Marjory Stoneman Douglas

Known as the Grande Dame of the Florida Everglades, American writer and pioneering conservationist Marjory Stoneman Douglas (1890-1998) founded Friends of the Everglades in 1969 to save the area from environmental destruction. Twenty-two years earlier, Douglas had written Everglades: River of Grass. This famed environmental tome pushed the Everglades into the national spotlight by helping readers understand that the Everglades were not a worthless swamp that could be drained in the name of progress, but really a vital wetland.

Marjory Stoneman Douglas was born April 7, 1890, in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Her mother, Florence Lillian Trefethen, was an accomplished musician with French and English roots. Her father, Frank Bryant Stoneman, hailed from a Quaker colony in Spiceland, Indiana. The first few...