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School of Theology Library Digital Exhibitions

Mary E. Lunn

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In memory of Deaconess Mary Lunn, first superintendent of the New England Deaconess Training School. 

Mary E. Lunn, a deaconess, was the first superintendent of the New England Deaconess Home and Training School, which opened on 20 November 1889 with the goal of providing Boston poor with "refuge, care, and shelter." She secured the properties near Shawmut and Massachusetts Avenue to provide a space for the training school, and as demand for services outstripped supply, Lunn led the push for a hospital that would have hospital-trained nurses instruct students, which became the New England Deaconess Hospital, and what would become the Deaconess Hospital. In 1918 the school became part of Boston University, renamed the School of Religious Education and Social Service, the predecessor to the modern Boston University School of Social Work.

Mary was born in Racine, Wisconsin in 1854 to two local preachers in the Methodist Episcopal Church. During her formative years, she was a Sunday School teacher. She also immersed herself in all aspects of work within the Christian church. She began schooling for deaconess work while in Wisconsin around 1888. She left behind the formal, deaconess schooling less than one year of beginning to do the work in Boston. Mary would stay in this post, dedicated to the cause of educating deaconesses and comforting the sick in Boston’s South End for twelve years. She would go on to work for two years in New York and then California, where she was superintendent of Los Angeles Deaconess Home.