Having read your request for information re the above named….
Hi David C., I see you’re an excellent sleuth! I had set my father loose on Ancestry, but he didn’t find much. Thank you for the information; it’s very interesting for placing Mary in the right context. Could you please send me the links to the sources (I know they might be behind paywalls, but my father has at least an Ancestry account)? The patent issue is also intriguing; I’ll try to figure out how to dig into old patents, as the topic has piqued my curiosity, even though it likely has nothing to do with astronomy.
Thank you for taking an interest in this person who, I believe, deserves more credit and recognition, even if it’s just by creating a single point with all the information about her, digitizing her notes (I’ll gladly help), and linking and citing all the journals she interacted with. There are so few women active in astronomy from that era, and it’s a shame she has remained in the shadows.
By the way, I just realized that the book she owned, with her signature attached, was a book from the BAA! I imagine it was chosen to be sold because there was a better copy, but if I were you, I would have kept it just for Mary’s autograph!
