Mary V. Tingley Lawrence

It is as "Ridinghood," her pen name, that Lawrence was best known. Using that pen name, she was a correspondent for The Union, writing a letter each week from San Francisco on social matters. The letters attracted significant attention, and the name "Ridinghood" became a household word among the families in the mining centers of California and Nevada. They also received favorable notice from the New-York Tribune and the Springfield Republican. Lawrence worked in many journalistic fields for The Daily Alta California , San Francisco Chronicle, San Francisco Examiner , San Francisco Evening Bulletin, and The Argonaut. She also wrote sketches for Overland Monthly , such as "A Summer With a Countess", relating to Theresa Yelverton or Lady Avonmore, "A Mountain Posy," "College Charlemagne", and others. She traveled in the western U.S. as a correspondent for different California journals. Amid all the temptations and inducements to write personals of a spicy or acrid nature, Lawrence took pleasure in thinking that she never wrote a line in her life that hurt someone.^[1]

Her name in probably best known in connection with the collection of the poems by early Californian writers known as Outcroppings. Lawrence was also the author of a novel.^[1]

She was a Charter Member and the Honorary President of Pacific Coast Women's Press Association;^[4] President Emeritus of the Ina Coolbrith Circle; and was a member of Daughters of the American Revolution.^[3]

For 30 years, Lawrence served as Customs Inspector of the Port of San Francisco,^[4] her responsibility being Inspector for Ladies on the Pacific steamships.^[8]

She married Hon. Senator James Henry Lawrence (or Laurence),^[1] who became a California State Senator.^[3] The couple had one daughter, Constance Violet (born 1876).^[8]

After an illness of several months,^[4] Mary Lawrence died in San Francisco, April 24, 1931, age 91.^[3]