Papers of Marion Angeline Howlett, 1880-1983

World traveler, lecturer, social worker, librarian, and journalist Marion Angeline Howlett was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on December 21, 1889, the daughter of Clarence and Melvina Weare Howlett. She had a sister Elsie and two brothers: C. Weare and Ralph. Her family traced its roots back to the Mayflower through her paternal grandparents, Enoch James and Angeline Shaw Mower Howlett. Her maternal grandparents were Theodore and Elsie Jane Perkins Weare.

Howlett attended the Cambridge public schools and took courses at Radcliffe College (1918-1919), Brown University extension program (1924), and elsewhere, including the study of Japanese, Spanish, Arabic, Hindustani, Russian, and Polish during her travels abroad. From 1920 to 1923 she traveled around the world, working as a hostess at the Los Angeles Military Academy, teaching western etiquette classes in Hawaii and the Philippines, writing as a free-lance journalist, and lecturing about her travels. Returning home, she worked for the Pung Chow Company in New York City promoting the game of mah jong (1923-1924), and for the R.H. White Company in Boston, Massachusetts, as editor of The White Star, the store's magazine, and as manager of two departments (1924-1926). Between 1928 and 1933 she continued her worldwide travels and lectures on international current events, good will among nations, etc., including radio broadcasts from WCAH in Columbus, Ohio. Her work in theater began in 1937 as director of productions for the Amateur Theatre Guild in Boston and Providence, and as publicity director for the Boothbay Playhouse in Boothbay, Maine (1940-1941). She also worked for Warren Kay Vantine Studios, organizing senior portraits at New England colleges (1941-1942). In the mid-1940s she began work as librarian and social worker at the South End Boys' Club in Boston and, later, at the Charles Hayden Memorial Clubhouse of the South Boston Boys' Club where she inaugurated a successful junior book awards program. She resigned in 1959. Howlett had an avid interest in family history and kept in regular touch with members of her far-flung family. She died in Boston in July 1983.