page_title: Mary Margaret O'Reilly
section_title: Rise to prominence
hierarchical_section_title: Mary Margaret O'Reilly / Mint career (1904–1938) / Rise to prominence
caption_attribution_description: English: Mint medal honoring the service of Director of the Mint George E. Roberts (1898-1907, 1910-1914). It was designed by Mint Engraver Barber.
context_page_description: Mary Margaret O'Reilly was an American civil servant who served as the Assistant Director of the United States Bureau of the Mint from 1924 until 1938. One of the United States government's highest-ranking female employees of her time, she worked at the Mint for 34 years, during which she often served as acting director during the Mint Director's absence.
  O'Reilly was born in Springfield, Massachusetts to an Irish immigrant family. Growing up in that state, she left school around the age of 14 to help support both her widowed mother and her siblings. Likely starting work in the local textile mills, she gained clerical training at night school before working as a clerk in Worcester for eighteen years. In 1904, O'Reilly gained a position at the Mint Bureau, resulting in a move to Washington, D.C. She rose rapidly in the bureau's hierarchy – an unusual feat for a woman at that time – and was frequently called upon to testify before the United States Congress. As many of the Mint's directors were political appointees who had little knowledge or interest in the bureau's operations, the task of running the institution often fell to her.
context_section_description: O'Reilly was hired by the United States Bureau of the Mint as a Class D temporary clerk in 1904, when she was 38 years old, older than most new employees. She served in the Washington, D.C. headquarters of the Bureau of the Mint, where Mint Director George E. Roberts was impressed by her business experience and competence.  Initially having only temporary status, she was made a permanent employee in 1905, and was promoted again that year to Clerk Class I at a salary of $1,200. When Margaret Kelly was commissioned Examiner of the Bureau of the Mint in 1911, the ripple of promotions in her wake included O'Reilly, who became adjuster of accounts.  This made her in effect the chief clerk of the Mint Bureau, with responsibility for reviewing all contracts. According to Teva J. Scheer, biographer of Nellie Tayloe Ross (O'Reilly's final Mint Director before retirement) "it must have required an almost unprecedented combination of drive and intelligence for [O'Reilly] to have climbed so far up through the organization in her male-dominated work environment".
  During the 1910s, O'Reilly continued to gain promotion, serving both as examiner and as computer of bullion.  She was frequently called upon to testify before Congress. In 1915, Robert W. Woolley was appointed Mint Director, and was likely O'Reilly's favorite of those who served in that position during her third of a century at the Mint.  She often concluded memoranda with personal good wishes, and Woolley reciprocated. After Woolley resigned in August 1916, O'Reilly served as acting director for part of the time until Woolley's successor Friedrich Johannes Hugo von Engelken took office the next month, though Adjuster of the Bureau of the Mint Fred H. Chafflin held the acting position for much of the interregnum.
caption: Mint Director George E. Roberts (shown on his Mint medal by Chief Engraver Charles E. Barber)
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