Woman of the Century/Mary M. Howard

MARY M. HOWARD. HOWARD, Miss Mary M., musician and musical educator, born in Batavia, N. Y. She received her musical education in New York, with S. B. Mills and William H. Sherwood for piano teachers and Frederick Archer and S. P. Warren as organ teachers. She began her career as church organist at fifteen years of age, and she has never been abroad. She is exclusively an American product. She taught three years in the New York State Institute for the Blind, in Batavia, and for two years was at the head of the musical department of Howard College. Fayette, Mo. For one year she held the position of director of the Batavia Philharmonic Club, an organization numbering eighty members. In 1887 she went to Buffalo, N. Y., and took the position of organist in the First Presbyterian Church, which she has retained ever since. She is the only woman who has ever held the place of organist in that church. In 1888 she opened in Buffalo a school of music, which has been the first institution of that kind to succeed in that city.