Mary Teresa McKee Waggaman

Background

Mary Teresa McKee Waggaman was born in Baltimore, Maryland, the daughter of John and Esther (Cottrell) McKee. Her father, a native of Ireland, joined the gold rush to California in 1849, acquired a fortune, and became a ship broker in New York. Her mother, the daughter of an Anglican clergyman, died when Mary was six years of age. The child was brought up in Mount de Sales Convent, Catonsville, Md.

At the outbreak of the Civil War her father took her to New York to live in the home of friends, in whose well-filled library she spent much of the next two years attempting to supplement her education. In the autumn of 1863, when her father, a Southern sympathizer, was seized and imprisoned for several months at Fort Lafayette, New York, she became one of a group of ardent Southern sympathizers in the Northern city. In the spring of 1864 she returned to the convent to be valedictorian of her graduating class. After her father was released from prison upon Lincoln's orders, she accompanied him to Liverpool, where they joined other exiles who were attempting to send supplies through the blockade to the depleted S. At the close of the Civil War they returned, broken in fortune, and took up their residence in Baltimore.

Career

She began writing during her school days. When twenty-five years of age she published a poem, "The Legend of the Mistletoe, " in Harper's New Monthly Magazine (January 1872). When her eldest son became a communicant and she could find no story which would properly inculcate lessons of piety, she wrote Little Comrades, A First Communion Story (1894) for her own children. Its enthusiastic reception by Catholic children led her to write others, and for thirty-five years she contributed short stories and serials, and infrequently poems, to Catholic periodicals. Among her earlier serials subsequently published in book form were Tom's Luck-Pot (1897), Little Missy (1900), and Corinne's Vow (1902); and among the later ones, The Secret of Pocomoke (1914), Grapes of Thorns (1917), and The Finding of Tony (1919). At the age of seventy-seven she wrote a winning story (published in The Columbiad, 1923) in a contest of over 3, 000 contestants. Shortly before her death, at the age of eighty-five, she completed a final serial story. In 1903 she published Carroll Dare, a novel of colonial Maryland and revolutionary France, and the next year Strong-Arm of Avalon (1904), her only other venture into historical fiction. After her death an autobiographical article, "An American Bastile, " describing her Civil War experiences, was published in the Ave Maria (May 28, June 4, 1932). In her later writing she was primarily concerned that her stories should strengthen the religious faith and loyalty of young Catholic readers. To this aim she sacrificed realism, variety, and literary distinction. Her characters, however, never become priggish or pretentious; her plots are inventive; and her style easy, natural, and straightforward.

Achievements

• She was an author famous for such a works as Tom's Luck-Pot (1897), Little Missy (1900), Corinne's Vow (1902), Strong-Arm of Avalon (1904) and others.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Killykinick

    (This collection of literature attempts to compile many of...)

  • Con of Misty Mountain

    (This historic book may have numerous typos and missing te...)

  • White Eagle

    ( This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923....)

  • Strong Arm of Avalon

    (Hardcover. Only marking in book is price penciled in. In ...)

  • Tom's Luck-Pot

Connections

In 1870 in Baltimore she married Dr. Samuel J. Waggaman, who later became a professor in the National College of Pharmacy, Washington, D. C. , where shortly after their marriage they established their home. They had eleven children, six of whom survived their mother.

Father:

John Waggaman

Mother:

Esther (Cottrell) McKee Waggaman

Spouse:

Dr. Samuel J. Waggaman