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 Mary D. Grant (1867-1941)
A Jewish immigrant's legacy to all

  By FELICE J. FREYER
Journal-Bulletin Medical Writer

Outside the hat shop that Mary D. Grant opened in 1897 on Providence's Prairie Avenue, there were two rows of chairs.

Every morning people would occupy those chairs, awaiting Grant's arrival. But it wasn't hats they wanted. One by one, they came into her shop to share confidences about husbands fleeing and babies arriving and such. Grant gave her advice freely.

It was among many social services, large and small, that this compassionate and resourceful woman bestowed on the Jewish immigrant community. Not the least of her contributions was leading the group of women who founded Miriam Hospital.

Grant was born in Russia in 1867. Her father emigrated to the United States when she was in her teens, leaving five children and a pregnant wife behind. Grant's mother soon died - in childbirth, according to Grant's son; of a broken heart, according to her daughter.

It fell to a teenaged Mary to bring her six siblings to New York and reunite the family. They traveled from port to port, and when they ran out of money, Mary would rent a room and make dresses until she had enough to move.

Finally the children rejoined their father in New York. Mary was beautiful and had many suitors, according to an account by her son. But she required that any man who would marry her also love and care for her five younger siblings. Only Louis Granowsky, a young jeweler from Providence, loved her that much.

They married in 1887 and settled on Willard Avenue in South Providence. (The couple changed their name to Grant in 1903.) Mary and Louis had two children, Fannie and Max.

In addition to running her hat shop, Mary Grant helped the poor Jewish patients admitted to local hospitals. She acted as an interpreter for Yiddish- speaking patients, and started a women's charitable group called the Miriam Lodge that tended to their needs - providing kosher food cooked in huge pots in the back of Grant's hat shop, paying for their beds, taking them to and from the hospital, arranging for their convalescent care and buying such equipment as eyeglasses and wheelchairs.

Most of the Jewish immigrants in Providence came from Russia, where being a physician was one of the few professional jobs open to Jews. But in Providence, Jewish doctors could not admit their patients to local hospitals.

So Grant's group resolved to open a hospital where doctors of any religion could practice. Renamed the Miriam Hospital Association, they put collection boxes in the houses of Jewish residents, and held balls and parties, until in 1921 they had $1,000 for a down payment on a former maternity hospital on Parade Street, in what is now called Providence's Armory district. It took another four years - and help from the men of the community - to raise $75,000 needed to open the Miriam Hospital in 1925. Mary Grant's son, Max, became its first president. (In 1952, the hospital moved to its present location on Summit Avenue, on Providence's East Side.)

Mary Grant continued her charitable work, including helping the Jewish Home for the Aged and Jewish Children's Home. She died in 1941 at the age of 74.

Sources: " 'An ornament and honor to her sex': New England Women from Valley Forge to Fenway Park," a history curriculum researched and written by Jane Lancaster; and A History of Miriam Hospital, hospital publication.

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