Mary Elizabeth McHughes Ferrell (26 October 1922 – 20 February 2004) was an American historian and independent researcher who created a large database on the John F. Kennedy assassination.
Life and career
Born in Memphis, Tennessee, she married Hubert Afton "Buck" Ferrell (1919–1998), in 1940 and had four children. In 1957 the family moved to Dallas, Texas, where Ferrell worked as a legal secretary, for more than thirty years,[1] at a law firm and at the office of the Governor of Texas in Austin.[2]
She began collecting materials on the Kennedy assassination immediately after the event.[3] Her assassination database was originally written on over 40,000 cards and included details of over 8,200 people involved in the case. These data were eventually entered into a computer. Ferrell also created a four-volume set of chronologies, covering all aspects of the assassination.[4]
She was interviewed for the program JFK: The Day the Dream Died, aired by WFAA-TV in 1983.[5]
Ferrell died, 20 February 2004, at age 81, in Dallas.[2]
The Mary Ferrell Foundation, named for Mary Elizabeth McHughes Ferrell (26 October 1922 – 20 February 2004), is a non-profit,[6] located in Ipswich, Massachusetts. Topics include the 1960s assassinations,[7][8] the Watergate scandal, and post-Watergate intelligence abuse.[9]
