Mary E. J. Colter and the Issue of Age

Today there is no right age to be a professional woman. During architect and decorator Mary E. J. Colter’s lifetime (1869 – 1958), the only right age was a young age. “Today there are few old people,” the 1905 manual Everyday Etiquette declared. “First, there is youth. That lasts almost until one is a grandparent; then one is middle-aged. No one is old,--at least few will acknowledge it. The woman of forty-five is on ‘the shady side of thirty,’ she of sixty-five, is ‘on the down-slope from fifty.’”

In 1910, Colter was well on the shady side of thirty. But when the census-taker came calling at the Seattle home where she was living, he recorded her age as 37. This age was three or four years younger than would be expected from Colter’s ages in 1880, 1890, and 1895 Census documents.

The other women in the household also aged backward, as recorded in the 1910 Census. The friend Colter was living with lost five years of lived experience while Colter’s sister Harriet lost about three. We cannot say why this is so. We do know that youth and the perceived value of a woman were linked, and birth certificates that might offer contradictory ages did not exist. Pennsylvania, the state of Colter’s birth, did not start keeping birth records until 1906.

The 1880 US Census lists Mary E. J. Colter as eleven years old. This is likely why Colter’s birth year is generally accepted as 1869. But Colter apparently preferred her age in the 1910 Census. In 1950, she was listed as four years younger than her true age on a ship’s passenger list. Today, many women on the shady side of thirty decline to share their ages because they know the ageism and sexism of Colter’s time could still harm them professionally.

Photo: Linda Reeder, 2017.

When Colter’s sister Harriet died in 1923, Colter buried her in the family plot in a St. Paul cemetery near her parents. Although her parents’ birthdates were carved into their headstones above the dates of their deaths, Colter omitted Harriet’s birthdate. Apparently she left similar instructions for her own headstone. Visitors to her grave cannot be sure how old Colter really was.

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