Frances Kellor's Grave

I finally located the grave of my hero, Frances Kellor (1873 – 1952) in Brooklyn’s Greenwood cemetery. As my biography of her, Founding Mother, details, Kellor launched women’s sports, got suffrage on national party platforms, founded the National Urban League, and much more. Visiting her grave was very personal to me because after researching someone for over 5 years, you become close.

 

Arriving at the cemetery, I secured a ride up the hill in a patrol car.  On the way to the site, I told the helpful cemetery worker that I was very curious as to which accomplishments Kellor had listed on her tombstone.  Dropped off, we hunted for her burial site.  I found it first!  Rather, I first found a monument to Theodore Dreier, the father of Kellor’s girlfriend of 47 years, I noted other Dreier family members – then, I found Kellor in the back right of their small family plot. 

An emotional realization – Frances’ relationship with Mary and the Dreier family, not political accomplishments - was how her peers had chosen to remember her.  The tombstone simply listed her name, birth and death years.  But more importantly, her inclusion in the Dreier family plot, and being buried next to her partner of 47 years, Mary Dreier, spoke volumes.  And it moved me to see that Kellor – who was raised by a long dead single mother – had been embraced by her in-laws.

I use the term “in-laws,” self-consciously.  LGBT couples could not get married in their lifetimes.  And, kindly, the cemetery's website lists Dreier as Kellor's spouse. But their burial shows some families accepted forms of same sex relations in the past.  Another political implication of the plot, comes from Father Dreier noting his and his wife’s birth in Germany on the tombstone; it also had a German saying on the back. Kellor ran the Americanization movement which assimilated immigrants from 1906 to 1921.  Thus her family’s pride as immigrants says something about the Americanization movement.

  

But the political implications were not what brought tears to my eyes: they came from being physically near Kellor and Mary.  I imagined her short body and smirking face only feet away.  We had finally really met.  My happiness for Kellor’s having such a loving family, also choked me up; she had not been alone in this world.  RIP to Frances, Mary, and the wonderful Dreier family.