# Representative women of New England/Helen M. Graves

​HELEN MacKENZIE GRAVES, a successful business woman of Boston, is a native of Nova Scotia, her birth-place and the home of her parents, David and Christina (Sutherland) MacKenzie, being in Pictou County. Her grandparents on ​her mother's side were Angus and Isabella C. (Gordon) Sutherland; on her father's side, John and Catherine (Mcintosh) MacKenzie, all Scottish Highlanders, belonging to old and distinguished clans. They migrated to Nova Scotia in the early part of the nineteenth century. The History of Pictou County states that Donald Mcintosh and Angus Sutherland took up their residence in the unbroken forest in the year 1813.
Angus Sutherland, the maternal grandfather above mentioned, was one of the Sutherlands of Sutherlandshire (in the extreme north of Scotland, south of Caithness), the head of which family for many generations bore the title of Earl, the line at length ending in an heiress, "Elizabeth Sutherland, Countess of Sutherland in her own right and proprietress of the greater part of Sutherlandshire," who married in 1785 George Granville Leveson Gower, the latter becoming in 1833 the first Duke of Sutherland.
The maternal grandmother, Isabella C, wife of Angus Sutherland, was the daughter of Robert and Christina (Arnot) Gordon. Her father is said to have sprung from the same stock as the distinguished British general, Charles George Gordon, known as "Chinese Gordon"—born at Woolwich, England, in 1833, son of William H. and Elizabeth (Enderby) Gordon and grandson of William A. and Anna M. (Clarke) Gordon—whose great-grandfather, David Gordon, emigrated from Scotland after the battle of Culloden, and died in Halifax, N.S., in 1752.
Robert Gordon is believed to have been very nearly related to David Gordon. Alexander Gordon, son of Robert, was a paymaster in the Forty-second Highlanders (the "Black Watch"), and his brother Donald was bandmaster of the same regiment.
Helen MacKenzie (now Mrs. Graves) at the age of sixteen, having received a public school education in her native place, came to Boston, Mass., to enter upon the active duties of life on her own account.
After various discouraging experiences in attempting to find a position for which she was fitted, she secured employment in the office of a laundry machinery company, beginning there at the lowest round of the ladder. She felt that this was the opportunity for which she had been looking, and determined to make the most of it by doing her work well. Her energy and faithfulness soon attracted the attention of the officers of the company, and they decided to make the experiment of placing her in charge of a department of the business that had previously been conducted entirely by men engaged as travelling agents.
The mere mention of employing a woman in that capacity was regarded as preposterous. Nevertheless, she began to travel for the company, and immediately proved herself capable of doing the work assigned her in a satisfactory manner. She installed steam laundry plants all over the United States, instructing operatives in the running of the machines, and gained a reputation as an authority in this branch of the business. It was hard, exact- ing, fatiguing work, and after a time, wishing to settle in a permanent location, she accepted a position as superintendent and manager of one of the largest steam laundries in the East. This position she held eighteen years, resigning it two or three years ago to embark in her present enterprise, establishing and carrying on a steam laundry in the Allston district of Boston. The "Mayflower Laundry," as it is called, has been conducted with her usual energy, industry, and honesty, and with such signal ability that it is a pronounced success, ranking as a first-class establishment of its kind and a credit to its proprietor and manager.
January 16, 1891, Helen MacKenzie was married to Oliver B. Graves, of the firm of Graves & Henry, of Harvard Square, Cambridge, Mass.