Mary Mathews Dick: Changing Healthcare in Lake Forest

Changing The World Making It Home
Mary Mathews Dick: Changing Healthcare in Lake Forest

Mary Henrietta Mathews Dick (1866-1944).

Mary Mathews Dick with her son Albert Blake Dick Jr. in 1894.

Mary Mathews Dick with her son Albert Blake Dick Jr. in 1894.

With her granddaughter and namesake in 1941.

With her granddaughter and namesake in 1941.

Lake Forest Hospital, 1943.

Lake Forest Hospital, 1943.

Mary Henrietta Mathews was born in Schenectady, New York, and grew up and attended school in Galesburg, Illinois. She and A. B. Dick were wed in 1892; he had previously been married to her sister Alice, who died in 1885. She raised her stepdaughter Mabel and had four sons: A. B. Jr., Charles Mathews, Edison and Sheldon.
Mary Mathews Dick and her husband Albert Blake Dick (inventor of the mimeograph and proprietor of A. B. Dick Company) built their home, Westmoreland, on Deerpath west of Lake Forest in 1902. The family were active volunteers and philanthropists, particularly in support of hospitals: Mary Dick with the Presbyterian Hospital in Chicago, and her son A. B. Dick Jr. with the Alice Home Hospital in Lake Forest.
By the late 1930s, the Alice Home Hospital desperately needed more space. After the death of her husband, Mary Dick had far more space than she required on the Westmoreland farm, so in 1939 she worked with her son to donate 23 acres for Lake Forest Hospital. She deeded more acreage to the hospital in her will in 1944, giving it a large footprint in what has become the center of town.
With the new hospital opening in 1942, residents of Lake Forest now ventured west of the Skokie Highway for important services. This key development would never have happened without the generosity of Mary Mathews Dick.