Suffolk County Historical Society: Women's History Month -- Syrena & Mary Stackpole of Riverhead

March 19, 2026

Photo of the Week

FROM THE SCHS LIBRARY & ARCHIVE

“How shall we know it is us without our past?”
– John Steinbeck

Syrena H. Stackpole of Riverhead, left, with her mother Mary Stackpole, in an undated photograph. (Image from the Collection of the Suffolk County Historical Society Library & Archive. Copyright © Suffolk County Historical Society. All rights reserved.)

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Four years before woman’s suffrage was granted in New York state in 1917, Mary Stackpole ran a good campaign to be the Republican nominee for Tax Collector. At “the largest Republican Town Convention ever held in Riverhead,” four people sought the nomination–three men and one woman. Mary Stackpole’s candidacy was part of the militant suffrage strategy to vote illegally, get arrested if necessary, and go to jail in order to publicize the injustice of denying women the ballot. Her husband, George Stackpole, a Riverhead attorney and founding incorporator of the Suffolk County Bar Association, was a staunch supporter of woman’s suffrage. Their daughter, Syrena H. Stackpole, at age 14, was the 1903 Riverhead High School valedictorian.

Earning her bachelor’s degree at Wellesley College, Syrena Stackpole (1888-1983) held various jobs after college–she “taught school, raised chickens and worked as a stenographer, librarian, and secretary”–before returning to school to earn her law degree at New York University School of Law. During her career in the law, Ms. Stackpole achieved numerous distinctions, including being one of the first women members of the Suffolk County Bar Association (1919), the first woman in Suffolk County to establish her own legal practice (Riverhead, 1929), and the first woman elected Justice of the Peace in Riverhead, Suffolk County (1931). Ms. Stackpole’s historic election to the court took place a mere eleven years after American women gained the right to vote in 1920.

Regarding that historic election as Justice of the Peace in Riverhead in 1931, which at the time meant Ms. Stackpole was also a member of the Riverhead Town Board, the Democratic State Committee, in a personal correspondence addressed to her, wrote: “The first time that a woman breaks into public office is a landmark in the progress of women, and you have blazed a trail for others to follow.” In recognition of Stackpole’s 1931 victory, fellow Democrat president-elect Franklin Delano Roosevelt, one year later, invited Syrena to the White House on the occasion of his inaugural parade.

Wellesley College gives an annual award in Stackpole’s name “in recognition of an alumna’s lifetime of dedicated service and exceptional commitment.”

The award was established in 1982 to honor Syrena Stackpole, Class of 1909, an attorney who offered to rewrite the wills of alumnae wishing to leave money to the College, free of charge. Besides offering gratis legal services to such alums, Syrena’s dedication to Wellesley was evident in her attendance at sixty-three class reunions.

The remarkable Syrena Stackpole, who was 42 years old at the time of her historic election, continued to practice law in Riverhead until her early 90s.

by Wendy Polhemus-Annibell, Head Librarian