Believe Me: The Lost Voice of Mary L. Booth

Mary Booth knew everyone who was anyone in her day–writers, statesmen, poets, artists. She was Secretary of the Women’s Rights Convention with Susan B. Anthony, she wrote the first History of the City of New York in 1859, and was the founding editor of Harper’s Bazar. Her shortlist of accomplishments include playing a key role for the Union during the Civil War and helping bring the Statue of Liberty to New York City.

She counted among her friends Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Louisa May Alcott, and Oliver Wendell Holmes. This once-famous author and editor was an extraordinary woman whose accomplishments – whose life – made a difference. And yet, 130 years after her death, no one knows her name. 

But writer and editor Tricia Foley found her, following a path from Booth's literal doorstep to Brooklyn, New York, Boston, Washington DC and Paris, from Harriet Beecher Stowe and Louisa May Alcott to Abraham Lincoln.

Meet a modern woman of any era: Mary Louise Booth.