Mary Barr Munroe

Mary Barr Munroe (January 5, 1852 – September 8, 1922) was a Scottish-born American clubwoman and conservationist, based in Miami, Florida. Munroe founded the Coconut Grove Audubon Society and library, and worked for the establishment of a state park that became part of the Everglades National Park.

Mary Barr Munroe
Born	January 5, 1852 Glasgow, Scotland
Died	September 8, 1922(1922-09-08) (aged 70) Cocoanut Grove, Florida, USA

Early life

Mary Barr was born in Glasgow, the daughter of Robert Barr and Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr.^[1] Her mother was a prolific novelist and teacher, born in Lancashire; her father was a wool merchant. She moved to the United States as a baby, and spent her girlhood in Chicago, in Texas, (where her father and brothers died from yellow fever), and in New York.^[2]

Career

Munroe moved to Florida with her husband in 1886, becoming one of the "pioneers" of the Coconut Grove neighborhood of Miami.^[3][4] She was the first elected president of the Woman's Club of Coconut Grove, started the Dade County Federation of Women's Clubs, was active in the Florida Federation of Women's Clubs.^[2][5][6][7] She founded the Coconut Grove Audubon Society and was its first president in 1915.^[8] She opposed the fashion of using egret feathers in women's hats, and was known to forcibly remove them from hats of other women in her company.^[2][3] She started a boys' club, Bird Defenders, to encourage children to protect Florida birds.^[5] She began the book collection that became the Coconut Grove Library in 1895.^[9][10][11] With Edith Gifford and May Mann Jennings, she proposed the establishment of Royal Palms State Park,^[12] which was dedicated in 1916 and became part of the Everglades National Park in 1947.^[13]

Munroe wrote about Florida for several national publications, and was the author of Florida Birds are Worth Their Weight in Gold, a pamphlet of the Florida Audubon Society.^[5] She corresponded with John Muir.^[14][15] She started an interracial sewing club,^[16] and attended services at a nearby black church.^[17]

Personal life

Mary Barr married American writer Kirk Munroe (1850–1930) in 1883.^[18] She died in 1922, aged 70 years, at "Scrububs",^[3] her home in Coconut Grove, Florida.^[19] Her grave is in Miami's Caballero Rivero Woodlawn Park cemetery.^[20] Her diaries are in the Kirk Munroe Papers at the Library of Congress.^[21] The Mary Barr Munroe Society is a women's organization that raises funds for programs benefiting women and girls in Coconut Grove.^[10] Munroe's sponge cake recipe was so prized that, a century later, it is still promoted by the Munroe Society at baking events.^[22]