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Nell Savage Mahoney, May 1942
Leslie Nelson ("Nell") Savage was born in 1890 in Nashville, Tennessee, one of three daughters of Leslie Alice Jones and opthamologist Dr. Giles Christopher Savage. She graduated from Ward Seminary, a private girls' school in Nashville, in 1908 and began study at Vanderbilt University. After a year she transferred to Goucher College in Baltimore, Maryland, receiving a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1912. Her continued interest in architectural history and design led her to take courses at the Art League in New York, the New York School of Applied Design for Women, and Cooper Union. She began study in 1916 at Ward Belmont School, completing a Certificate in Interior Decorating. In July 1918, she received an appointment as clerk in the Surgeon General's Office in Washington, D.C. She resigned in October of the same year. In 1923 she married Charles Hallum Mahoney, the first cousin of her sister Kate's husband. They were divorced in May 1925. She received full custody of their daughter Margaret Ellerbe Mahoney who was born in October 1924.
Nell entered Vanderbilt University in 1937 and received her Master of Arts degree in history in 1939. Her thesis was titled "The Building of the Tennessee State House, 1845-1854," and was written under the direction of Professor Frank L. Owsley. She worked as an interior decorator, lecturer, and writer. Her work on architect William Strickland was published in the Tennessee Historical Quarterly and various magazines and newspapers. In 1944, she worked for the Department of Military Intelligence in the Signal Corps. Although she anticipated the publication of a monograph on Strickland through McMillan & Co., the manuscript was never completed. She died January 30, 1986.
The Leslie Nelson Savage Mahoney Papers consist of four linear feet of correspondence, writings, diaries, and photographs and date from 1890 to 1986. The bulk of the material dates from 1942 to 1970. The papers are both personal and professional in nature and provide insight into the life a southern woman and a professional single mother.
This collection is organized into four series:
The collection is open to research according to the regulations of the Sophia Smith Collection without any additional restrictions.
The Sophia Smith Collection owns copyright to unpublished works of Leslie Nelson Savage Mahoney. Copyright to materials created by others may be owned by those individuals or their heirs or assigns. It is the responsibility of the researcher to identify and satisfy the holders of all copyrights. Permission must be obtained from the Sophia Smith Collection to publish reproductions or quotations beyond "fair use."
Please use the following format when citing materials from this collection:
Leslie Nelson Savage Mahoney Papers, Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College, Northampton, Mass.
The Leslie Nelson Savage Mahoney Papers were received from the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, where they were temporarily stored, in three installments between 1986 and 1988. Some of the personal papers were also received as part of Margaret E. Mahoney's papers donated to the Sophia Smith Collection in the same period.
Processed by Susan Boone, 2001.
There are additional Mahoney papers located in Nashville Tennessee at the Tennessee State Library Archives and the Interior Design Deparment of Watkins College of Art Design
This series contains a handwritten autobiography which describes Nell Mahoney's life to 1923 and a biographical sketch written by her friend, Dorothy Saunders. There are a series of personal diaries (1933-45, 1952, 1962-69) from Nashville and Monteagle, Tennessee; travel diaries from Europe (1906, 1960s) and engagement calendars (1966, 1969, 1979). There are also miscellaneous biographical items on Giles Christopher and Alice Leslie Savage as well as Nell Savage Mahoney. These includes legal documents such as wills and Nell's divorce decree. This series also contains memorabilia consisting of school records and a scrapbook. The scrapbook which contained clippings, memorabilia, and photographs has been photocopied and dismantled.
This series is organized into two subseries: Personal and Business. The Personal subseries is divided into two sections, incoming and outgoing. The first section contains personal correspondence from friends and family. Correspondents include photographer, Frances Benjamin Johnston (1934-42), and lawyer and House of Representatives member, Lucy Sommerville Howorth (1953-72). There are also significant runs of letters from her mother (1902-54) and her friends, Virginia Polk (1951-72), operator with her husband of the largest Mississippi plantation system, and Elizabeth Rogers (1939-69), history professor at Wilson College. The second section contains letters to her daughter, Margaret E. Mahoney (1940s, 1960s), her mother, Leslie Alice Savage (1935-52), and her sister, Kate Savage Zerfoss (1939-47). Letters from her daughter are contained in the Margaret E. Mahoney Papers and are closed until 2015. The Business correspondence includes material related to her research on architect William Strickland.
This series consists of typescripts and notes related to Nell Mahoney's interior decorating work, poems, a biography of her father, and a series of newspaper articles from the Nashville Tenneseean on Nashville history art and architecture, 1949-53.
There are circa 110 photographs in this series dating from 1880 to 1986. These include photographs of Nell, her parents, and other family members. There are miscellaneous photos including Tom Thumb and his wife, singer Eleonora de Cisneros, and Frances Benjamin Johnston. [See also SERIES I. BIOGRAPHICAL MATERIAL--Scrapbook]