Marion Margery Scranton

Marion Margery Warren Scranton (April 2, 1884 – June 23, 1960) was a 20th-century women’s suffrage activist and leading member of the Republican Party in the United States. Known as “the Duchess and the Grand Old Dame of the Grand Old Party,” she was described in Life magazine as “the woman Pennsylvania politicians still remember as ‘Margery,’ and ... the only woman who (in Tom Dewey’s much-quoted phrase) could wear two orchids through a coal mine and get away with it.”

The first female vice-chair of the Lackawanna County Republican Committee, Margery Scranton was also a member of the Pennsylvania Republican State Committee from 1922 to 1934, and served as vice-chair of the Pennsylvania Republican Party from 1926 to 1928. A Pennsylvania delegate to the Republican National Convention in 1928, 1932, 1936, 1940, 1944, and 1948, she was also a Pennsylvania representative to the Republican National Committee from 1928 to 1951—during which time she served as that national committee’s vice-chair from 1936 to 1938.

In 1954, she and her husband, Worthington Scranton, contributed one million dollars to establish the Scranton Foundation (now the Scranton Area Community Foundation), which was launched to support charitable and educational organizations in the city of Scranton.