President Franklin Delano Roosevelt appointed Mary Brackett Hoyt Ransom (1884-1971) as Mattapoisett’s first woman U.S. Postmaster, a position she held from 1934 until 1942.
Visionary restaurateur Sue Wong van Wiggeren (1926-2019) spearheaded the opening of Mattapoisett’s iconic Cathay Temple restaurant at the age of 25. Lovingly known as “Suzie Wong,” she was raised in the restaurant business and considered her mother Jade as a standard for success in culinary arts.
Mattapoisett basket maker Gladys Heuberger Sherman Ellis (1916-2011) designed and created the Mattapoisett Basket, a unique regional form of the Nantucket Basket. An accomplished scrimshaw artist and Nantucket basket maker, she also taught this artistry to many others.
The only woman to enlist in World War I from Mattapoisett, Florence Eastman (1894-1918) became the Head Army Nurse of the Isolation Hospital at Camp Mills, Mineola, Long Island, with 20 nurses and over 100 orderlies under her supervision.