Marion Benedict Cothren (1880–1949) was an American suffrage and peace activist, lawyer, and children's author.

Early life and education

Marion Benedict was born and raised in

Brooklyn, New York Brooklyn () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Kings County, in the U.S. state of New York. Kings County is the most populous county in the State of New York, and the second-most densely populated county in the United States, be ...

by her parents William Marsh Benedict (a lawyer) and Grace Dillingham Benedict (a Vassar alumna). Marion was a 1900 graduate of

Vassar College Vassar College ( ) is a private liberal arts college in Poughkeepsie, New York, United States. Founded in 1861 by Matthew Vassar, it was the second degree-granting institution of higher education for women in the United States, closely follo ...

and pursued teacher training at

Columbia University Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...

(MA 1901). She was admitted to the New York bar in 1909.

Career

Marion Cothren went to Europe during

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

to work with the

International Red Cross The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC; french: Comité international de la Croix-Rouge) is a humanitarian organization which is based in Geneva, Switzerland, and it is also a three-time Nobel Prize Laureate. State parties (signato ...

at Toul, France, an experience she credited with confirming her pacifism: "When I finally left France I took with me not only the pacifist's theoretical hatred of war, but a hatred born of an overwhelming sympathy for those who warred." Marion B. Cothren was a member of the

College Equal Suffrage League The College Equal Suffrage League (CESL) was an American woman suffrage organization founded in 1900 by Maud Wood Park and Inez Haynes Irwin (''nee'' Gillmore), as a way to attract younger Americans to the women's rights movement. The League spurred ...

, the New York chapter of the

Women's Trade Union League The Women's Trade Union League (WTUL) (1903–1950) was a U.S. organization of both working class and more well-off women to support the efforts of women to organize labor unions and to eliminate sweatshop conditions. The WTUL played an important ...

, and

Heterodoxy In religion, heterodoxy (from Ancient Greek: , "other, another, different" + , "popular belief") means "any opinions or doctrines at variance with an official or orthodox position". Under this definition, heterodoxy is similar to unorthodoxy, wh ...

, a feminist debating club based in

Greenwich Village Greenwich Village ( , , ) is a neighborhood on the west side of Lower Manhattan in New York City, bounded by 14th Street to the north, Broadway to the east, Houston Street to the south, and the Hudson River to the west. Greenwich Village ...

, among other clubwork. She was on the National Advisory Council of the

National Woman's Party The National Woman's Party (NWP) was an American women's political organization formed in 1916 to fight for women's suffrage. After achieving this goal with the 1920 adoption of the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, the NW ...

, one of the honorary chairs of the

Woman's Peace Party The Woman's Peace Party (WPP) was an American pacifist and feminist organization formally established in January 1915 in response to World War I. The organization is remembered as the first American peace organization to make use of direct action ...

when it was founded in 1915, and was one of the thirty American women to attend the

International Congress of Women The International Congress of Women was created so that groups of existing women's suffrage movements could come together with other women's groups around the world. It served as a way for women organizations across the nation to establish formal m ...

at the Hague that same year. Cothren was also a vocal supporter of

Margaret Sanger Margaret Higgins Sanger (born Margaret Louise Higgins; September 14, 1879September 6, 1966), also known as Margaret Sanger Slee, was an American birth control activist, sex educator, writer, and nurse. Sanger popularized the term "birth control ...

, and served as president of the New York Women's Publishing Company, the publisher of ''

Birth Control Review ''Birth Control Review'' was a lay magazine established and edited by Margaret Sanger in 1917, three years after her friend, Otto Bobsein, coined the term "birth control" to describe voluntary motherhood or the ability of a woman to space childr ...

,'' from 1918 to 1923. Marion Cothren's writings for children included ''

Cher Ami Cher Ami (French for "dear friend", in the masculine) was a male homing pigeon who had been donated by the pigeon fanciers of Britain for use by the U.S. Army Signal Corps in France during World War I and had been trained by American pigeoners. ...

: The Story of a Carrier Pigeon'' (1934), ''The Adventures of Dudley and Guilderoy'' (1941), ''Pigeon Heroes: Birds of War and Messengers of Peace'' (1944), ''Buried Treasure: The Story of America's Coal'' (1945),''This is the Moon'' (1946), and ''Pictures of France by her Children'' (published posthumously, 1950). She also wrote ''The ABC of Voting, A Handbook of Government and Politics for the Women of New York State'' (1918) to instruct new female voters.

Personal life

Marion Benedict married lawyer Frank Howard Cothren in 1904. They had one daughter, Frances (later Mrs. J. Roy Fuller). Marion Cothren was widowed in 1914 when her husband, who had been ill, overdosed on morphine. During the 1930s, she lived with sculptor

Janet Scudder Janet Scudder (October 27, 1869 – June 9, 1940), born Netta Deweze Frazee Scudder, was an American sculptor and painter from Terre Haute, Indiana, who is best known for her memorial sculptures, bas-relief portraiture, and portrait medallions, ...

Paris Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. S ...

. She moved back to the US in 1940. She died in 1949, age 69, accidentally falling from a cliff in Maine.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Cothren, Marion American suffragists 1880 births 1949 deaths American women in World War I Vassar College alumni College Equal Suffrage League International Congress of Women people