New Britain’s Notable Women: Martha Parsons, Businesswoman
Martha Parsons, courtesy of the Enfield Historical Society.
Born December 6, 1869 in Enfield, Connecticut, Martha A. Parsons was a trailblazer for women in business, making herself absolutely indispensable in her work.
She attended Enfield High School, then stenography training and took a job at the Morgan Envelope Co. in Springfield, Massachusetts as a stenographer, where she was paid a respectable salary of $10-12 a week. In 1893, she took another position at Landers, Frary & Clark of New Britain, despite Morgan Envelope Co. offering her higher pay ($16!) to stay. Parsons joined LF&C right around the time the trade name “Universal” was implemented for many of its products.
Parsons was so successful in her new position that by 1912 (the same year LF&C released their first Universal electric appliance, a “thermo cell” electric iron) she was made the executive secretary of the company, a high-level administrative position typically only done by men. Her duties would have included clerical and gate-keeping responsibilities, such as writing, reading, and screening correspondence, communicating with the board of directors, taking and submitting meeting minutes, coordinating the executive’s calendar, schedule, and itinerary, maintaining company records, and disseminating important information company-wide.
She signed letters and official press releases “M. A. Parsons” to disguise her gender, though it was revealed in a Hartford Courant article in 1914 regarding the newest, biggest building in New Britain– a seven-story factory to be occupied by Landers, Frary, & Clark. “Miss M. A. Parsons holds the honor of being secretary of such a large concern, a unique position for a woman to hold,” the article read.
Parsons retired home to Enfield to live with her sisters in 1919– having seen the company through World War I, and by which point Landers, Frary & Clark was regularly producing electric appliances like toasters, percolators, ovens, and more.
Martha Parsons died in 1965 at the age of 95, and was inducted into the Connecticut Women’s Hall of Fame in 2010. You can learn more about her life and visit her home, now a museum operated by the Enfield Historical Society here, and view her entry into the CTWHF here.
