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| Mrs. Mary Orvis Marbury |
Charles Frederick Orvis and Laura Ellen Walker were married on April 25, 1855. Their first child, Mary Ellen Orvis was born March 6, 1856 in Manchester, Vermont; the same year her father opened his tackle shop in a small stone building next to his brother’s hotel, the Equinox House.
Mary had 3 younger brothers; Frederick Charles born April 26,1858, who died when he was just 2 years old; Robert Judson born July 16, 1861 and Albert Charles born Aug. 7, 1863.
Their father, Charles Orvis established his company before the Civil War. After the war, as the railroad brought more tourists and anglers in to fish the Batten kill, his company prospered and orders for his rods and fishing tackle grew.
As the company grew, one of the challenges he faced was finding an adequate supply of the flies his customers ordered. Even when he tried other dealers, he found no consistency of pattern and was, he said, “continually disappointed.”
It was a problem that would ultimately be solved by his daughter’s interest in fly tying.
Mary Orvis grew up exploring the Batten kill and meeting many of the great anglers of the day. When she expressed an interest in learning to tie flies, her father employed one of the best fly tiers in the city, John Haily, to train her.
Mary became an expert at making flies and in 1876 she began supervising the Orvis fly tying staff. Her workforce, generally from 5 - 7 girls was small compared to other fly tying operations. These flies helped drive the sales of her father’s invention, the lightweight fly reel.
Mary held great influence over the family business. Her brothers became prominent Manchester citizens but it was Mary who contributed the most to her father’s business. Anglers often placed orders for flies by name but there was no way they could know that the fly they ordered would be the pattern they thought it would be, and what they received was often different from what they were expecting. Charles and his daughter recognized the need to standardize fly patterns by name and type.
Charles Orvis surveyed anglers from fly fishing areas across North America, soliciting information on the finest flies and how they were made and used. Mary undertook the task of compiling the responses and editing the book. Much of her book, Favorite Flies and Their Histories, consisted of the replies her father received from anglers.
Favorite Flies and Their Histories (1892) contained 32 color plates and 290 illustrations of regional patterns. It was an immediate best seller and became the standard reference for identifying flies, dressings and patterns. The acclaim Mary’s book and fly tying brought her surpassed that of any of her contemporaries. She was an expert fly tying artist, a successful author, and a recognized authority in her field, and much has been written about her contribution to fly fishing, but precious little about the woman herself.
The quote below is indicative of what I found describing her personality …
“Her moods were said to be unpredictable; at times she was ill mannered but one acquaintance recalled her as a delightful woman.”
I imagine being a successful woman in the 19th century, in a business dominated by men, had its challenges.
That Mary’s marriage in 1877 was brief is evidenced by the fact that no one seems to have known her husband’s name. That being said. I am not convinced that the general assumption that their brief marriage was unhappy is correct. I think it may have been brief because he died.
There is not one census, from 1860 when Mary is 4 years old, to the one before her death, when Mary is not living in her father’s household.
In the 1880 census, the first after her marriage, Mary Marbury, 24, is found in her father’s household with her 3 year old son John Morton Marbury. Her marital status is listed as single, which is doubtful. In all succeeding censuses her marital status is “widowed.”
I wondered just when Mary Marbury became a widow, but the date of her husband’s birth and death, like so much of Mary Marbury’s life, remains a mystery.
Whenever I found mention of Mary‘s husband, he was referred to as John Morton Marbury born 1876. Which is impossible since he could not possibly have been born in 1876 and fathered a child in 1877. As it turns out her husband’s name wasn’t John Morton Marbury.
Yet, I found this particular bit of misinformation going as far back as 1922.
According to the death certificate of Mary’s son, who died as a young man; his father’s name was William C. Marbury, born in New York, NY. Which unfortunately for me, didn’t make him any easier to find.
John M. Marbury, the son, was born November 20, 1877. Some records show his birthplace as Manchester, VT.; in others it is recorded as Greenwich, NY.
He attended school at Burr and Burton Seminary (VT), St. John’s Military Academy and Norwich University (NY). After 1895 he was involved in the newspaper business in Machester. The 1900 census lists his profession as journalist.
His mother, Mary remained an active participant in the family business, assuming more responsibilities as her father grew older. She turned the fly operation over to her sister in law, Mrs. Robert Orvis in 1904, the same year her son died.
John M. Marbury died at age 27 on Sept. 5, 1904. His cause of death was “uremia.” (kidney failure).
His stone is marked …
"He loved his fellow men"
"Warm, summer sun
Shine Kindly here
Warm, southern wind
Blow softly here
Green sod above
Lie light, lie light
Good night, dear heart,
Good night, good night"
Mary Ellen Orvis Marbury died November 8, 1914 at age 58. After her death she was compared with the legendary Dame Juliana Berners, another mysterious woman who was thought to have written the first book on angling in 1496.
Mary‘s father, Charles Orvis, famed American tackle maker and author of Fishing with the Fly (1883) died a few months later on March 24, 1915, at age 84.
A Piece of Fly-Fishing History: A Letter from Charles F. Orvis
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