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Margaret Doane Gardiner Fayerweather was a poet and author. She was born in Albany, New York on November 5, 1883. She died in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, November, 1958. Her father was the Western surveyor and geologist, James Terry Gardiner. Her mother was Eliza Greene Doane, the daughter of William Croswell Doane, the first Episcopal Bishop of Albany. She was raised in wealth and social position, growing up in Albany and New York City, but summering in the family mansion, Ye Haven, in Northeast Harbor, Maine. Upon the death of her grandmother, she managed the home and affairs of her grandfather, the Bishop, in Albany until his death in 1913.

She published her first play in 1907, a comedy about a psychiatric home. It is called "Universal Neurasthenia, The House of Rest".

She was traveling in Europe when World War I broke out, and volunteered to be a nurse's aide near the front. She was stationed at a field hospital at Fort Mahon, France. There she met her future husband, who had volunteered as an ambulance driver. She and Charles Swinburne Fayerweather were married in Belfast, Northern Ireland on June 14, 1915.

They chose to settle in New Lebanon, New York, 30 miles east of Albany. There they purchased and operated a dairy farm, living in a house built by Revolutionary War Colonel Jonathan Murdock in 1800. She was outspoken in public and in writing on social issues from an early age, initially representing the very conservative views of her father and grandfather the Bishop. She became a well known spokeswoman against women's suffrage. She took the side opposed to women's suffrage in a 1910 column in a Pittsburgh newspaper debate, calling the idea of women voting "undemocratic and unprogressive". This was not a one off effort, as a letter criticizing her position in the New York Times in 1912 makes clear. . She testified before the New York Legislature in opposition to women's suffrage. In one case in 1921, in a letter to the New York Times she opposed proposed Government involvement in welfare, suggesting that was the "Russian" approach. . She took the side opposed to women's suffrage in a 1910 column in a Pittsburgh newspaper debate, calling the idea of women voting "undemocratic and unprogressive". Her views became far more liberal as she became active in politics and a strong supporter of the Roosevelts.

Her husband was elected to the legislature for one term, and then served in the administration of Gov. Roosevelt. They had four children: Elizabeth Lavinia (1916 – 1928), Margaret ( 1918 – 2002), Anne (1920 – 1976), and John ( 1922 – 2005).

While raising her family, she was active in her community, writing and in Democratic politics. She assembled and wrote the history of New Lebanon in "One Hundred Years of New Lebanon Valley Cookery." Individual poems of hers, such as "The Black Fleet of Gibralter" were published. In 1929, she published a book of poetry called "Gathering". Her elder sister was teaching English to Japanese girls in the 1930s and noted the absence of good books about and for teenage girls in English. So Margaret drew on her deep friendship with Eleanor Roosevelt and the experience of Franklin Roosevelt's campaigns for governor and president to write three books about the teenage years and young adulthood of a girl named Anne. These were "Anne Alive" (1933), "Anne at Large" (1934) and "Anne at Work" (1935). Each had an introduction by Eleanor Roosevelt,and the series received good reviews.

For almost 3 decades she maintained a close friendship with the Roosevelts, visiting the White House frequently when Franklin Roosevelt was president, and corresponding and visiting with Eleanor Roosevelt thereafter. At Margaret's request he dedicated the New Lebanon Central School building in 1930, and Eleanor turned in 1948 to address the graduating class of 20 students. . "The former First Lady frequently visited Margaret and Charles Fayerweather and other relatives and friends in the area. One of her trips to New Lebanon was discussed in her July 21, 1937 column. "“My friend, Mrs. Charles Fayerweather, and a group of her friends have been very active in starting craft work in that vicinity and this was to be their second exhibition. I arrived to find a great many cars parked outside the school, and as they were selling as well as exhibiting, I decided this was a fortunate day for them!” she wrote in her column."