Mary Monnett Bain

Mary Monnett Bain (Mary Monnett; September 21, 1833 in Ohio – July 30, 1885 in Osawatomie, Miami County, Kansas), following her mother's death, came into a very large sum of money. She is known for the construction of Monnett Hall in 1856, a cutting edge, Midwestern 19th century female college, built at a time when many Ohioans still lived in log cabins and most colleges did not accept women or did not provide boarding for them if they wanted to study away from home. The college (and Mary's building - a grand Second Empire styled Victorian building) was absorbed into Ohio Wesleyan University (OWU) after a few decades, but addition upon addition made the building grow to mammoth size.Monnett Hall provided the female dormitory space for all of OWUs women students for decades, until it was abandoned in the 1960s and torn down in the 1970s. Mary Monnett's donation of initial funding for the building provided generations of women with a kind of freedom she herself never enjoyed.

Monnett inherited a heart ailment which had made her family over-protect and shelter her. She was also the youngest daughter. As a result, she was not a good candidate for the kind of independence thrust upon her by her father's wealth after the death of her mother, just two years after the deaths of her other family members due to typhoid fever.

Mary and a young man named Charles Caldwell McCabe , a male seminarian attending Ohio Wesleyan University (also in Delaware, Ohio), had been courting since before the death of Mary's mother. He along with her mother's minister linked Mary to the life she had lived before the deaths of her father, two brothers, and sister, from typhoid fever, and then later, her mother. Mary's mother had loved Charlie and spoken of him on her deathbed.

Upon the death of her mother, since Mary could not live alone (19th century proper single females did not do this), she was taken into the home of her mother's minister, Bishop Leonard B. Gurley and his wife. Gurley was deeply involved with the Ohio Wesleyan Female College in Delaware, Ohio and the Methodist Church network in Ohio. Mary had already begun attending classes at the female school where her elder sister had attended. She continued her studies, and continued her romance with Charlie McCabe.

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