Mary Westall Collection

Mary Westall was born in Asheville in 1889 to parents James Manassas Westall and Rachel Minerva White Westall. James Manassas Westall's family was deeply committed to classical education, to the point that--even in the log cabin--the oldest children had been sent to school in the "flatlands," so that they could return to teach Latin, Greek and Shakespeare to their many younger siblings. Mary's father moved into Asheville, North Carolina shortly after the Civil War and became the city's premiere builder/contractor just in time for Asheville's late-19th/early 20th-century building boom. With cash in hand, Mary's father was able to encourage his children to pursue their intellectual interests.

Mary, the third daughter, majored in biology at Randolph Macon, where she was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. Graduating in 1910, she returned in 1914 as a lab assistant/lecturer in Biology for several years. It was in this capacity that she learned of the Cold Spring Harbor opportunity for college teachers of biology. Energized by her work at CSHL, she returned to Randolph Macon for the 1916-17 academic year; decided to pursue her PhD, and went to Columbia University for a Masters, and to Chicago, where she was among the first women to earn a PhD in Botany. She taught through the Depression at Agnes Scott College, returning to Asheville, North Carolina in the 1940s to care for her ailing mother.

Credit: [Donor] Catherine O'Shea Wetstein