Mary Watson Webster

Grass-roots philanthropic groups, such as the National Sewing Council under the direction of Mary Hill Watson Webster, enabled Blacks holding nonprofessional jobs to contribute to the welfare of the community. Despite the lack of a formal education, Webster helped establish vocational training programs, set up a Home for the Colored Aged and provided clothes, food and fuel in the District and Africa.

On April 20, 1900, under the leadership of Mrs. Mary Watson Webster, a small group of women founded the National Sewing Council of the United States of America, Inc. Born out of frustration of rejection by the Needle Work Guild of America, and the needs of neighborhood families, this unique organization, which also invited men and children into its membership, is the earliest recorded benevolent society founded by Black Anacostia women.

The idea for an organization that would employ the talents of women occurred to Mrs. Webster after she read an account of the activities of the Needle Work Guild published in Harper's Bazaar. Inquiring about the requirements for establishing "a Branch among colored women," Mrs. Webster was visited by the national president, who expressed "pleasure" at her efforts to help "her people," but advised her that black women could not organize an independent branch, "but might have a colored section under a white Branch." Offended at the subordinate position offered, Mary Webster called a meeting with Barry's Farm/Hillsdale women to discuss the matter, and it was then decided to form an organization of their own. With membership open to those who pledged to contribute "two new plain garments each year of a donation of money," both men and women joined the society. Monthly dues of a spool of thread, a paper of pins, a package of needles, or other such useful items were used to aid and support the work of the sewing council.

Serving the community continuously for over seventy years, generations of Hillsdale families, through the Sewing Council, provided needed services to countless numbers in Anacostia and across the city.

In the tradition of the Black extended family, Mary Watson Webster and her husband, Daniel Webster with no children of their own, helped to raise orphaned children, one of whom became the third president of Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, Dr. Frederick Douglass Patterson, who was orphaned by the age of 2 when both of his parents, Mamie Lucille and William Ross Patterson died from tuberculosis.

Mary Watson Webster died November 15, 1925. In her Will she left a provision for the establishment of a home for aged colored women.

Sources: The Anacostia Story, 1608-1930 by Hutchinson, Louise Daniel; Anacostia Neighborhood Museum (1977); Washington Post