Mary Danah McMurray Richardson (1851–1911) was a native St. Louisan, born the second and youngest daughter to Dr. William Aston McMurray and Catherine L. De Kay McMurray. During high school years, she participated in public presentations, showing a prowess for reading literary works to audiences. With her parents and her sister Annie, she frequently spent summers at Biddeford Pool, Maine, a seasonal pilgrimage she continued throughout her adulthood.
In 1872, she married Joseph Clifford Richardson, a businessman working in his father's drug company as a chemical manufacturer. They had two children, a son who died in infancy, and a daughter, Mabel, who died in early childhood. The Richardsons acquired a property at Biddeford Pool, and J. Clifford purchased a steam yacht, Telka, which he used to cruise along the Maine coast.
Upon the death of her husband, Mary relocated to New York City's Upper West Side. She inherited the Richardson property at Biddeford Pool, Maine, where she built a summer cottage, Stonecliffe. Designed by Boston/Portland architect Albert Winslow Cobb, it rapidly became the site of public gatherings, including a meeting Mary hosted for the Rebecca Emery chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution in July 1900. Mary contributed to various Biddeford Pool organizations, including its fire company and life saving station, the Good Templars, the church, the Sunday School, and the Abanaki Clubhouse. President William Taft (term 1909-1913) famously arrived at the Stonecliffe dock via his yacht The Mayflower in July 1910 before he participated in an automobile parade in Biddeford Pool.
Mary devoted later years preparing the Richardson family tomb in Bellefontaine Cemetery in St. Louis, Missouri, and planning to fund a public art research library to commemorate her deceased husband. When she died suddenly of pneumonia in January 1911, The Biddeford Journal conveyed a warm tribute, "she was chums with the winds, the waves, and the weather."
Her legacy gift established the J. Clifford Richardson Memorial Library at the City Art Museum of St. Louis (today's Saint Louis Art Museum), which opened to the public four years after her death.