation. Through membership on this board they helped support many arts and cultural programs in New York City, the Carolinas, and Duke University.

The first of these programs, started in 1964 and named after Dr. Semans's parents, was an art collection at Duke University. Later in the 1960s Semans and her husband then helped start the University of North Carolina School of the Arts in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. At the time, the NC School of the Arts was the first publicly funded art school in North Carolina. Semans later said that of all her projects, the Semans Art Fund was closest to her heart. Semans also served for 28 years as a trustee of Lincoln Community Hospital, a hospital started in 1901 by her family to serve Durham's African-American population. starting a tradition she continued and influencing much of her life's work.

Facing competition from other tobacco manufacturers, the youngest of Duke's sons, James B. Duke, convinced his father to buy machines to make ready-made cigarettes, and within five years the W. Duke, Sons & Company became the largest manufacturer of cigarettes in the United States. Under the direction of James Duke it then merged with four other manufacturers to become the multinational American Tobacco Company. Later in 1905, James Duke worked with his brothers to create a second empire in hydroelectric power as an outgrowth of Duke investments in North Carolina's booming textile industry. They poured millions of dollars into hydroelectric infrastructure of the Carolinas, creating the Southern Power Company and what is now the United States' largest electric power holding company, the Duke Power Company.

Philanthropic leanings As the Dukes made money, they, somewhat unusually for the time, Washington Duke first came to philanthropy through the Methodist church, although he was influenced by the larger Social Gospel movement and had interest in quieting critics of his tobacco trust. Later in her life, Mary Duke Semans would spend much time as the chairwoman of this still-existing Duke Endowment. The lichen species Parmelia semansiana was named in her honour by William and Chicita Culberson, both researchers at Duke University.

Death Semans died on January 25, 2012, at age 91 in Duke Hospital in Durham, North Carolina. The exact cause of death was not published.

Legacy Semans became involved with and started many charitable organizations throughout her life. She dedicated nearly her entire life to philanthropic work, yet she could never bear to think of her work as philanthropy. When asked for a reflection on her work, she replied that she "see that word [philanthropy] all the time," but never thought it applied to her. She was simply "giv[ing] to so and so" at times when they needed it.