Born: 20 December 1820, United States
Died: 6 March 1894
Country most active: United States
Also known as: Mary Porter Tilesto
The following is republished with permission from the Boston Women’s Heritage Trail.
When Old South, the site of mass protest meetings in Revolutionary Boston, was slated for demolition a hundred years later, a group of women bought the building (but not the land) to protect it. Philanthropist Mary Tileston Hemenway (1820-94) then contributed more than half the sum needed to preserve it, becoming an early leader in historic preservation.