Mary Ormsbee Whitton

Mary Royce Ormsbee Whitton (February 23, 1886 – January 31, 1971) was a 20th-century American author. She wrote First First Ladies and These Were the Women (1954), both books on women in American history. She also wrote about electrical appliances for the home.

Early life and education Mary Royce Ormsbee was born in Springfield, Massachusetts, and raised in Brooklyn, New York, the daughter of Edwin Hamilton Ormsbee and Agnes Bailey Ormsbee. Her father was a newspaper editor in Brooklyn, and her mother was an active clubwoman and writer. Her brother Thomas Hamilton Ormbsee and her sister Helen Ormsbee were also writers. She attended Erasmus Hall High School, and graduated from Smith College in 1907.

Career Whitton published short stories and poems in various publications, including The Touchstone, House Beautiful, Woman's Home Companion, Parents Magazine, Pictorial Review, Children: The Magazine for Parents, Prairie Schooner and The American Scholar.

Whitton's first book The New Servant (1927) was about new and expanding uses of electrical appliances at home. Whitton's other two books were about American women's history before 1865. "What Shall I Buy First?" (1928, article) "Not Luxuries; But merely a new form of household economy" (1928, article) "The New Ironers" (1930, article) "At Home with Lucretia Mott" (1951, article)

Personal life Ormsbee married Belgian-born businessman William Hean Whitton. He died in 1951. She died from a heart attack at her home in Pound Ridge, New York, in 1971, at the age of 84. and two grandchildren.