Profile: (1869–1951)
Mary Stanahan Hart Pattison, known as “Molly,” was a writer, reformer, feminist, and suffragist
from Colonia, New Jersey. She was born in Brooklyn, New York, although her parents moved to
New Brunswick, New Jersey and then to Metuchen shortly after her birth. Mary Hart married Frank
Pattison, a Rutgers engineering graduate, in 1893, and they had two children.
Mary Pattison herself became a “domestic engineer,” who sought to bring new technology
into the home. Under the auspices of the New Jersey State Federation of Women’s Clubs, she
opened a State Housekeeping Experiment Station in her home. She hoped to solve the major
problems of the day: the high cost of living, the servant shortage, and “to eliminate drudgery.” Her
book, Principles of Domestic Engineering, published in 1914, was based on these experiences.
Pattison believed that men and women should work side by side in the “great Civic household.”
Pattison and her husband were ardent Progressives. They advocated for better working
conditions, improved housing for the poor, prison reform, the abolition of child labor, and
women’s suffrage. In 1912, Mary Pattison helped found the Woman’s Progressive Party, along
with Margaretta De Mott and Emma McCoy of New Brunswick, and Alice Carpender (1850–1927).
Pattison also headed the Woman’s Campaign Committee for Everett Colby’s failed bid for New
Jersey governor in 1913. In 1915, she was elected secretary of the New Jersey branch of the
Congressional Union, Alice Paul’s radical suffrage group.
In 1915, Pattison also became the district chair for the New Jersey Woman’s Peace Party,
which worked for a peaceful end to World War I. In 1949, at the age of eighty, she published
Colonia Yesterday, one of the earliest local histories of any community in the U.S.
Mary Pattison, 1914
Special Collections and University Archives,
Rutgers University Libraries
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