Wilcox County author, Mary Fenollosa, passed away 70 years ago

Mary McNeill Fenollosa

Today – Jan. 11 – marks 70 years since the death of one of the most famous writers to ever call Wilcox County home – Mary McNeill Fenollosa.

Fenollosa passed away at the age of 88 on Jan. 11, 1954 at Montrose, and she was buried in Mobile’s Magnolia Cemetery. She was buried near the graves of her parents, and her headstone bears the simple inscription of “Author, Poet, Beloved Mother.”

Fenollosa was born Mary Elizabeth McNeill in March 1865 to Confederate officer William Stoddard McNeill and Laura Sibley McNeill. Sources say that Mary was born on a Wilcox County plantation that belonged to her grandparents, Origen and Elizabeth Sibley, after her mother took refuge in Wilcox County when Yankee soldiers burned their family home in Baldwin County during the War Between the States.

After the war, Fenollosa went on to write a number of books and more than a few of them were set in her home state of Alabama and published under the penname Sidney McCall. Some of her most famous books include “Truth Dexter” (1901), “The Breath of the Gods” (1905), “The Dragon Painter” (1906), “Red Horse Hill” (1909), “The Strange Woman” (1914), “Ariadne of Allan Water” (1914), “The Stirrup Latch” (1915), “Sunshine Beggars” (1918) and “Christopher Laird” (1919). “Red Horse Hill,” “The Breath of the Gods” and “The Dragon Painter” – were also made into movies.

Despite her successful career as a writer and her ties to Wilcox County, Fenollosa received little attention from the Camden newspaper. In a search through back issues of The Progressive Era, the only clear reference to her that I could find appeared in the July 20, 1905 edition of the newspaper. That edition reprinted a short item from the “New Orleans Sunday States,” which read as follows:

“The Breath of the Gods” is the greatest book edited this year. It is signed Sidney McCall, but it is well know that the authoress is Mrs. Fenollosa, formerly Miss Mary McNeill of Mobile, a well known Southern writer. Her first book was called “Truth Dexter,” a book of Southern life. It recorded a brilliant success. “The Breath of the Gods” is the breath of genius intoned in a word picture of Oriental coloring, thought and patriotism.

Fenollosa’s third husband was Prof. Ernest F. Fenollosa, who was a recognized authority on Oriental art and also a noted author. Mary’s books and poems often featured Oriental themes and were also heavily influenced by her wide travels in Europe and Japan. She and her husband were such fixtures in Japan that when he died in 1905, he was “signally honored” by the Japanese government, sources say.

In the end, I’d like to hear from anyone in the reading audience with more information about Fenollosa’s family ties to Wilcox County. It would also be interesting to know where the Sibley plantation was located in Wilcox County and if the old family home still stands today. I would not be surprised to learn that Fenollosa still has a number of distant relatives living within the confines of present-day Wilcox County.