Mary Lee Ware
Mary Lee Ware, daughter of Elizabeth Cabot Ware and Charles Eliot Ware, was born to a wealthy Bostonian family and, with her mother, was the principal sponsor of the Harvard Museum of Natural History's famous Glass Flowers. She was an avid student of botany, particularly of the work of George Lincoln Goodale; a close friend and sponsor of Leopold and Rudolf Blaschka, creators of the Glass Flowers; and a leading philanthropist and farmer of Rindge, New Hampshire, and Boston, Massachusetts.
Early life
Born into a respected family in the New Hampshire town of Rindge, specifically to naturalist and Harvard Medical School professor Dr. Charles Eliot Ware and his wife Elizabeth in 1858, Mary Lee Ware was an avid nature-lover and lived according to the precept "It is more blessed to give than to receive." Taken to Italy as a young girl, Mary was dazzled by the many sights there, which served to enhance her love of beautiful things. Beauty that ranged from the picturesque landscape to the language which she quickly excelled, to the art for which the country is famous. This is no surprise given that her father, Dr. Charles Ware, while not a botanist himself raised his daughter to love botany with a passion. A love which was fostered by the family farm in Rindge New Hampshire, a place which stood out happily among her childhood memories. Mary eventually settled with her parents in Boston, 41 Brimmer Street, around 1870; at that time, Mary was 13 years old. She was also, at some point, a student of Radcliffe College and learned under Dr. Goodale - who would become the first director of the Harvard Botanical Museum. In fact, "Mary Ware, an especially fascinating character, became in many respects a professional naturalist," a role which she was later able to utilize by being the patron sponsor of the Glass Flowers, her purpose being to advance the education of women.The Glass Flowers
The "ever-loyal and ever-generous" Mary Lee Ware and her mother were drawn into the Glass Flowers enterprise in 1886 when her former teacher, Professor George Goodale, approached them with his idea to populate the new Botanical Museum with Blaschka glass specimens. Being independently wealthy and liberal benefactors of Harvard's botany department, Mary convinced her mother to agree to underwrite the 200 mark consignment, but this was done anonymously at first. The uncannily lifelike models arrived in the spring of 1887 and enchanted the Wares. Then, that same year, Dr. Charles Ware died, thus filling the two women with the desire to provide Harvard with a donation in his memory. Hence, when the official contract was signed between the Mary and her mother, Leopold and Rudolf, and Harvard, the agreement was that the collection would be a memorial to the now-deceased Doctor: "The first Blaschka glass flowers are formally presented to the Botanical Museum as a memorial to Dr. Charles Eliot Ware, Class of 1834, by his widow Elizabeth C. Ware and daughter Mary L. Ware." Today, there is a large bronze plaque in the exhibit's center formally dedicating it to the nature-loving Doctor, father, and husband. The initial contract signed dictated that the Blaschkas need only work half-time on the models, thus allowing them to continue their work making glass marine invertebrates. However, in 1890, they and Goodale - acting on behalf of the Wares - signed an updated version that allowed Leopold and Rudolf to work on them full-time; some sources detail the agreement as a shift from a 3-year contract to a 10-year one, agreed to once Goodale convinced Mary and her mother of the wisdom in doing so. It is also noted by Prof. Goodale in the Annual reports of the President and Treasurer of Harvard College 1890-1891 that the updated contract was partly due to the Blaschkas insisting that it was impossible to craft the botanical models for half the year and the marine ones the other half; "they said that they must give up either one or the other." Furthermore, the report notes that the activity of the Blaschka "has been greatly increased by their exclusive devotion to a single a single line of work." Later, in 1889, Leopold made and gifted a bouquet of glass flowers to the Wares which, at some later date, was given to Harvard and is now part of the Glass Flowers exhibit.Specific role
Early in the making of the Glass Flowers, Mary Lee Ware engaged in correspondence with Professor Goodale regarding the making of the collection, one of which contained a remark of Leopold's regarding the false rumor that secret methods were used in the making of the Glass Flowers: "Many people think that we have some secret apparatus by which we can squeeze glass suddenly into these forms, but it is not so. We have tact. My son Rudolf has more than I have, because he is my son, and tact increases in every generation. The only way to become a glass modeler of skill, I have often said to people, is to get a good great-grandfather who loved glass."Miss Ware is also known to have visited the Blaschka home/studio three times, the first in 1899 along with Prof. Goodale, Mrs. Goodale and their son Francis. By this time Mary was the sole benefactress of the Blaschkas, as her mother, Elizabeth C. Ware, had died the previous year. During the course of these visits she became very great friends with Rudolf and his wife Frieda, and, on one occasion, Rudolf wrote to Mary L. Ware regarding his vision of how the Flowers should be displayed: "I think pure white sheets will do best as bestow good light to the whole room. The models will look best either on pure white or a deep velvet-black." A preference Harvard evidently agreed with as, to this day, the botanical model are wired down to pure white boards within the original cases.
Regardless, Mary's second visit was around 1908 and the third on October 3, 1928. This second visit, made after Leopold's death, was years later related via a letter from Miss Ware to the second director of the Botanical Museum, Professor Oakes Ames. This letter appears to confirm the previous statement of Leopold's regarding his son; Miss Ware writes, "One change in the character of his work and, consequently in the time necessary to accomplish results since I was last here, is very noteworthy. At that time...he bought most of his glass and was just beginning to make some, and his finish was in paint. Now he himself makes a large part of the glass and all the enamels, which he powders to use as paint." This missive to Professor Ames was published on January 9, 1961, by the Harvard University Herbaria - Botanical Museum Leaflets, Harvard University Vol. 19, No. 6 - under the title "How Were The Glass Flowers Made?"
However, in September 1923 Miss Ware received a letter from Rudolf Blaschka stating that he has at long last shipped four cases of specimens to the Museum. This is the first Glass Flowers shipment following World War I, but the letter also notes the complicated tax and inflation situation in Germany has left him without money - "I am at the end of my financial power" - and the Museum has not sent the 1923 payment yet. Presumably, Mary Lee Ware notified Professor Ames of this as, that November, $500 was sent to Rudolf via the now dead Prof. Goodale's son Francis. Furthermore and in addition to funding and visiting, Mary took a fairly active role in the project's progress, going so far as to personally unpack each model and making arrangements for Rudolph's fieldwork in the U.S. and Jamaica – the purpose of such trips being to gather and study various plant specimens before returning to the old style Bohemian lamp-working table at which he worked. Beyond that, she also exchanged several letters with Prof. Ames discussing the project, namely the quality and speed of production as Rudolf ages, discussions which on Ames' part vary from controlled excitement to grave concern regarding the project and Rudolf's continuing ability to produce in a satisfactory manner. In 1924 he wrote to Miss Ware to note to great success of the Glass Flowers overall: "You ought to be very happy in the realization that your great gift is one of the outstanding attractions of the country. But Tom Barbour certainly looks a bit disgusted when visitors to the Agassiz Museum asks if the giraffe is made of glass."
It is also known that, in 1898, Mary Lee Ware was made a member of the Committee of Overseers on the Botanic Garden and the Botanic Museum - an addition that was met with pleasure by its members, including Professor Goodale. Indeed, Miss Ware's "generous gifts of money and time for the advancement of the Department... already known from the previous Annual Reports.
Upon her death in 1937, Miss Ware left a will with assets worth one million dollars, $600,000 of which she bequeathed on charity and education. Of this vast sum, a full half of it was given to Harvard for completion and the upkeep of the Glass Flowers.
The Ware Farm and agricultural work
Although her mother remained in Boston, Mary Lee Ware clearly considered herself a New Hampshirite and apparently maintained the West Rindge family farm of her childhood. However, she is almost always called Miss Mary Lee Ware of Boston; very rarely is Rindge, NH mentioned. Reportedly she was a seasonal resident of both Massachusetts and New Hampshire, spending the summers at the Ware Farm in Rindge while wintering in Boston with her mother. The Ware Farm was sold to Mary's father, Dr. Ware, by a Joseph Davis and Dorestos Armory for $3000 in 1868 – the place having 450 total acres, 21.5 dedicated to pasture land with another 56.5 for cultivation. Housing from two to forty people, the place was spared from a massive tornado that, on September 13, 1928, hit West Rindge. Enduring for twenty minutes, the disaster leveled the land and resulted in a $100,000 loss for the town. Thankfully, "the beautiful Mary Lee Ware estate proper was not damaged," yet the estate workers' homes suffered via falling trees. Her estate manager, William S. Cleaves, fled his truck - to the relative safety of his home - in the nick of time, just before a falling tree crushed it. Years earlier, in 1887 and 1898 respectively, the farm saw the death of both Miss Ware's parents, Dr. Charles Eliot and Elizabeth C. Ware, making Mary the sole heiress of the estate. Later, in 1931, the Ware farm was the location of her cousin Cordelia E. Ware's wedding.Under Mary Lee Ware's strict but kind jurisdiction the farm blossomed, so to speak, with Miss Ware expanding it to a scale beyond that of what her parents enjoyed. Between 1898 and 1936, she wired the entire farm for electricity, built gardens, all-season greenhouses, equipment barns, and a dairy and ice-house, purchased the neighboring Carr Farm and acreage which extends Ware Farm to the eastern shore of Pool Pond, established a water system, and maintained a large-scale chicken operation on the acquired Carr Farm. The Farm was known to be "an outstanding showplace with Jersey cows, poultry, a piggery, sheep, and Irish Settlers, all purebred...in 1911, her three foundation cows and a bull were imported from the Isle of Jersey." Her affection for the family and its many non-family residents is illustrated by the fact that, upon her death, Mary's will designated funds to keep the farm and her "farm family" together for one full year.