Courtesy of RankenJordan Pediatric Bridge Hospital
Mary Ranken Jordan
Genealogy breeds the best mysteries. I recently corresponded with Mary Ranken Jordan’s great-niece and biographer, Susan Walker, who plans to cross the Atlantic next week from her home in Warwickshire, England, to attend a reception of the Mary Ranken Jordan Society here in St. Louis. As a child, she heard her mother reminisce about “a lovely lady from St. Louis,” Mary Ranken Jordan, who’d come to Dublin to visit her grandmother. Walker is eager to meet anyone with memories of her great-aunt. (Email her at marymemories89@gmail.com.)
Jordan, who founded what’s now the RankenJordan Pediatric Bridge Hospital, was an extraordinary woman. At 20, she left her family’s manor home in Aghadowey (a town in the part of Northern Ireland where Game of Thrones was filmed) to seek a new life in St. Louis. (Courage ran in her blood; two centuries earlier, her ancestor Margaret Ranken had been shot smuggling food to starving people during the Siege of Derry.)
Several of Mary’s uncles had already moved here, as had a second cousin, David Ranken Jr. An eccentric bachelor imbued with strict Presbyterian values of his Scottish ancestors, he was tall, lean, and as he grew older, slightly stooped; he walked briskly through the city with the aid of a blackthorn stick. Uncomfortable in society, he lived simply, renting a room in The Southern Hotel on 15th Street, and cherished no vices. Even after founding what is now Ranken Technical College, he shunned newpaper reporters, saying, “I dislike very much to see my name in the newspaper. I decline to say anything.”
As I scurried down that rabbit hole (shunning the press is the fastest way to intrigue them), I came upon a dark and puzzling scrap of information: a New York Times exclusive about a will filed in Clayton in 1913. A David P. Ranken, capitalist, had bequeathed his millions to three nieces in Montreal, binding them, “on pain of losing everything, not to give a single penny of their inheritance to their father or stepmother.” Should one of them dare, “she is to be treated as if dead and her share diverts to her descendants.” The reporter continued, “This strange enmity of their bachelor uncle, carried beyond the grave, extends also to another relative, Mary Ranken Jordan.”
Goodness. Why on earth?
After a bit more digging and a flurry of emails, we sorted it out. There were two David Rankens, of roughly the same age, and they were cousins. One, David P. Ranken, died in 1913 in St. Louis. He was one of Mary Ranken Jordan’s uncles, and it was his will that barred her (along with several other relatives) from touching a cent of his money.
The other David, David Ranken Jr., had died three years earlier, shortly after giving virtually all of his considerable fortune to Ranken Technical College, which he’d founded in 1907. He, too, was a bachelor. And the love of his life was his cousin Mary Ann Ranken—David P. Ranken’s sister.
“For a time she favored his suit,” noted the St. Louis Globe-Democrat after David Jr.’s death, “but she was won, not by him, but by his younger brother, Robert.” After Mary Ann married Robert, the two brothers did not speak for years. They were reconciled by their shared grief when Mary Ann died—but when Robert remarried, their reconciliation shattered. Apparently David Jr. just couldn’t forgive him what must have felt like a betrayal of their Mary Ann.
Courtesy of RankenJordan Pediatric Bridge Hospital
Mary Ranken Jordan
That romantic backstory might bring us closer to an answer: David P.’s three heirs, it turns out, are the daughters of Mary Ann and Robert. And the will explicitly forbids Robert and his second wife from touching the estate. Maybe, like David Jr., David P. resented his sister’s widower for remarrying. Maybe Robert’s niece, Mary Ranken Jordan, was swept up in a grudge against one or both of her second cousins.
It’s hard to imagine another reason for such specific animus. While David P. was out in Montana, exploring and prospecting in the Rockies and investing in the mining industry, and Robert was relocating in Canada, Mary Ranken Jordan and David Jr. lived quietly, as sedate and virtuous philanthropists in St. Louis. They did a great deal of good.
David Jr. was concerned that the mechanical trades were being stigmatized and “a false pride” was causing boys to avoid manual labor, so he established what’s now Ranken Technical College. Fearing idleness, he went there daily, admitting, “If I didn’t have something to do, I’d die.”
Mary Ranken Jordan married at 36 and never had children, yet she devoted much of her time and fortune to their well-being, founding what’s now the Ranken Jordan Pediatric Bridge Hospital in 1941. It was an extraordinary place, sheltering children stricken with polio, osteomyelitis, or bone tuberculosis as they recovered. Its mission has steadily expanded, and it now treats children with brain injuries, burns, paralysis, neuromuscular diseases, ventilator dependency, and a host of other complicated issues. Most of the kids come from families living below the poverty level, and they travel to Ranken Jordan from a three-state area.
Courtesy of RankenJordan Pediatric Bridge Hospital
The Ranken Home
Jordan also supported the Saint Louis Art Museum, the Second Presbyterian Church, the St. Louis Symphony Society, the Missouri Historical Society, Shaw’s Garden, the Zoological Society, St. Luke’s Hospital, Lindenwood College, the YWCA, the Missouri Botanical Garden, the Artists’ Guild, etc. etc. etc. Her husband, Clay Jordan, graduate of Phillips Academy and Yale University; worked in the family cutlery business, retired to travel, then died, at 69, of cancer. Mary continued her good works without him and even wound up sharing a Central West End apartment with his cousin, Ettie Jordan.
We may never know what embittered David P. Ranken, but it’s a small detail in Mary Ranken Jordan’s long and generous life. If you ever met her, or can shed further light on her life, please contact Susan Walker at marymemories89@gmail.com.
