Rooftop gardener with a long, distinguished New England heritage.
Mary Sherman Parsons (1930-2004)
Samuel Hoar of Concord, was considered one of the great 19th century lawyers of Massachusetts, a man of principle, morality, integrity, and directness. From 1835-1837, “Squire Hoar” served in the 25th U.S. Congress. More than 150 years later, his great-great granddaughter, Mary S. Parsons, showed a similar, no-nonsense approach in 1995 as she took charge of The Lotus Garden, a lush and beautiful green space 20 feet above West 97th Street on Manhattan’s Upper West Side.
Mary was known for her severity, “more like George Patton,” said Mark Greenwald, a rooftop gardener who helped persuade the property’s owner to allow Mary and group of other die-hard volunteer gardeners tend the plots. Among other things, Mary was strictly opposed to moving plants around, Mark said. Still, the garden flourished and the entire neighborhood was supportive. “One day, somebody jumped the fence and stole a tomato,” he said. “One of the guys on the corner hit him over the head with a bottle.”
Mary Sherman Parsons was born in Concord, near Boston, on March 26, 1930, to George A. Parsons and the former Elizabeth Sherman Hoar. Her father was vice president of Peterson & Neville Inc., a metal manufacturing company in Boston. She had one brother, W. Todd Parsons. The 1940 census reveals they lived with her grandmother, Sherman Mae Hoar, and three servants.
Mary’s great-grandfather, Ebenezer Rockwood Hoar was a lawyer and abolitionist. He served as U.S. attorney general in the cabinet of Ulysses S. Grant from 1869 to 1870 and as a U.S. congressman from Massachusetts from 1873 to 1875. He and his wife, Caroline Downes Brooks, had seven children, including Mary’s grandfather, Sherman, who also was a Massachusetts congressman from 1890-1892, and served as U.S. district attorney under President Grover Cleveland. Mary’s grandmother, Mary Buttrick Hoar, was president of the Concord Garden Club—proof the tomato doesn’t fall far from the vine.
Mary graduated from Vassar College in 1951 and worked as an assistant editor and correspondent for Horizon: A Magazine of the Arts, a bimonthly magazine published by American Heritage Publishing Company from 1958 to 1989. She was a member of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago.
In 2003, Mary donated four generations of manuscripts and photographs, ranging from 1774 to 1926, to the Concord Free Public Library. She died on June 2, 2004, at age 75.
Upon her death, Mary created a fund to aid individuals in the pursuit of access to government records on themselves and their families under the Freedom of Information Act and for research into methods by which government agencies collect information about individuals and publication of the results of such research.