# Representative women of New England/Mary A. Greene

​MARY ANNE GREENE, LL.B., daughter of John Waterman Aborn and Mary Frances (Low) Greene, was born in Warwick, R.I., June 14, 1857. She was graduated from the Law School of Boston University in 1888 with the degree of Bachelor of Laws, magna cum laude, and was admitted to the bar in Boston the same year. She was the third woman graduated from the school and the second to be admitted to the Massachusetts bar. After practising two years in Boston, she returned to Rhode Island in 1890, and has resided in Providence ever since. She has an office practice, giving her attention largely to conveyancing and the care of estates.
Miss Greene is of the ninth generation of the Rhode Island family founded by Dr. John Greene, son of Richard Greene, of Bowridge Hill, Gillingham, Dorsetshire, England. John Greene came to Salem from Salisbury, England, 1635, was one of the original proprietors of Providence, 1636, and one of the original purchasers and founders of the town of Warwick, 1642. This family gave to the colony and State a number of public officials, among them a Deputy Governor, John Greene, Jr.; a Chief Justice, who sat on the bench of the Court of Common Pleas of Kent County all through the Revolution; Philip Greene, an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of Rhode Island; two colonial Governors, William and William, Jr.; and two Revolutionary officers of distinction. General Nathanael Greene and Colonel Christopher Greene.
Miss Greene's line of descent is as follows: John$^1$ Greene, surgeon; John$^2$ Greene, Jr., general recorder, Attorney-General, Major for the Main, Deputy Governor; Job$^3$ Greene, Speaker of the House of Deputies, 1727-28; Philip$^4$ Greene, a Justice of the Court of Common Pleas of Kent County twenty-five years, 1759-84, and its Chief Justice 1776-84, also. Associate Justice of the Supreme Court 1768-69; Christopher$^5$ Greene, Colonel-Commandant of the Rhode Island Brigade, Continental Line, of the Revolution; Colonel Job$^6$ Greene, of the State Brigade in the Revolution and an original member of the Rhode Island Society of the Cincinnati; Simon Henry' Greene, for many ​ years Senator from Warwick in the Rhode Island General Assembly; John Watennan Abom* Greene, who died young, but had already held many offices in the giift of the town of Warwick. Miss Greene is his only living child. She is also descended from Colonel Christopher Greene and from his only brother. Judge William* Greene, through her mother, Mary Frances Low, and her mother's mother, Mary Ann' Greene (Jeremiah,® William,*^ Philip,^ Job,' John,' John*), who was born in the ancestral home, "Occupasuatuxet," Warwick, R.I. This Mary Ann Greene, the grandmother, for whom Miss Greene was named, contributed stories and poems to the Providence Journal at the age of fourteen. She was of double Greene descent, her mother being Colonel Christopher's grand-daughter. She married Joseph Holden Low, of the Warwick branch of the Low family, and died at twenty-one, leaving an infant daughter, Mary Frances, who became Mrs. John W. A. Greene, a woman of fine mind. Miss Greene's mother.
Miss Greene is descended from Roger Williams through the marriage of his grand-daughter, Phebe Sayles, with Major Job' Greene, and also through her paternal grandmother, Caroline Cornelia Aborm Indeed, she is descended from nearly every one of the founders of the colonies of Providence and of Warwick and from most of them in several lines, owing to constant intermarriages.
Mrs. Julia Ward Howe is descended from Deborah* (married Simon Ray), sister of Chief Justice Philip* Greene and daughter of Job' and Phebe (Sayles) Greene.
It is a notable fact that in every generation in Miss Greene's line of the Greenes there has been either a Senator or a Representative from the town of Warwick in the General Assembly, her cousin, Francis Whittier Greene, serv- ing at the present time as Senator from War- wick.
Miss Greene was the first American woman invited to a<ldress the World's Congress of Juris- prudence and Law Reform, an honor extended to but two American and two foreign women lawyers, their names appearing upon the same programme with eminent American and p]uro- pean male jurists. Miss Greene assisted in preparing the fifth edition of Schouler on the Domestic Relations, the standard authority in the courts upon that branch of law. She is the only lawyer who makes a specialty of the delivery of lectures upon practical business law before women's clubs and girls' schools, and she finds great interest in the subject among all classes of women, from shop-girls and work- ing-women to the wives of millionaires. Miss Greene was commissioned by the Gov- ernor of Rhode Island chairman of the Rhode Island Committee on a Colonial Exhibit at the Atlanta Exposition; and the Legislature, upon her sole petition as chairman, appropri- ated one thousand dollars for the colonial ex- hibit. This is said to be the first time in his- tory that State funds have been placed in the control of a commission composed exclusively of women, by a direct grant to them from the Legislature itself.
In 1902 Miss Greene published "The Wom- an's Manual of Law," a clear, simple, and non- technical book of reference for women who de- sire to inform themselves as to the laws of busi- ness and of the domestic relations. It is said to be the most satisfactory work of the kind yet published. The Chicago Legal News of November 8, 1902, says of it: —
"This book is the result of years of experi- ence of Miss Greene, a member of the Boston bar, as lecturer upon the subject of which it treats. . . . The entire cycle of a woman's life, from her marriage to the grave, is passed in review in successive chapters. First, the laws affecting the domestic relations are considered. Then follow those dealing with buying and selling and the care of all kinds of property. In every case the particular legal restrictions upon the powers of the woman who is married are considered. Lastly, the proper disposi- tion of property by will and by the laws of inheritance is treated, including the rights of the widow or the widower in the property of either.
"Miss Greene has shown good judgment, not only in the selection of her subjects treated, but in her manner of treating them. Her style is pleasing and easily understood. Every w^oman who can read the English language, and wishes to know her legal rights, should ​ have this manual of Miss Greene's for a companion. The gifted author tells us, while all the laws discussed in this volume are of equal importance to men, it is entitled 'The Woman's Manual of Law' because it is a selection of laws that women especially need to know."
Since 1898 Miss Greene has been a vice-president of the Woman's Baptist Foreign Missionary Society. This organization includes the New England and Middle States, also Delaware and the District of Columbia. It is incorporated under the laws of Massachusetts, and has its office in Tremont Temple, Boston. It is auxiliary to the American Baptist Missionary Union, and maintains over four hundred schools, with about sixteen thousand pupils in Burma, South India, China, Japan, and Africa. It supports seventy-three lady missionaries, and carries on medical work, as well as evangelistic and educational. In January, 1902, she was, by formal vote of the Board of Directors, made its authorized legal adviser. Since 1895 she has been president of the Woman's Baptist Foreign Missionary Society of Rhode Island, a State branch of the general society.
In 1892, at the request of the Board of Managers of the Columbian Exposition, she compiled a pamphlet entitled "Legal Status of Women under the Laws of Rhode Island, 1892." It was originally published in the Rhode Island Woman's Directory for the Columbian Year, edited by Charlotte Field Dailey, and published in Providence in 1893 by the Rhode Island Woman's World's Fair Advisory Board, of which Miss Greene was a member. In 1900, the laws having been very much altered and amended, she revised the pamphlet, and it was published by the Rhode Island State Federation of Women's Clubs under the title, "Legal Status of Women in Rhode Island, 1900," with a preface concerning the recent sweeping legislation for the benefit of Rhode Island wives.
Miss Greene was the first woman contributor to the American Law Review, Some of the published articles are: "Privileged Communications in Suits between Husband and Wife," American Law Review, September-October, 1890; "The Evolution of the American Fee Simple," American Law Review, March-April, 1897; "Results of the Woman Suffrage Movement," Forum, June, 1894; and a series of articles on law for women in the Chautauquan, November, 1891-August, 1892.
Her translation entitled "The Woman Lawyer," from the French of Dr. Louis Frank, the famous Belgian champion of woman's rights ("La Femme-Avocat," par L. Frank, Bmxelles, 1888), appeared serially in the Chicago Law Times for the year 1889. Dr. Frank dedicated to Miss Greene his Catêchisme de la Femme in J895. This little work was translated into nearly every language of Continental Europe, with its dedication.
Miss Greene's address at the World's Congress of Jurisprudence upon "Married Woman's Property Acts in the United States, and Needed Reforms therein," was published in the Chicago Legal News of August 12, 1893. Her address delivered in the Woman's Building of the Columbian Exposition, entitled "Legal Condition of Women in 1492 and 1892," is printed in full in the official volumes of the Congresses in the Woman's Building. In the New England Magazine for 1898 is her illustrated article on General Nathanael Greene, a brief biography tracing the development of General Greene's character and attempting to show what it was that made him a great military genius.
The Woman's Baptist Foreign Missionary Society has published two small pamphlets from her pen—"The Primer of Missions" in 1896 and "Women's Missionary Wills and Bonds" in 1902. Miss Greene says, "If I get interested in any subject, legal, patriotic, or missionary, I have to deliver addresses and publish articles about it." She is a magnetic speaker, and has the power to hold her audiences and to inspire them with enthusiasm.
At the Fortieth Anniversary of the first Woman's Rights Convention she represented women in the legal profession. The meeting, presided over by Lucy Stone, was held in Tremont Temple, January 27, 1891, and Miss Greene, though her voice is naturally low, as she spoke on "Women in the Law," made three thousand people hear with ease.
As a presiding officer she is unusually popu​lar and successful. In her own words, "I suppose it is because I have such complete self-possession myself that my audience feel easy and comfortable themselves." She was State Regent for Rhode Island of the Daughters of the American Revolution from 1895 to 1897, and is now an Honorary State Regent.
Miss Greene says: "I did not intend to delay for so many years my application for admission to the bar of Rhode Island. No woman has yet applied here. By the rules of court a member of the bar of another State may appear here and plead, but all court papers must be signed by a member of the Rhode Island bar. As I do not practise in court, there has been no need for me to apply, and I have put it off from time to time for a more convenient season. I am not an 'agitator' of any sort, and do not care to do anything merely for the sake of the notoriety of doing it. I am glad to help where I can to make the world better by informing the people of present conditions, pointing out reforms, and helping others to do the reforming if I can."