Mary Frances Lawrence LAST NAME: Lawrence FIRST NAME: Mary MIDDLE NAME: Frances NICKNAME:  MAIDEN NAME:  AKA 1:  AKA 2:  AKA 3:  TITLE: Miss GENDER: F MILITARY:  BORN: 14 Dec 1844 DIED: 26 Aug 1927 BURIED: 29 Aug 1927 ETHNICITY:   OCCUPATION:  Teacher BIRTH PLACE:  Davis Co., Iowa DEATH PLACE: Portland, Multnomah Co., Oregon NOTES:  BIOGRAPHICAL:  Came to Oregon as a child from Iowa, retired school teacher; taught in Astoria, Salem and Portland for almost half a century. Her teacher's certificate was issued in 1884. She left an estate of $100,000 to be spent for a home for women. She had 3 sisters: Mrs. Ella Newman of San Francisco, Mrs. J. R. Bray of L. A., and Mrs. Anna Haskins of Portland. Her brother was C. G. Lawrence of Portland.  source - Chapman Scrapbook. OBITUARY:  SCHOOL TEACHER LEAVES FUND TO BEFRIEND LONELY WOMEN. Miss Lawrence Bequeaths Four-Fifths of $100,000 Estate for the Erection of Comfortable Refuge for Homeless.  Fifty-six years ago this month, September, 1871, Mary Frances Lawrence, a young self-educated school-teacher started her teaching career in Salem, Or. She received what was then the high salary of $25 a month. When her will was filed for probate August 21, 1927, it revealed that Miss Lawrence had accumulated an estate of approximately $100,000. Four-fifths of this amount she set aside for the erection and furnishing of a home for homeless self-supporting working women. The motive back of this gift, friends of Miss Lawrence declare, is not hard to discover. She herself was homeless. If having no husband and no children of her own constitutes homelessness. Although she had sisters, brothers, nephews and nieces, Miss Lawrence is said to have been too self-reliant, too independent, to lean on them, even in her later years.  Girls Find Friend  Miss Lawrence, however, had many children--literally hundreds of the--whom whe had watched from the time they entered their first grade of school in pigtails and ginghams, or hickory shirts and denim, until they became gray-haired grandmothers and grandfathers, clubwomen and business-men, social leaders and figures…..  Chapman Scrapbook, pg 260 INSCRIPTION:  Mary Frances  Lawrence  1844 - 1927 SOURCES:  LR  LD  Saucy Survey & Photographs OSBH DC (Portland 1927) #2272  Chapman Scrapbook pg 259 CONTACTS:  LOT: 662 SPACE: 2 NW S½ LONGITUDE: N 44° 55.167' LATITUDE: W 123° 02.916' IMAGES: