Mary Margaret O’Reilly

Mary Margaret O’Reilly was an American civil servant who served as the Assistant Director of the United States Bureau of the Mint from 1924 until 1938. She was one of the U.S. government’s highest-ranking female employees of her time. She worked at the Mint for 34 years, during which she often served as acting director during the Mint Director’s absence.

About Mary Margaret O’Reilly in brief

Mary Margaret O’Reilly was an American civil servant who served as the Assistant Director of the United States Bureau of the Mint from 1924 until 1938. She was one of the U.S. government’s highest-ranking female employees of her time. She worked at the Mint for 34 years, during which she often served as acting director during the Mint Director’s absence. Mary left school after ninth grade, at or soon after age 14, as her help was needed to support the family. She likely started work in the local textile mills, and attended night school to train as a clerk and stenographer. Her parents, James A. and Joanna O’ Reilly, were immigrants from Ireland, and Mary wasOne of five children. She left school around the age of 14 to help support both her widowed mother and her siblings, and gained clerical training at night school before working as a Clerk in Worcester for eighteen years. In 1904, she gained a position at the mint Bureau, resulting in a move to Washington, D. C. She rose rapidly in the bureau’s hierarchy – an unusual feat for a woman at that time – and was frequently called upon to testify before Congress. In 1924 she was officially appointed Assistant Director. In 1933, the Mint gained its first female Director, Nellie Tayloe Ross, and despite initial mistrust between them, they came to forge a strong bond. She no longer involved herself in Mint affairs, instead devoting much of her attention to Catholic charitable work.

Although scheduled for mandatory retirement in 1935, she was considered to be so indispensable to the Bureau’s operations that U. S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt postponed this until 1938, when she was still in her 60s. She died in New York City on November 14, 1941. She is buried in Mount Vernon, Massachusetts, where she grew up in a family of Irish immigrants. Her father was a liquor wholesaler, and her mother was a schoolteacher. Her brother was a teacher at a local high school. Her sister was a homemaker and mother of two children, and she was married to a man who worked in the insurance industry. She had no children of her own, but had a daughter and a son-in-law who also worked for the Mint Bureau. She never had any children, but she had a son who was a banker. She served as examiner and computer of bullion during the 1910s. In 1915, she became the adjuster of accounts, with responsibility for reviewing all contracts. She often reciprocated W. W. Woolley’s good wishes with personal good wishes, and often held the acting position for much of the interregnum. In 1916, she served as Acting Director until Woolley resigned in 1916, though Friedrich von Engelken Engelken took office the next month. She also served as Adjuster of the Adjuster.

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