Marietta Reed, daughter of a greengrocer (Ransom Reed) in Lowell, Massachusetts. Her mother was Mary Sprague. She grew up to be a schoolteacher, and at nineteen married Paran Stevens, a man more than twice her age. A successful Boston businessman, he owned the Parker House and Tremont hotels and, later, the Fifth Avenue Hotel in New York City. He preferred breeding racehorses to hobnobbing with society, but after his death in 1872, his widow moved to New York and set out to establish herself as a society hostess at her home at 244 Fifth Avenue. Find a Grave
