History Lecture
there’s something about mary GREELEY with John Magoun
March 23rd, 3-4 pm
March 23rd, 2025, 3:00 pm
Join us for a lecture about Horace Greeley’s wife, Mary – who spent far more time living in the Horace Greeley House in Chappaqua than Horace Greeley ever did. Usually disrespected by Horace’s biographers as a neurotic shrew, today Mary is reconsidered as a woman in her own right in John Magoun’s presentation, “There’s Something About Mary Greeley”.
Who was Mary Greeley?
Mary Cheney Greeley was not a gaunt ghost in a faked-up campaign portrait, nor was she some screeching lunatic doomed to cower in a shadowy attic of Horace Greeley’s legacy. She was more complex than that, as most women are more complex than history likes them to be.
She was neurotic, but she had a steady nerve. She was angry, but she felt pity. She was baffled by housework, but she liked neatness. She wanted children, but she needed to control their love. She preferred solitude, but she cherished her friends. She wanted to be active, but she always felt poorly. And although she had physical courage, she was afraid – afraid of her life, afraid of the trap she had set for herself and that her loving husband had unwittingly sprung.
Finally, there is great value just in thinking about Mary for herself, as a person who lived a life of her own, rather than as the unwifely wife of a famous man. Yes, her marriage and motherhood was her primary achievement. But if women’s history teaches us anything, it is that perspective is everything. Male is not the default sex – or at least it shouldn’t be. Mary knew this. She was one of America’s original feminists – a close friend and ally of Susan B. Antony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton.
John Magoun is a high school history teacher, with degrees from Harvard, NYU, and Columbia, who lived in Chappaqua for many years, and volunteered for the New Castle Historical Society starting in 2011. He was a Trustee for the Society until 2019. He has also been active in the New Castle Historical Preservation Commission, researching the families and homes that have made Chappaqua a special place.
