Mary Foot Seymour

Mary Foot Seymour (1846 – March 21, 1893) was a 19th-century American businesswoman and journalist. In 1879, in New York City, she started the Union School of Stenography, the first women's secretarial school in the United States. She also published a magazine devoted to the interest of women. Seymour served as president of the Union Stenographic and Typewriting Association, commissioner of the United States Court of Claims, commissioner of deeds of New Jersey, and notary public of New York County, New York. She served three different terms in as many offices, and handled a large proportion of the writing done for the United States Patent and Trademark Office. Though she preferred journalistic work, she carried on her stenographic establishment as it paid better than correspondence or reporting. She was a member of the Woman's Press Club of New York City and Sorosis. Seymour died in 1893. Early life and education Mary Foot Seymour was born in Aurora, Illinois, in 1846. Her parents were Ephraim Sanford Seymour and Rosette (Bestor) Seymour. Her father was an author, a scientific geologist, a lawyer, and a linguist, in Galena, Illinois. Her mother was a broad-minded, philanthropic woman, possessing great executive ability. Mary, the oldest daughter, inherited traits of both parents. She was a born scribbler and began to write poems and stories when she was eight years old. When she was eleven, a drama she had written was acted by the children in the village school. Her father, acting as counselor for a large company, journeyed to California around this time. While crossing the Isthmus of Panama, he came down with yellow fever and died, at which time the family returned to the East coast. While studying in a boarding-school, at about thirteen years of age, she wrote and published a good deal of creditable verse that earned her the title of "village poet". The first money Seymour ever earned in this way was for a rhyme sent to Jane Cunningham Croly for a child's magazine that Croly was editing at the time.