Mary Ellicott Arnold

Mary Ellicott Arnold (1876-1968) was a Quaker writer and social activist, known for her work with consumer cooperatives. After an unsuccessful farming venture in her youth, Mary Ellicott Arnold and her lifelong companion, Mabel Reed, worked with the Karok Indians in California as employees of the United States Indian Bureau. After a period as chief organizer for the U.S. Employment Service in New York State, she and Mabel Reed were involved in a number of successful cooperative ventures, including cafeterias and an apartment building in New York City, miners' housing in Nova Scotia, cooperative credit unions among lobster fishermen in Maine, and the Tanguy and Cheyney Cooperative Homesteads in the Philadelphia area. She was an early Treasurer of the Cooperative League, was very active in the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, and was a member of Providence Monthly Meeting, Media, Pennsylvania.