Childhood and adolescence Born in
Chicago, Illinois, on May 5, 1861, Mary Virginia McCormick was the eldest daughter of
Nancy Maria "Nettie" Fowler McCormick and
Cyrus Hall McCormick, the American
inventor of the
mechanical reaper and
industrialist who
founded the
McCormick Harvesting Machine Company in 1847. Mary was the couple's second child, in 1880. The following August, she stayed at Clayton Lodge, the McCormick family
estate in
Richfield Springs, New York, and after
Christmas, her mother brought her to
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to seek treatment under the care of Dr.
Silas Weir Mitchell, a
neurologist. By 1889, she occupied a
camp in the
Adirondack Mountains of
upstate New York and a house on the
Upper West Side of Manhattan near the
Hudson River, two dwellings that were provided by her mother who had employed a
resident physician and
household attendants to care for her. Grace Thorne Walker, a
Canadian-born business
secretary for the McCormick family, was the head of Mary McCormick's household and served as her
nursing companion. Cyrus McCormick Jr. negotiated a three-year contract to recruit Dr.
Alice Bennett, a
superintendent at the
Norristown State Hospital for the Insane, as Mary McCormick's
attending physician in 1896, after her mother purchased the property from industrialist Michael Joseph O'Shaughnessy in 1900. She kept a small herd of
deer on the estate and maintained a
dairy that provided free milk to
underprivileged children in Huntsville. Mary McCormick visited Canada in 1904 and remained in
Toronto for months. She noticed the
Oaklands manor on
Avenue Road during her stay and her family bought the property from the family of
Senator John Macdonald in November 1905 for her. where her home held indoor gatherings for the
Young Women's Christian Association (YWCA), the
Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) and the
Women's Christian Medical College. The grounds of her manor held outdoor
garden parties every June that
raised funds for the benefit of the
Girl Guides of Canada, the
Toronto General Hospital and the
Home and School Association of Brown Public School on Avenue Road. In June 1916, her estate had the largest
fête ever held in Canada, a four-day festival for the
Canadian Red Cross Society Fond of music herself, The Caravels manor served as a
layover during her travels between Huntsville and Toronto as the McCormicks made annual family visits to Cohasset at the end of June.
Later life in California and death After the death of her mother on July 5, 1923, Mary McCormick moved back to California in 1924. The property at 1400 Hillcrest Avenue in
Pasadena was purchased by the McCormicks from the family of oil
magnate Frank Whitney Emery as her primary residence. She was placed under the care of Dr.
Adolf Meyer, a
psychiatrist who was
retained in 1927 for five years by her younger sister,
Anita McCormick Blaine. In 1928, the McCormick family acquired a
cliffside property in
Los Angeles on Alma Real Drive in the
Huntington Palisades community near
Santa Monica that became her summer home Her estate in Toronto was sold to the
Brothers of the Christian Schools in 1931 for the purpose of establishing a campus for
De La Salle College and her manor in Huntsville was sold at
auction in 1932 and became a hotel that year. She hired
symphony orchestras to play for her and unable to attend the wedding of her younger brother,
Harold Fowler McCormick, to his nurse, Adah Wilson, that was held at her other home in Pasadena. Her belongings in California were sold at auction and her
net worth, after all
inheritance taxes and expenses had been deducted, was in 1942 (equivalent to US$ in ). She was buried with other members of the McCormick family at
Graceland Cemetery in Chicago. == Philanthropy ==