Mary (Mai) Huttleston Rogers Coe

Early life[edit]

Mary Huttleston Rogers, known as "Mai", was born in Fairhaven, Massachusetts, on September 26, 1875. She was the youngest of four daughters of Henry Huttleston Rogers (1840–1909) and his first wife, Abbie Gifford (1841–1894). Her father was an associate of John D. Rockefeller and one of the wealthiest men in the United States through Standard Oil. By 1874, the Rogers family was living in New York City and maintaining a summer home in Fairhaven. Henry and Abbie Rogers already had three daughters when Mai was born, and she was their last daughter. Mai (as she was always called) was the "baby" of the family until the arrival of Henry Huttleston Rogers Jr., who was born in 1879.


Mai was educated at private seminary schools, spoke fluent French, played the piano, and was interested in art and decoration. She had three older sisters and one brother who survived infancy. Mai's sisters were Anne Engle Rogers, who married publisher William Evarts Benjamin, and Cara Leland Rogers, who married Urban Hanlon Broughton (she later became the first Lady Fairhaven in England after her husband was posthumously elevated to the peerage). In 1890, Mai's older sister Millicent (born 1873) died at age 17, and the family donated the Millicent Library which was dedicated to her memory.^[1] In 1894, a new Town Hall in Fairhaven was dedicated to Mai's maternal grandmother only a few months before Mai's mother herself died suddenly on May 21, 1894, following an operation in New York City.


As children, Mai and her brother and sisters spent much time at coastal Fairhaven, where some of their grandparents were still alive. They heard tales of the days of the whaling ships. Her maternal grandfather, Peleg Gifford, was particularly well known in the community for his tales of days as a ship's captain. Over the years, the Rogers family donated many public facilities to the community, including schools and a Unitarian church.


Her brother, Henry Huttleston Rogers Jr., was better known as Harry. As adults, Harry and his wife were favorite traveling companions of Mai's father and family friends (including humorist Mark Twain and educator Dr. Booker T. Washington) aboard the family's luxury yacht, Kanawha. Harry later changed the spelling of his middle name to an earlier version, Huddleston.