Mary Parke Foster
Wife of US Secretary of State (1840–1922)
Mary Parke Foster (née McFerson; August 14, 1840 – June 18, 1922) was the 3rd President General of the National Society Daughters of the American Revolution and wife of John W. Foster, U.S. Secretary of State under President Benjamin Harrison.
Personal life
Mary Parke McFerson was born in Salem, Indiana, on August 14, 1840, the daughter of Rev. Alexander McFerson and Eliza Reed. She died on June 18, 1922, and is buried at Oak Hill Cemetery in Evansville, Indiana. She graduated from Glendale Female College near Cincinnati, Ohio.
She married John Watson Foster in 1859 and they had three daughters, two of whom lived to adulthood: Edith Foster, who married Allen Macy Dulles, and Eleanor Foster, who married Robert Lansing. She traveled with her husband around the world, to countries including Mexico, Russia, France, and Spain. She and her husband were members of the Church of the Covenant, a Presbyterian Church which formerly stood on the southeast corner of Connecticut Avenue and N Street NW.
DAR membership
Mary Foster joined the DAR in 1891, a Charter Member of the Mary Washington Chapter in Washington, D.C. Before being elected DAR President General, she served as Vice President General from 1892 to 1893.
She served as DAR President General for a single one-year term and presided over the 5th Continental Congress. She declined a nomination of a second term so that her predecessor, Letitia Green Stevenson, could serve as President General again.
“Mary Parke Foster” enters the record as wife of US Secretary of State (1840–1922). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Mary, Parke and Foster can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“Mary Parke Foster” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Mary, Parke and Foster provides the most credible route into that argument.
Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 30, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q98924496. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1840, 1922, 1859 and 1891.
Overview language is designed for orientation and should not be treated as a substitute for the evidence cited beneath it. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.
- Subject orientation
- Search vocabulary
- Locating named sources
The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Mary Parke Foster”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Mary Parke Foster primary sources, Mary Parke Foster archive and Mary research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Mary Parke Foster”?
- Which cited source is closest to the event, object or claim?
- Which institution is responsible for the underlying evidence?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “Mary Parke Foster” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.