The couple did not have children. Edward had begun philanthropic work before their marriage, which the couple continued both together and separately. After his death in 1940, she spent the rest of her life making donations to various institutions. She died in 1950, leaving an $18 million estate, including public bequests of more than $4 million. Women's education was a focus of her giving. She supported the founding of
Connecticut College as a women's college in 1911, after
Wesleyan University decided it would admit only men, and in the 1930s gave the college a total of almost $540,000, including a dormitory, Harkness House, and the chapel. She also donated in 1930 to the then women-only
Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford; her gift, made through the auspices of the musician
Margaret Deneke when she was touring the United States, was used to build the
Deneke Building, designed by
Giles Gilbert Scott and completed in 1932. In 1907, the Harknesses bought the estate of Eolia, on
Long Island Sound in
Waterford, Connecticut, from Mary Harkness' sister Jessie and brother-in-law William Ambrose Taylor, for whom it was built; it was their primary summer home. In 1920, she created Camp Harkness, for children with
polio, on part of the estate. In 1929, Mary Harkness helped found the Marine Historical Association—now
Mystic Seaport Museum—on land that had belonged to her shipbuilding grandfather; in 1945, she would donate his house to the museum as well. She also funded two farms for research and treatment of
rheumatic fever and donated funds to World War II relief in Europe and Asia. In 1941 she gave a farm in
Nyack, New York to the
Tolstoy Foundation for a resettlement center. Harkness was a member of the
American Museum of Natural History, the
New York Botanical Garden, the
Garden Club of America, the English-speaking Union, and the
New York Philharmonic Society. Their mansion on the
Upper East Side of Manhattan,
Harkness House, is now the headquarters of the
Commonwealth Fund, a Harkness foundation for healthcare philanthropy; after her husband's death, she succeeded him as its president in an honorary capacity. ==References==