Mary Ethel Gibson: An Emblem of Boston's Victorian Era

The research for this blog post was conducted in preparation for an interview with the What’s Her Name podcast in 2023. To learn more fascinating details about Ethel’s life, listen to their episode, “The Boston Brahmin.”

Ethel and husband Freeman Allen, c.1925
Gibson House Museum

Mary Ethel Gibson, born in 1873—and more often referred to as Ethel by friends and family—was brought into a world on the precipice of great change. Over the course of the first few decades of her life the telephone was invented, as was the automobile and kodak camera; electricity made its way into homes; and even the first airplane took flight. The city of Boston itself was also changing, as waves of immigration created a massive population boom, which not only encouraged the city to create the Back Bay neighborhood that Ethel would spend her entire life in, but also created new social pressures that sparked various progressive movements. At the Gibson House, as we have begun to uncover more details about Ethel’s life, we can see the ways in which she navigated these changes, both by holding on to the traditions she grew up with and by taking advantage of the newfound freedoms afforded to her in the 20th century. Ethel’s community and her status in society informed and shaped her life during such rapidly changing times. In many ways, Ethel and her experiences during the 19th and 20th centuries are emblematic of Boston’s Victorian era, but she was also an individual who made individual choices. No one person’s story is enough to understand any period of history, but knowing more about Ethel and her life not only expands our understanding of the Gibson House and the Gibson family, but also the greater world they occupied.

Ethel was born in Nahant, MA, likely in the family’s summer home known as 40 Steps, but it was the home at 137 Beacon Street where she would spend three-quarters of her life in. Parts of her story are recorded in the museum’s archive, many of which were well known to us. We know she attended a girl’s school and had a French tutor when she was young. We know she, along with her siblings, had a nanny in the house who helped raise them. We know that she was a founding member of the Vincent Club alongside her mother and sister. We know she enjoyed horseback riding, that she married Dr. Freeman Allen and had a son, that she was anti-suffrage, and that she continued to live on Beacon Street through the remainder of her life. However, in spending time in the archive, flipping through her scrapbook, diary, and files, more details about her life came into view, especially the ways in which she began to engage with the growing community around her.

The museum archive contains photos of her time in California, her short-story drafts and poems, careful lists of party attendees, and postcards and letters from abroad, but the stories held in the many newspaper clippings she and other family members saved expanded the scope of our research to her wider interactions in Boston. In searching through newspaper archives for mentions of her name, we found many articles that highlighted her philanthropic work in the city. Although her participation in philanthropy would have been an expectation placed on Boston Brahmins—and especially on a young woman like herself—her participation in various community healthcare initiatives seemed to go beyond obligation. She was greatly involved with the Vincent Club, and especially in the organization’s annual fundraising performance. She performed the leading role of a man as a part of her social debut. At one point, she became the center of a local scandal. In 1895, a male reporter snuck into the show (which was only open to women) and sketched her during a solo dance which exposed “such a display of leg as few Boston ladies had yet exposed to public view” (Boston Evening Transcript). 

Scrapbook clipping
Gibson House Museum

In 1902, she expanded her work, joining the board of directors of the Channing Home, which was founded by a woman and helped care for women who were battling tuberculosis. The Channing Home treated its patients for free, and became nationally known as a center for the treatment of patients with tuberculosis. In fact, it remained open for almost 100 years and its continued endowment helped to fund infectious disease labs in the city during the latter half of the 20th century. Newspaper articles also listed Ethel as the director of the Tide Over League which provided aid to people recovering from illness, helping to “tide them over” until they could work again. At home, she became a private support for her husband during his battle with depression and addiction. During a period of treatment, we have records of her close communication with his doctors, advocating for his care, and almost daily letters written in response to his, all while raising their young son.

Ethel was a person who lived her life in typical and atypical ways for the period and acknowledging the complexity of her life enriches our understanding of the Gibson House, the Gibson family, and broader Boston history. And there is still plenty left to be uncovered about her. Right before writing this blog post, a woman reached out to the museum with an image of a plaque dedicated to Ethel, confirming that she was on the board of directors of the Channing Home up until her death in 1938. These details paint a picture of Ethel’s experiences as not only emblematic of the Victorian era in Boston, but as part of a community that continues to reverberate in our society today.

- Sarah Hagglund, former museum guide and Museum and Program Coordinator