Mary Hatch Willard was an American business woman and social worker.
Background
Mary Hatch Willard was born on December 15, 1856 in Jersey City, N. J. , the eldest of the eleven children of Alfrederick S. and Theodosia (Ruggles) Hatch. Her childhood and youth were passed for the most part in comparative affluence, although her father, junior member of the Wall Street banking firm of Fisk & Hatch, met repeated reverses in fortune. The family removed to New York City. For a number of years their summer home was in Newport, R. I. In 1871 Eastman Johnson painted the Hatch "Family Group" (including the parents and grandparents) which now hangs in the Metropolitan Museum of Art as an illuminating and authentic social study of its period. Mary was then fifteen. As she grew older she entered whole-heartedly into the New York society life of that day and attained a place of leadership in it.
Education
Mary attended private schools in New York.
Career
Eight years after her marriage, finding herself dependent on her own resources and wholly without training for a business career, she achieved single-handed what might well have seemed an impossibility - the building up, without capital and with only the most meager encouragement at first from any source, of a new business in the heart of New York. While making broth, under the doctor's orders, for a sister-in-law ill with typhoid fever, the thought came to her that many sick persons in need of such aids to recovery were probably unable to obtain them conveniently in New York. She had become an expert in cookery from sheer love of the art and had sought the best available medical advice on dietetics. Accordingly, she established a modest kitchen on Forty-second Street, and since she had no money to spend for advertising or even to advance the first month's rent, she parted with some of her most cherished personal belongings. Practising physicians brought to the Home Bureau, as her enterprise was named, a great part of its early patronage. They quickly learned that her products were dependable and they recommended them to their patients. From broths and jellies the list of prepared foods was extended to include many staples and sick-room delicacies. Then, in response to requests from doctors, other invalids' supplies were added. As a farther emergency service a registry for trained nurses was maintained. In the Spanish-American War, after the return of the troops to the Montauk Point camp on Long Island, she started diet kitchens to cooperate with the medical corps in restoring hundreds of fever victims to health. Important as that service was, her work in the World War made far greater demands on her energy and organizing ability, for then she was called upon to lead American women in a stupendous effort to supply with surgical dressings the hospitals of the Allies on the Western Front. In the emergency following the shortage of the manufactured gauze supply, the women of New York made temporary dressings from old linen and cotton. The contribution of 25, 000, 000 dressings by the national surgical dressings committee headed by Mrs. Willard was recognized by England, France, Belgium, and Italy. She died in New York City.
Achievements
Membership
For some twenty-five years she served as a member of the board of managers of the State Charities Aid Association of New York, holding from 1901 to 1909 the chairmanship of a committee charged with the placing of dependent orphans in families, for 3500 of whom suitable homes were provided.
Connections
On June 6, 1882, she married Henry Bradford Willard.