Partner Mary Parker Follett
Queer Places:
8 Marlborough St, Boston, MA 02116
Overhills, 31 Overhills, Putney, VT 05346
5 Otis Pl, Boston, MA 02108
Isobel L. Briggs (1848 - January 8, 1926) was in long-term relationship for 30 years with Mary Parker Follett. Two decases older than her partner, Briggs devoted herself to helping Follett, flourish in her career. The two especially cherished their cottage in the mountains in Vermont, where they read books, relaxed, walked in the summer daisy fields, and shared sparkling conversations with visitors.
Isabella (Isobel) Louisa Briggs was born in November 1848 to William Briggs and Isabella Bunnett of Great Yarmouth, Norfolk, on the east coast of England. She was the great-granddaughter of John Briggs of Hessle. Briggs's father, a forty-eight year-old Yorkshire nonconformist, was a coal merchant and a ship owner in this busy working seaport. Briggs's mother, already thirty-seven at the time of Isobel's birth, was William Briggs's second wife. Three daughters from Briggs's previous marriage, aged sixteen, nineteen, and twenty-one, shared the family home on Yarmouth's South Quay along with William and Isabella's young sons, aged seven and one. Young Isobel quickly became a middle child in this "second" family when her birth was followed by two more children. Given the large size of the household, the Briggses were fortunate in being able to afford the help of a cook, housemaid, nursemaid, and governess. Briggs suffered serious losses early in life. Her mother developed breast cancer and died before Isobel's seventh birthday. Her father quickly remarried, no doubt seeking help in raising the younger children; but he, too, was soon dead, a victim of gangrene poisoning following a minor accident. Fifteen-year-old Isobel, her sister, and her three brothers then had to make their own way in the world.
Briggs was the first to take the university examinations that were open to her sex in England. Her father stipulated that after the death or marriage of his widow, his assets were to be sold and "equally divided between such of my children as being sons shall attain the age of twenty one years or being daughters shall attain that age or marry." As a result of these generous provisions, Isobel may have received as much as 800 pounds from his estate. This inheritance, though not sufficient to support her for a lifetime, did allow Isobel to take what would otherwise have been an extraordinary risk. In 1880 at the age of thirty-two, apparently without either relatives or a position awaiting her, Briggs left England for the United States.
In time got in close touch with Pauline Agassiz, who married Quincy Adams Shaw. When the latter opened her school at 6 Marlboro street, which was started to prepare both girls and boys for college and embodied some of Mrs. Shaw's advance ideas touching education. Briggs was selected to be head of the school and she continued in that capacity for a number of years. While her primary duties in the school were largely of an administrative character, she won quite a reputation for teaching Shakeapeare and the English classics, and many of the students afterwards happily remembered her for what she had taught them in this department of English.
The difficulty of commuting to Cambridge and Boston daily so that she could teach as well as study finally gave Follett a reason to leave home. Shortly before her 26 birthday, she took up residence in the Back Bay building that housed Mrs. Shaw's School. Sharing the accommodations with Follett at 8 Marlborough street, was the woman who would eventually be her life companion, the school's 46 years old principal, Isobel Briggs.
In the 1900s Isobel L. Briggs built a summer home north of Putney in Vermont, which commanded a wonderful view of distant scenery. Briggs was a regular summer visitor. After a separation due to the fear of being accused of being a lesbian, Follett took refuge with Briggs in Vermont. For almost two years, Briggs and Follett "lived quietly together . . . pre-occupied by the interests and demands of their country life." In the "quiet beauty" of this "far-away hill top, surrounded by upland pastures & woods, rolling country, wide spaces, & with the lovely hills in the distance," Follett found an "atmosphere of peace" that she would never know anywhere else. Mary and Isobel christened their country house "Overhills." The name was apt, for whether sitting on the long front porch or looking out the enor-mous living-room window, one could look east across the hills all the way to Mt. Monadnock in New Hampshire. Briggs's architect, A. Wadsworth Longfellow, who worked in the tradition of H. H. Richardson and Frederick Law Olmsted, carefully sited buildings in relation to the landscape. Even the interior of the three-story house had a distinct country flavor; in the living room an open-beam ceiling and rustic stone fireplace evoked the outdoors, and the wall covering was chosen because its texture and color "like redwood bark" provided "a restful contrast to the green all around them."
After nearly two years of being cloistered in Vermont, Follett again felt drawn to the variety and complexity of the urban environment. She returned to Boston late in 1900 and with Isobel Briggs took up residence in their former home, the building at Eight Marlborough Street owned by Pauline Agassiz Shaw. Shaw's continuing support, a product of her longtime friendship with Briggs, would prove to be crucial for Follett. On more than one occasion, working in an organization sponsored by Shaw would enable Follett to take the next step in her personal development." Long before the founding of Boston's first full-fledged settlements in the early 1890s, Pauline Agassiz Shaw was supporting settlement activities in the poorer neighborhoods of Boston. She had been introduced to neighborhood work in the late 1870s when she assumed responsibility for funding a small kindergarten program that had been discontinued by the Boston School Committee. Shaw became so committed to the kindergarten idea that by 1883 she was operating thirty-one in the greater Boston area, many in the poorer neigh-borhoods of the city. Perhaps because Shaw had emigrated from Switzerland as a child, she was more sensitive than most upper-class Bostonians to the plight of the city's immigrants. She organized a chain of day nurseries for children of working parents and encouraged working mothers to gather in the evenings to discuss personal and family problems, participate in clubs and classes, and enjoy a brief respite from the hardships and drudgery of their lives. By 1902, eight of the kindergarten-nurseries that Shaw supported in the poorer districts of the city had evolved "into flourishing neighborhood settle-ment houses."
She died following a several months' illness. She was diagnosized with breast cancer and cancer of the spine.
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