Mary K. Neff

Mary K Neff in Auckland, NZ in 1937. Image from TSA Archives.

Mary Katherine Neff was an American Theosophist of the Theosophical Society based in Adyar, India, known as an educator, lecturer,and historian. She was born on September 7, 1877 in Akron, Ohio. After teaching in that city for fifteen years, she traveled extensively in India, learning to speak Hindi and Urdu, followed by eight years in Australia. She died in 1948.

Career as educator

In 1911, just before leaving for India for the first time.

During much of her life, Miss Neff was involved in education as a teacher and administrator, beginning with fifteen years in the public schools of Akron, Ohio.

Dr. Besant, having at this time [1913] organised a large number of schools and colleges under the Theosophical Educational Trust, Miss Neff, through her training as a teacher, found a new avenue for her abilities, first as head of the business department of the Boys' High School at Madanapelle; she then took charge of the Vasanta Ashrama, a boarding school for girls in Benares. A year later, the Municipality of Lucknow invited her to act as Principal of the Middle School for Girls in the Kashmiri Mohalla of that city, where she remained for five years, raising the school to the status of a High School and introducing many reforms.

In another account:

In India she acted as superintendent of a Girl's School at Benares, principal of the Municipal Middle School for Indian Girls at Lucknow, and it was under her leadership that the first Business Courses were offered to the Boys' High School at Madanapalle, Madreas. In Australia she was head teacher of King Arthur's School at Sydney.

She described her time teaching in in India:

In India she once was called upon to take over the principal's post in a school for Mohammedan and Hindu girls in Lucknow.

The Mohammedan "purdah" or seclusion of women customs and the Hindu system of caste had been major obstacles to setting up community projects within the school

"But I decided I might as well start breaking some of the rules and get it over with," she said.

She recalled as one of the most amusing incidents of her busy life the "sir" that was always bestowed on her while she taught typing and shorthand in a boys' high school in India.

"Although the boys there had never straightened out genders, one of the nicest compliments I ever received was: 'Ah, sir, what a gallant woman you are,' " she concluded with a laugh.

Travels

In 1911 she received her first passport, in preparation for her first journey to India. Photographs from her collection show a journey to Nepal in October 1914. She visited Kapilavastu, the childhood home of Buddha, and the villages of Lahari Kudan and Ronagai.

Miss Neff's experiences in other continents provided useful topics for her lectures. A press release for her lecture tours provides this description of her travels:

Though born in our country, Mary K. Neff, Lecturer for The Theosophical Society in America, feels quite at home on both sides, or one might say all sides, of our earth. She has lived for fifteen years in India, for eight years as a resident of Australia, and during those twenty-three years hers has been an extraordinary career of service and adventure...

Carried from her flooded and falling house by a Mohammadan servant, Miss Neff aided government authorities in rescue work during the flood of the Gompti River in 1915. Safely established in a cell of the Prison Hospital, each day she ventured forth in a row boat, carrying a bicycle in order that she might take charge of a camp of some six thousand refugees who were marooned in a palace tomb of the Nawabs of Oudh. For a month she kept this strange assortment of human beings, goats, chickens and ducks, in a sanitary condition and saw to the supplying of food and water. She has knowledge of India life and Indian women such as is attained by few missionaries, having made herself conversant with two Indian languages, Hindu and Hindustani or Urdu. ...

As a Theosophist and a student of comparative religion, Miss Neff is perhaps the only woman to have visited the birth places of the founders of three great religions: The Christ at Bethlehem, Palestine, Shri Krishna at Brindaban, India, and the Lord Buddha in the Terai of Nepal in the Himalaya mountains.

As she and two other ladies, an Englishwoman and a Hindu girl, were making their way on elephants, from village to village in search of the modern Rumindei, near the site of the ancient garden-palace where the Lord Buddha was born, whole villages followed their caravan shouting, "Memsahab! Memsahab! - White women! White women!" - for the village folk had seen no white women previous to this visit.

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  Arriving at Lahari Kudan, October 1914.
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  On the crumbled wall at Kapilavastu, Nepal, October 1914.
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  On the crumbled wall at Kapilavastu, Nepal, October 1914.
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  Plain outside Kapilavastu, Nepal, October 1914.
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  Plain outside Kapilavastu, Nepal, October 1914.
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  MKN's tent under village tree in Ronagai, October 1914.
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  In garden at The Manor, Sydney, 1925.
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  At north end of L. W. Rogers Building, Olcott campus, 1940s.

Theosophical work

Flyer from a lecture tour. Image from TSA Archives.

Miss Neff became a member of the Theosophical Society in 19__. During the years 1908-1909, she served as Secretary of the Akron Lodge.

From 1911-1913, during her first visit to India, she resided at the Adyar headquarters and worked in the Theosophical Publishing House, the Adyar Library and for a time was private secretary to Charles W. Leadbeater. In 1925, Mr. C. Jinarājadāsa asked her to return to Adyar to take charge of the archive and once again to act as secretary to Leadbeater.

For two years she servied as Assistant General Secretary and for two years National Lecturer for the Australian Section of the Theosophical Society.

Miss Neff was a much-sought lecturer who toured the United States, Australia, and New Zealand speaking about Theosophy on behalf of the Society and giving public lectures about her travels. These are some of the stops on her tours when she was a national lecturer in Australia and in the United States:

• National Lecturer in Australia, 1935-1937:
  • Adelaide Lodge, May 26 - July 18, 1935
  • Fremantle Lodge, July 23-August 6, 1935 or 1936
  • Launceston Lodge, Tasmania, September 19-29, 1935
  • Blavatsky Lodge, Sydney, March 8-29, 1936
  • Kuring-gai Lodge, Chatswood, May 7-28, 1936
  • Melbourne, November 1-29, 1936
  • Sydney, January 10-31, 1937
• Lectures in New Zealand
  • Hamilton, 1935 or 1936
• Lectures in the United States

Writings

• The “Brothers” of Madame Blavatsky. Adyar, Madras, India: Theosophical Publishing House, 1932.
• A Guide to Adyar (1934). Reissued by Theosophical Publishing House in Adyar, 1999, as Adyar: Historical Notes and Features up to 1934. Pamphlet with several coauthors, 54 pages.
• Personal Memoirs of H. P. Blavatsky (1937, 1967).
• How Theosophy Came to Australia and New Zealand (1943).
• The Mahatma Letters: Their Chronological Order (1940 pamphlet).
• Letters of H. P. Blavatsky to A. P. Sinnett: Their Chronological Order (1940)..

Numerous articles by and about Miss Neff may be located in the Union Index to Theosophical Periodicals using this search.

Later years

Mary K. Neff

During her fifth and last trip to Australia, Miss Neff worked with the armed forces. When she returned to the United States shortly before the end of World War II, the ship was filled with war brides, children, and wounded soldiers. After about 18 years in India and 12 in Australia, she retired to Akron to study and write..

She died in 1948.

Additional resources

"Neff, Mary K." in Theosopedia.