Mollie Frances Holbrook

Compiler of the Holbrook-Low family typescript, typed in the 1930s: "The Holbrook Family" (her father's ancestry, with her grandmother Nancy Ellis's lines) and "The Low Family" (her mother's). Its Holbrook descent follows Davis's Ancient Landmarks of Plymouth (1899) through Peter and Eliphalet, and gives Elisha's wife as "Mary Mayhew"; the records show the line runs through Capt. John and the Scituate Johns, and that Elisha's first wife was Sarah Mayo. From Elisha downward it agrees with the records. Nearly every family in the tree was first named by her. A handwritten note in it says that in 1931 she "Stood besides his grave in Quincy MASS," the grave of the first pastor of the Braintree church (scan 126).

Her own entry in it is a blank. After a paragraph on her brother Horace she wrote: "Mollie Frances Holbrook (9) may have this space devoted to her record, if anyone is interested enough, or understanding enough, to fill it" (scan 112). The research thread "Who was Mollie Frances?" takes that up.

Names. Mollie as a child and on Whidbey (the censuses of 1871-1880, the Seattle paper in 1890, her marriage record of 1898, the Coupeville column of 1899, and "Molly Frances Holbrook" on her daughter's marriage record of 1946); "M. Frances Holbrook" at college; then "Frances Holbrook Pfeiffer" or "Frances H. Pfeiffer" in everything she signed or published. Her gravestone has "Francis."

Whidbey. One of five children, three of whom grew up (Horace, Mollie and Richard). She was born a few months after her sister Josephine died at four, and the typescript calls her "a more pugnacious child, one with a mind and a will of her own, who made things lively wherever she was ... anyway she was more or less of a disappointment" (scan 111). Her memoir "The Passing of a Princess" (Dearborn Independent, 1924) is of the family's ranch on the bay and of "Old Mary," a Skagit woman who nursed the children (The Dearborn Independent, 1924-1927: articles by Frances Holbrook Pfeiffer). In May 1890 she was a guest at a Coupeville wedding, and gave a gift with Hattie Swift (Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 1890-1900: Mollie Holbrook of Coupeville and Mrs. E. C. Pfeiffer).

Emerson College. She studied at the Emerson College of Oratory, Boston, from 1895 to 1898 (Catalogues of the Emerson College of Oratory, Boston, 1895-96 to 1897-98: Frances Holbrook), and wrote for its magazine as M. Frances Holbrook: on the founding of the Kidder Literary Society, a story ("The Press of the Storm"), a report of Elbert Hubbard's reading at the college (1897; a second, signed "M. F. H.," is probably hers), an essay on Wendell Phillips, a poem, the words of the class song of 1898, and the college's outing to Dr. Emerson's home (Emerson College Magazine, 1896-1904: writings by M. Frances Holbrook and notes on Mrs. Frances Holbrook Pfeiffer). In the typescript she calls Charles Wesley Emerson "the compiler' dear teacher" (scan 141). An Oberlin catalogue lists a "Frances Holbrook (Mrs. Charles E. Pfeiffer)" there in 1893-95; that may or may not be her (General Catalogue of Oberlin College, 1833-1908 (1909): Frances Holbrook (Mrs. Charles E. Pfeiffer)).

Marriage. She married Emil Charles Pfeiffer in Boston on 15 June 1898, at the end of her last year at Emerson; he was 33, a Harvard man who had left in his senior year, and four years before had walked out of Boston naked as "Paul Jones" for a wager he later admitted was a fake (Newspapers on Emil C. Pfeiffer as "Paul Jones," 1894-1902). Their one child, Alice Phillips, was born at Tacoma in August 1899. Emil's sworn testimonial of 1901 says she was "almost completely prostrated" from about 1898 to 1900 and recovered after taking up Helen Wilmans Post's Mental Science (Helen Wilmans, The Wonders of Thought Force (1902): sworn testimonial of E. C. Pfeiffer, 20 Sept 1901); she wrote on the New Thought in Mind in 1904 (Frances Holbrook Pfeiffer, "Some Illogical Conclusions," Mind (New York), April 1904). They moved often: Tacoma, Seattle, Boston, Los Angeles, Gardnerville, Nevada; in 1910 she and Alice were lodging at East Aurora, New York, and he was not in the household (1910 U.S. census, Aurora town (East Aurora), Erie County, New York: Frances H. and Alice P. Pfeiffer, lodgers); in 1920 she and Alice were lodgers at Los Angeles, and Emil is indexed separately as a boarder there (1920 U.S. census, Los Angeles, California: Frances H. and Alice P. Pfeiffer, lodgers). By 1930 they were together at Palms, Los Angeles, where he died in 1934, an invalid in his last years; she signed his death certificate.

Work and writing. A teacher in 1898 and 1900; in December 1899 she and Emil were to give an entertainment at Coupeville. In 1900 she read a paper to the Washington State Equal Suffrage Association and was elected its first vice-president (Emerson College Magazine, 1896-1904: writings by M. Frances Holbrook and notes on Mrs. Frances Holbrook Pfeiffer). At Gardnerville in 1908 she advertised for pupils in literature, dramatic art, oratory, elocution, physical culture and voice, and to form a Shakespeare class, and the high-school girls thanked her for coaching the graduation speaking and the play; Nevada licensed her to teach English, history and oratory in 1909 (Nevada state reports, 1907-1910: Mrs. E. C. (Frances H.) Pfeiffer, teacher of reading and oratory). In 1910 she was a correspondent for a printing house; in 1916, for The Cinema Lyceum in Los Angeles (its letterhead names her and Philip A. Thompson), she wrote to W. E. B. Du Bois and Tuskegee proposing an educational film on Booker T. Washington's life (Letters of Frances H. Pfeiffer, The Cinema Lyceum, Los Angeles, to W. E. B. Du Bois, R. R. Moton and E. J. Scott, 1916); in 1920 she was in newspaper advertising; in 1922 a "Mrs. Frances H. Pfeiffer," probably she, was secretary of a campaign committee for Friend W. Richardson for governor (Los Angeles Times and Glendale Evening News, August 1922: Mrs. Frances H. Pfeiffer). From 1924 to 1927 she wrote history for the Dearborn Independent (noble women of the seventeenth century, and a series on early California), and from 1928 for the Christian Science Monitor (The Christian Science Monitor, 1928-1932: an article and letters by Frances Holbrook Pfeiffer).

Last years. Widowed in November 1934, she was living at Coupeville by April 1935, and in 1940 owned the house (1940 U.S. census, Coupeville, Island County, Washington: Francis Pfeiffer). She spent her last two years at a nursing home in Mount Vernon and died there in 1954. Her obituary was in the Island County Times of 4 March 1954 (Island County birth and death notice indexes: Frances M. (Holbrook) Pfeiffer, her mother, brother and daughter).

Open questions

• Her birth: 4 Dec 1870 (the 1930 certificate, the 1900 census, her typescript) or about January 1871 (the 1871 census)? The 1861 of her death certificate and obituary is ten years out.
• The text of her obituary (Island County Times, 4 Mar 1954), not yet seen.
• Whether she is the "Frances Holbrook (Mrs. Charles E. Pfeiffer)" at Oberlin in 1893-95.
• Whether her printing-house work at East Aurora in 1910 was with Elbert Hubbard's Roycrofters (she had written about his reading at Emerson College as a student); the census does not name the employer.
• The Pfeiffer family papers "written in Grandpa Pfeiffer's beautiful hand-writing" that the typescript mentions (scan 95), and where the typescript's other copies are.