Mary Louise Booth

She was born in Yaphank and grew up to know everyone who was anyone—
President Lincoln, Georges Sand, Winslow Homer, Oliver Wendell
Holmes. As the founding editor of Harper’s Bazar, she performed a
“great service” to suffrage, according to her friend Elizabeth Cady
Stanton, “by showing that a woman can hold for years a place at the
head of a profession so difficult and so arduous”. She had a passion for
flowers and perfumes, a weakness for lace and an eye for talent. She published Louisa May Alcott and Wilkie Collins and at her Manhattan home, she hosted legendary Saturday night salons. She wrote the first history of the city of New York in 1859, was fluent in seven languages, translated over 40 books and was first secretary to the Women’s Rights Congress at Seneca Falls in 1855.

The birthplace of Mary Louise Booth on Main Street in Yaphank is being restored by the Yaphank Historical Society and Suffolk County Dept of Parks Historic Services as a period house museum and will be open to the public. www.yaphankhistorical.org