Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews

Mary Raymond Andrews ( Shipman; April 2, 1860 – August 2, 1936) was an American writer. She is best known for a widely read short story about US President Abraham Lincoln, "The Perfect Tribute", which was adapted for film twice and sold 600,000 copies when published as a standalone volume.

Biography Mary Raymond Shipman was born in Mobile, Alabama, the oldest child of the Reverend Jacob Shipman, rector of Christ Episcopal Church. She grew up in Lexington, Kentucky, where her father was rector of another Christ Church. Her younger brother, Herbert Shipman, later became suffragan bishop of New York.

In 1884, she married William Shankland Andrews, a young lawyer who would become judge of the New York Court of Appeals and spent most of the rest of her life in Syracuse, New York. They lived on an estate named Wolf Hollow in nearby Taunton, New York. They had one child, Paul Shipman Andrews, who became dean of the Syracuse University College of Law. The connections between Andrews' contribution to The Whole Family and her other work, and the cultural significance of her representations of sentimental masculinity, are analyzed in June Howard's Publishing the Family.

Andrews' best remembered work, "The Perfect Tribute", appeared in Scribner's in July 1906. The story was largely responsible for the persistent myth that Lincoln hurriedly wrote the Address on the train on the way to Gettysburg.

That story reached Andrews through her son Paul, whose history teacher, Walter Burlingame, overheard his father, diplomat Anson Burlingame, hear it from Senator Edward Everett, the featured speaker at Gettysburg. Burlingame's other son, Edward L. Burlingame, was the founding editor of Scribner's.

"The Perfect Tribute" was adapted into a 1935 MGM short film starring Chic Sale as Lincoln and a 1991 television movie starring Jason Robards as the President. Two of Andrews' other works were adapted for film: The Courage of the Common Place in 1917 and Three Things, as The Unbeliever in 1918.