Concise Encyclopedia of Tufts History
Sauer, Anne
Branco, Jessica
Bennett, John
Crowley, Zachary
2000
Grant, Mary Charles, 1896-1975
Mary Grant Charles (1896-1975), J1920, was the author of travel and historical pieces, short stories, and numerous poems. The Mary Grant Charles Scholarship Prize was donated by her husband and children and is named in her honor. | |
Mary Grant Charles was born in Boston and received a B.A. cum laude from Jackson College in 1920 and an M.S. from Simmons College. While at Tufts she was president of Alpha Omicron Pi sorority. Before her marriage to Ralph S. Charles, A1923, she worked as a Social Services executive. The family lived in London for three years and moved to Covered Bridge Farm in Potter Place, New Hampshire in 1936. | |
Her published works consist of travel and historical pieces, short stories, and numerous poems. Across a Covered Bridge, a collection of about eighty of her poems, was published in 1958. The Lambs of Lanarkshire (Scotland) and their Descendents in America, a regional, historical and genealogical work, was published in 1972. Two other book length works were completed but not published. The first, Born in this House, is a biography of Richard Potter, an internationally acclaimed ventriloquist and magician for whom Potter Place was named. The second, Green Sleeves, is a historical novel set in the nineteenth century around the time of the civil war. | |
Mary Grant Charles was elected to the Poetry Society of America in 1951 and is one of only two New Hampshire poets to appear in their Diamond Anthology. She had the privilege of studying poetry under Robert P. Tristram Coffin, who wrote of her as "a fellow poet and a fine one." | |
Her two sons also attended Tufts, Grant Charles, A1951 and Ron Charles, A1957. Charles died on April 19, 1975 in New London, New Hampshire. | |
Source: TC, July 1975; 100H | |
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