GREENE, Miss Mary A., lawyer, born in Warwick, R. I., 14th June, 1857. She is a lineal descendant of Roger Williams, and also of John Greene, the founder of the famous Greene family of Rhode Island, prominent in the military and civic affairs of the State and the nation. Her Revolutionary ancestor. Colonel Christopher Greene, the gallant defender of Red Bank on the Delaware, was a cousin of General Nathaniel Greene. Miss Greene began the study of law in 1885, in order to be able to manage her own business affairs and to assist other women to do the same. She took the full
MARY A. GREENE.
course of three years in the Boston University Law School, graduating in 1888 with the degree of Bachelor of Laws, magna cum laude, being the third woman to graduate from the school. She was at once admitted to the Suffolk bar, in Boston, becoming thus the second woman member of the Massachusetts bar. After practicing eighteen months in Boston, she returned to her native State. She now
resides in Providence, where she is engaged in the work of writing and lecturing upon legal topics. Always frail in constitution. Miss Greene found herself unable to endure the strain of court practice, although she was successful in that line of work. For that reason she has never applied for admission to the Rhode Island bar, her standing at the Boston bar being sufficient for the kind of work she is at present doing. She is a regular lecturer upon business law for women in Lasell Seminary, Auburnbale. Mass., the first girls' school to give systematic instruction in principles of law. Among her literary productions are a translation from the French of Dr. Louis Frank's essay. "The Woman Lawyer," which appeared in the Chicago "Law Times." and the original articles: "Privileged Communications in the Suits between Husband and Wife," in the "American Law Review"; "The Right of American Women to Vote and Hold Public Office." in the Boston "Evening Traveller"; "A Woman lawyer," and a series of articles upon "Practical Points of Every-Day Law," in the "Chautauquan." Miss Greene is firmly impressed with the importance to all women of a practical knowledge of the
principals of business law, and in all her professional work she endeavors to educate her hearers and readers in those most necessary matters. As a public speaker she is very successful. She always speaks without notes and with great fluency and felicity. At the fortieth anniversary of the first woman's rights convention, celebrated in Boston in January, 1891, Miss Greene was invited to speak for "Women in Law" as the representative of that profession. She is not, however, identified in any way with the woman suffrage movement, possessing, as she does, that spirit of conservatism mingled with independence which has always characterized the people of Rhode Island. She believes that her mission is to educate women to an intelligent use of the rights they possess, and that to others may be left the work of demanding further rights for her sex.