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Mary D. Fisk (b. Doolittle) (1851-1939) was born in Elyria, Ohio, and
died in Los Angeles, California. She attended the Granville Ladies Seminary College in
Monmouth, Illinois, and married Archie C. Fisk, a businessman and colonel with the Union
army during the American Civil War, in Lorain, Ohio, in 1869. The couple lived in
Vicksburg, Mississippi, until moving to Denver, Colorado, in the spring of 1873. Fisk
became interested in Christian Science during this time and was a student of Bradford
Sherman's. She graduated from the Christian Science Theological Seminary (originally the
Emma Hopkins College of Metaphysical Science) in Chicago, Illinois, in May 1889. She was
active in the women's suffrage movement and was a leader of various women's groups,
including the Daughters of the Revolution (establishing a chapter in Brooklyn in 1908),
the Sorosis Club, and the Women's Twentieth Century Club. Fisk organized the first
women's club in Denver. She was known as a writer and lecturer on literature, art,
history, travel, metaphysics, and women's suffrage. The Fisks moved to New York, New
York, in 1896, and by 1899, they had become active in the Baha'i Faith. Fisk helped
found a Bronx branch of the religion after they moved to the borough in 1915. The family
moved to California in 1918 due to Archie's ill health. After his death, Fisk became
involved with the Congregationalist church in Eagle Rock, a neighborhood in Los Angeles.
By the time she passed away, Fisk was known as "Mother Mary" among her social circle of
club women and local business leaders.
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