Mary Norris Dickinson

Vorlage:Copy edit Mary "Polly" Norris Dickinson (July 17, 1740 – July 23, 1803) was an early American land and estate owner and operator. She was well educated and is known for her ownership of one of the largest libraries in the British American colonies and her presence in or near events of the Constitutional Convention, including her marriage to John Dickinson, one of the early drafters of the Constitution and one of its signers on behalf of the colony of Pennsylvania. Upon her husband's death, much of their combined library was bequeathed to John and Mary's College, which was named in their honor and later renamed Dickinson College.

Early life

Mary "Polly" (née Norris) Dickinson was born on July 17, 1740 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She was the daughter of Isaac and Sarah (née Logan) Norris. The Norris family were members of the Quaker Church, also known as the Religious Society of Friends. Her extended family included members of the Logan and Norris families, who were either loyal to the British Crown; advocates for intense, but nonviolent protest of British policies; or advocates for American independence.Vorlage:Cn She was the cousin of the Quaker poet, Hannah Griffitts, (aka "Fidelia") with whom she shared a common interest in politics.Vorlage:Cn

Norris was very well educated and owned one of the largest libraries in the colonies at the time, holding approximately 1,500 books, as well as personal property and real property, including the estate of Fair Hill in the Philadelphia area.Vorlage:Cn Norris ran the estate, either by herself or with her sister Sally, for a number of years. At the time of her marriage, she also held personal property in the amount of £50,000 and £80,000.

Marriage

On July 19, 1770, Norris married John Dickinson. While they were both raised as Quakers, they married in a civil ceremony, rather than in the Quaker Meeting, because of objections they had to certain of its tenets, including prohibitions on defending oneself if attacked. This caused controversy in her extended family, due to the lack of adherence to the teaching of the Quaker faith. Although they had five children, only their daughters Sarah "Sally" Norris Dickinson and Maria Mary Dickinson survived to adulthood.

John Dickinson was one of the Founding Fathers of the United States. Some years after their wedding, although he famously declined to sign the Declaration of Independence, because of its advocacy of war, he was named as the chair of the committee that drafted the Articles of Confederation, which he drafted around a concept of Person rather than Man as was used in the Declaration of Independence. He later enlisted in the Continental Army as a private, while and Mary Norris Dickinson continued to manage their property herself. Along with James Madison, he was also a principal writer of the first draft of the Constitution of the United States, converting it from the Articles of Confederation.Vorlage:Cn Whilst Dickinson and her husband were both raised in the Quaker church, he objected to some of the church's policies, including the inability to defend oneself if attacked. The couple shared common social, political and economic ideals and often discussed these matters. This allowed her to quietly influence the political, economic and educational matters which were not openly afforded women in forums such as the Constitutional Convention. In the Quaker Church women held position equal to men in keeping with the Quaker view that "in souls there is no sex" and in the colonial era in the Delaware Valley region, heavily populated with Quakers and others of similar views, women had considerable influence, including voting rights.

Fair Hill Estate

As a result of the political controversy in her family, as well as her civil marriage ceremony, the ownership of Fair Hill at the marriage has been a confused issue in historical records, with a member of the Logan family saying in a diary written years later that the property was transferred to a male cousin at the time of the marriage while other records show that after the marriage, she and her husband used their combined wealth to modernize Fair Hill and to live there for many years at her request despite his having previously built another house in Philadelphia.Vorlage:Editorializing

The norm in Quaker families of this era was equal division of the estate, rather than preference for division of property exclusively between the sons (or only to eldest sons). In some families, the daughters would not receive real property, however, in Norris' family, only she and her sister survived to adulthood. Quaker families also sometimes used inheritance as an instrument of communal control over younger people, however, specifically in regard to the problem they saw of marrying outside the Quakers. The objection that some in her family had to the civil marriage ceremony between Norris and Dickinson, as well as her and her husband's stance for independence from Britain, may Vorlage:Editorializing have led her maternal aunt and others to seek transfer of some of her real property, including Fair Hill, to a paternal male cousin at the time of the marriage or later, although there is no record that this transfer actually happened until possibly in 1790.

Dickinson and her husband lived at Fair Hill while they were in Philadelphia. Fairhill was later was burned to the ground in the Revolutionary War Battle of Germantown by the British Army. In 1790, the land of Fair Hill was transferred to a paternal male cousin of Mary Norris Dickinson, Joseph Parker Norris.Vorlage:Cn

Death

Mary Norris Dickinson died in Wilmington, Delaware on July 23, 1803. Upon her husband's death in 1808, much of the combined library belonging to Dickinson and her husband was bequeathed to John and Mary's College, named in their honor and later renamed Dickinson College.