[7] In 1917, Marion Nicholl Rawson served on the Executive Committee of the National Birth Control League.
She sketched and painted all her life, holding frequent sales of her work in Bellows Falls, Vermont, Alstead, Providence and other places in New England.
[citation needed] Rawson wrote and illustrated books on the homemade arts and crafts of the early American home, farm, shop and countryside,[13][14] which she spent years researching.
[16] In From Here to Yender and New Hampshire Borns a Town, Rawson captured New England phrases, like "always astern of the lighter" (dead last), "has no more suavity than a swine", "I just ate chagrin" (embarrassment over a faux pas), "I wish I had a neck as long as a cartrut" (good drink!)
[17][18] She later wrote the town history of Plainfield, New Jersey, Under the Blue Hills, and in one passage she reminisces of her early years at Tier's Pond: "Today there may be places as cool and inviting, but I doubt it ... a place where the heavy white dishes curled thickly about the edges; where the chairbacks curled in a well-remembered design; where the chocolate, strawberry and vanilla ice cream mounded itself up inches high ... it was simply our idea of Heaven.
[citation needed] In 1947 Rawson gave a lecture on "Art of the Quakers" at the Friends Historical Association Annual Meeting.