Mary Ella (Roberts) Rinehart (1876 - 1958)

Born 12 Aug 1876 in Allegheny City, Pittsburgh, Allegheny, Pennsylvania, United States

Died 22 Sep 1958 at age 82 in New York City, New York County, New York, United States

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Biography

Mary (Roberts) Rinehart is Notable.

Mary (Roberts) Rinehart served in the United States Army in World War I
Service started:
Unit(s): Nursing Service Corps
Service ended:

Mary Roberts Rinehart was a very famous American mystery writer. She wrote novels 14 years before Agatha Christie and was often referred to as The American Agatha Christie. The novel that began her climb to fame, "The Circular Staircase," published in 1908, sold 1.25 million copies, but because I read her autobiography, "My Story", I admired her work as a nurse and war correspondent and found her travels with her husband, Dr. Stanley Marshall Rinehart,^[1] fascinating.

Mary graduated from the Pittsburgh Training School for Nurses at Pittsburgh Homeopathic Hospital in 1896. That is where she met her husband, and that event changed her life drastically. She was quoted as saying nurses training in that bygone era included experiencing "all the tragedy of the world under one roof." Mary should be applauded for going public about her breast cancer in 1947, a time when such a revelation was rare. In an article published in the Ladies Home Journal, she encouraged women to have breast exams.

I gave my copy of her 1931 "My Story" to a friend who is a nurse because Mary's description of those training days and her experiences being sent to military installations in Europe to evaluate their conditions, I believe, though I wish I could describe that better. That was during WWI, but she was also a correspondent in WWII. She wrote that she was the first woman sent to Europe as a war correspondent and was privileged to interview such world leaders as Winston Churchill and the King and Queen of Belgium. Her personal life was tremendous to read about, too, as it included fascinating travel including camping trips in the Western states. Their life later when Dr. Rinehart became involved in the early days of the Veterans Administration and they lived in Washington, D.C. takes you back in history and gives a glimpse into the lives of the Rinehart family and other famous people they knew. If I ever come across her book, Kings, Queens and Pawns in 1915, I'll be thrilled to discover more about Mary Roberts Rinehart and am thankful Wikipedia's section on her includes the titles of much if not all of her writing.

Sources

1. ↑ "Pennsylvania, County Marriages, 1885-1950," database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:VFMT-19C : 12 November 2019), Stanley M. Rinehart and Mary E. Roberts, 21 Apr 1896; citing Marriage, , Allegheny, Pennsylvania, United States, multiple County Clerks, Pennsylvania.

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Roberts_Rinehart
• https://www.britannica.com/biography/Mary-Roberts-Rinehart
• https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/875/mary-roberts-rinehart

See also:

• "United States Census, 1920," database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:M6B8-4WT : accessed 19 December 2019), Mary R Rinehart in household of Stanley M Rinehart, Haysville, Allegheny, Pennsylvania, United States; citing ED 1, sheet 5B, line 63, family 64, NARA microfilm publication T625 (Washington D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, 1992), roll 1509; FHL microfilm 1,821,509.
• Books by Rinehart
• Rinehart Fiction