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Marion Lena Starkey
Marion Lena Starkey (Apr. 13, 1901 - Dec. 18, 1991) was an American author of a number of history books. A New Englander born and bred, one of her ancestors, Peregrine White, was born on the Mayflo...view moreMarion Lena Starkey (Apr. 13, 1901 - Dec. 18, 1991) was an American author of a number of history books. A New Englander born and bred, one of her ancestors, Peregrine White, was born on the Mayflower off the coast of Cape Cod. She herself was born in Worcester and lived in Saugus, Massachusetts. Her education, too, is a New England one, for she attended Boston University (where she received her B.S. in 1922 and her M.A. in 1935), and the Harvard University Graduate School of Education. She has been a New Englander in her job, too. From 1923-1927 she was an editor of the Saugus Herald, and nearly all of the Boston papers carried her freelance writing.
To provide some variety, Miss Starkey also spent “six unforgettable months in R. H. Macy’s during a lean year of freelancing in New York” and two years (1943-1945) in the Women’s Army Corps (WAC). While in the Army, she added Casablanca, Algiers, Italy, Paris and Nice to such places as Russia, Czechoslovakia and Mexico, which she had visited in peacetime. She had also been a teacher at Woodhull (N.Y.) High School, Hampton Institute, and at the Fort Trumbull Branch of the University of Connecticut, where was Assistant Professor of English.
In 1949, The Devil in Massachusetts, a modern inquiry into the Salem witch trials, was published. In 1953 Miss Starkey received a Guggenheim Fellowship to do research on that period of Massachusetts history about which she writes in A Little Rebellion, which was first published in 1955. As for the intervals between writing and teaching, Miss Starkey’s favorite recreations were “swimming, bridge, music (the listener’s angle), and exploring the Saugus marsh.”
She passed away in 1991, aged 90.view less