Mary Hicks Brown
Posted on January 20, 2025 by Jenny ONeill
WOMEN OF WESTPORT POINT
Mary Elizabeth Hicks Brown (1894 – 1990)
Artist and historian
1603 Main Road, 2001 Main Road, Westport Point
Mary Hicks Brown could trace her Westport familial roots back to the 1700s. Born in 1894, she was the child of William B. Hicks and Caroline Davis Hicks. Mary attended Moses Brown School in Providence and the School of Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University. Following her marriage to Dr. Percy Brown she moved to Barre, Massachusetts but returned to Westport in the 1970s as a widow, residing at her family homestead, 1603 Main Road (Captain Barney Hicks property). An interest in genealogy grew out of an appreciation of her own roots. Like many of our female caretakers of history, she had an interest in antiques and traditional handicrafts such as needlework and hooked rugs. Her primary contribution to our understanding of local history was as an artist and photographer, leaving us with a visual documentary of her hometown. Mary joined the Westport Art Group in 1957 even while she was living in Worcester and remained active throughout her life.
Mary Hicks Brown was an accomplished and sensitive artist, whose deep affinity for Westport’s natural environment and historical scenery is evident in the Impressionist oil paintings of fields, dunes, river and landscapes. Her paintings depict a simple cottage with well sweep, an ice house, hay ricks, farmhouses, summer and winter seasons. Some scenes are familiar to us today, others have captured sights that have long since disappeared from our landscape.
She was also a keen photographer, whose snapshots document many visits to historic sites, and especially providing a visual record of Westport’s oldest house, the Waite-Kirby-Potter House before it suffered irreparable damage by hurricanes.
The Westport Historical Society is fortunate to have acquired many of her paintings and an extensive archive of Hicks family papers, including many of Mary’s photo albums and scrapbooks. Sadly, she did not leave a written record of her local history knowledge, but her passion for the special beauty of Westport provides an equally valuable visual document of her mid-20th-century hometown.