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Note: See Adoption Agency Biography In 1920 she had a ward - Mable Patterson living with her...who was she? I believe she was living with grandmother, Mary A Harris in 1910 along with Mable Patterson age 26 - was this her unmarried mother?
REBECCA TALBOT PERKINS
Rebecca Talbot Perkins, the founder of Talbot Perkins Children's Services, was a highly successful businesswoman who found time during a career of more than 50 years to engage in many philanthropic interests.
In the late 18th century - at a time when few women were in business and fewer still ran their own enterprises - Rebecca Talbot, as yet unmarried, was operating a real estate brokerage in what was then the City of Brooklyn. In 1890, after the sudden death of her father, she took charge of the firm he had started only four years earlier and became one of the first two Brooklyn women to hold a brokerage license.
More than five decades later there still hung on her office wall a framed newspaper clipping dated March 9, 1890, that read: "Rebecca C. Talbot, a daughter of the late Joseph Talbot, was this week appointed a Commissioner of Deeds by County Clerk Kaiser. Miss Talbot is the first lady appointed by the present County Clerk and the second lady to receive the distinction in the history of Kings County."
Not long after she established herself in business, Miss Talbot became extremely active in charitable and civic work as a women of many causes. In 1893 she joined the Brooklyn Woman Suffrage Society, a quarter century before women were successful in winning voting rights through the 19th Amendment to the United States Constitution. For many years she was chairman of the Alliance of Women's Clubs of Brooklyn, and she served as president of the People's Political League of Kings County. She was vice president of the Memorial Hospital for Women and Children and a director of the Welcome Home for Girls.
In September 1921, now married to Agar Ludlow Perkins who had joined her in the real estate business, she placed an advertisement in a local paper seeking adoptive parents for an out-of-wedlock child. The many responses she received encouraged her to continue in this work.
In 1927 a committee of the Alliance of Women's Clubs of Brooklyn joined with her to form a membership corporation and named it The Rebecca Talbot Perkins Adoption Society, later to become Talbot Perkins Children's Services. The adoption service came to be the main focus of her community activities, and she served as its president from 1927 to 1949 and honorary president until her death in 1956.
The service, whose first headquarters were at 140 Remsen Street, Brooklyn Heights, is now located in Manhattan. Through the years it has broadened its activities and today offers a wide variety of social services, in keeping with the changing needs of the family.
Throughout her career, Mrs Talbot Perkins possessed enormous energy, which in later years she attributed to her early work experience.
"When I started in business," she recalled, "the hours for real estate offices were from eight o'clock in the morning until nine o'clock at night and no half-holiday on Saturday."
Though the work day and work week shrank dramatically over the decades, Mrs Talbot Perkins managed to continue devoting long hours to her extensive philanthropic work. Over the decades she fought for such causes as better schools, improvements in the courts, increased pay for civil service workers and expanded social services for women and children, but her chief interest was in the Adoption Society.
Rebecca owned a holiday Cottage at Rockaway Beach to which the family regularly visited...was that Daydream Cottage?
Visited England with husband and returned on SS President Polk 1st October 1923.
The above was produced by Weintraub & Fitzsimons Inc. the Public Relations Company working for the adoption agency in 1989.
The Blue Book - Clubs and Organisations 1955
THE REBECCA TALBOT PERKINS ADOPTION SOCIETY, INC. 140 Remsen Street * Brooklyn 2, N.Y. * Tel. Main 4-3240
OFFICERS Mrs. Rebecca C. Talbot Perkins (Honorary President) Mrs. Lawrence C. Gumbinner (President) Mrs. Herbert T. Georgi (Vice-President) Mrs. Russell Iler (Treasurer) Mrs. Dan Brock (Secretary) Miss Kathryn Leonard (Executive Director)
DIRECTORS Mrs. John C. Arnell Mrs. Dan McCullough Mrs. Gordon Bell, Jr. Mrs. A. Milton Runyon Mrs. William M. Horner Mrs. Joseph Schreiber Mrs. Carl Kroepal Mrs. Sidney A. Siegel Mrs. Nathan Krumholz Mrs. Minnie T. Swain Mrs. Ross White
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