Rebecca Moore MANNING

1906 - 2007  (100 years)

• Name	Rebecca Moore MANNING  [1, 2]
  Birth	10 Jul 1906	Spartanburg, South Carolina   [1]
  Gender	Female
  Education	Ashley Hall, Charleston, South Carolina, received a bachelor’s degree from Sweet Briar College in Virginia, where she ranked at the top of her class and was subsequently awarded membership in Phi Beta Kappa; graduate studies at Radcliffe and Harvard  [2]
  HIST	Rebecca graduated from Sweet Briar College, Virginia with the highest scholastic average. She then graduated in law with a LLB degree, (Doctor of Jurisprudence) from Columbia University, N. Y. C. She is a member of the New York and Supreme Court Bars and practices law in New York. Rebecca and Howard live in Greenwich, Connecticut in summer and Landrum, South Carolina in winter. She was the last survivor in her generation of a dintinguished South Carolina family. After a year in Cambridge, however, she longed for something more exciting and less academic. She moved to New York and entered publishing. By 1935 she was an acquiring editor at Henry Holt, but grew dissatisfied with the opportunities then available to women in the field. As she recounted years later, her mother responded with her characteristic forthrightness: “Well, Rebecca, why don’t you go ahead and do what you want?” She did, entering Columbia Law School, where she was elected to the Law Review and graduated either first or second in her class in 1942 - her status was unclear because the other top contended already had a law degree from Germany. while still studying law she married. After the birth of her daughter, she received a phone call offering her a clerkship at the Supreme Court of the United States - a plum opportunity routinely awarded to top graduates of the nations’ top law schools, but initially withheld from Rebecca because she was a woman. With the war effort at its peak, it was now clear that women of her caliber were needed at the high court. Yet, as a new mother with a husband about to be assigned overseas, she decided it was not an assignment she could now responsibly take. At war’s end the Cutlers returned to New York where she gave birth again. Although she was primarily a specialist in patent law, she was called upon by her alma mater, Columbia University, to serve as counsel when Teachers College moved to disband the Horace Mann-Lincoln pilot school, and the parents sued the university to keep it open. In 1949 they moved to Greenwich, where they bought a house on the water. In addition to practicing law and raising children, she took up painting and the study of Russian. She was a lifelong devotee of classical music, she played the piano regularly and later took up the harpsichord. She stayed at Milbank, Tweed, until 1961, when the firm’s stubborn resistance to promoting women to partner prompted her to retire from practice. It would take a few more years and pressure from civil rights activists to move the firm on the issue of female partnership, but other women at Milbank, Tweed came to view their colleague Becky as a pioneer and a role model for women in the law. Once she and her husband had both retired, they traveled widely and began to spend the winter and early spring of each year in South Carolina. There they built a house in the mountain foothills at Landrum, South Carolina, not far from where Rebecca had grown up. Howard died the day after his 90th birthday, but Rebecca continued on vigorously after that, tending to the needs of her grandchildren, gardening, setting a fierce pace on trails into the Great Smokies whenever her nieces and their families came to visit, playing Mozart and Bach on special evenings, reading and studying widely, playing bridge, and regularly attending the symphony and opera in New York City in the autumn. At Landrum the needlepoint cover she designed and executed for the harpsichord bench expressed her sensibility exactly. It depicts the mountian horizon she loved and, above that, the opening notes of a favorite Bach fugue. Proposed Change: William Sinkler MANNING (I6643) Tree: Singleton and Related Families Link: http://singletonfamily.org//getperson.php?personID=I6643&tree=1 Description: My mother, Rebecca, is listed as the source for W.S.M.'s birth date being listed here as 1854, but I believe that is an error. Our family tree and her oral account to me when she was still alive, as well as the records of the Caroliniana Library at USC (where his papers are preserved) all indicate that the correct year for his birth is 1851. Best Regards, HC Howard Manning Cutler howard.m.cutler@gmail.com  [2, 3, 4]
  Occupation	she was a member of the New York Bar; she joined the important firm of Milbank, Tweed, Hope & Hadley (later Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy)  [2]
  _UID	E657845A3C2B4169AABACDE46BFF2D461E18
  Death	30 May 2007	Greenwich, Connecticut
  Burial	27 Jun 2007	Church of the Advent Cemetery, Spartanburg, South Carolina   [2]
  	Mathew Murphy at Fred Knapp & Sons, 203 869-0315
  Person ID	I6701	Singleton and Related Families
  Last Modified	25 Nov 2015

  
  

  Father	William Sinkler MANNING,   b. 30 Jan 1851   bur. Church of the Advent Cemetery, Spartanburg, South Carolina
  Mother	Nina HORNER,   b. 13 Apr 1868, In North Carolina d. 21 Apr 1955 (Age 87 years)
  Marriage	21 Oct 1902  [3]
  _UID	727545400B0140D1821ABECA8518A2907CC5
  _UID	727545400B0140D1821ABECA8518A2907CC5
  Family ID	F2447	Group Sheet  |  Family Chart

  
  

  Family	Howard Walden CUTLER   d. 1995
  Marriage	22 Jun 1940	Church of the Advent, Spartanburg, South Carolina   [2, 3]
  _UID	EDB6E3CCC9EB428F82F8D0A25241CF7DA268
  _UID	EDB6E3CCC9EB428F82F8D0A25241CF7DA268
  Children	1. Ann Moore CUTLER,   b. 9 Aug 1943, Fort Lauderdale, Florida d. 1976, of a brain tumor (Age 32 years)   2. Living
  Family ID	F2452	Group Sheet  |  Family Chart
  Last Modified	13 Sep 2007

  
  

• Sources

  [S9123] Barteczko Barteczko.Yvette@tiscali.de, Proposed Change: Rebecca Moore Manning. [S9221] Rebecca Moore Manning Cutler. [S44] . [S23273] Howard Manning Cutler-howard.m.cutler@gmail.com, Proposed Change: .