This is a Message Board Post that is gatewayed to this mailing list. Classification: Biography Message Board URL: http://boards.ancestry.com/mbexec/msg/rw/yNi.2ACEB/5411 Message Board Post: From Ancestry.com's "Biographies of Notable Americans-1904": HENDERSON, Mary Foote, reformer, was born in New York city, July 21, 1846; daughter of Judge Elisha and Eunice (Newton) Foote. Her father (born 1809, died 1883) was judge of the court of common pleas of Seneca county, N.Y., and U.S. commissioner of patents. She removed with her parents to Washington, D.C., in 1864, where in 1868 she was married to John Brooks Henderson, U.S. senator from Missouri, and resided in St. Louis in her early married life. She was elected president of the Missouri State Suffrage association in 1876; organized the St. Louis, School of Design in that year, and founded "The Woman's Exchange" in that city in 1879. She studied art in Washington university, St. Louis and removed to Washington, D.C., in 1889. She advocated a new executive mansion to take the place of the White House at Washington, and with Mr. Paul J. Pelz, the architect of the new Library of Congress, she formulated plans for a magnificent residence. She is the author of Practical Cooking! and Dinner Giving (1876), and Diet of the Sick (1885), and contributions to periodicals Deloris Williams