[5][6] After two honeymoons – the first in December 1891 to Detroit and Chicago, which involved tours of their family's Midwestern shoe factories, and the second, an 1892 spring cruise aboard a German ocean liner – they settled into married life in their mansion in Malden.

Motivated to sell his beloved yacht Penelope to the U.S. Navy as his nation entered the Spanish–American War, he was then appointed as a colonel and acting quartermaster-general of the Massachusetts Volunteer Militia by Governor Roger Wolcott in 1901.

Following her application to a class at Radcliffe College, she solicited feedback in 1917 from Harvard faculty member George Pierce Baker regarding one of her works, and later wrote music for Stuart Walker's "Six Who Pass While the Lentils Boil.

After joining the Boston chapter of the American Red Cross, she penned an inspirational pamphlet for members of the U.S. military, and helped to assemble soldiers' grooming kits.

[19] Sometime after this move, Mary Converse attended the United States Merchant Marine Academy at Kings Point, New York, where she earned a second-class pilot's license, according to historian Andrew Zimmerman.

So, on February 2, 1938, she joined the crew of the South African freighter S.S. Henry S. Grove, and honed her navigation skills as a 4th mate and practicing pilot while en route from Trinidad to Cape Town.

Departing in June 1939, she sailed from Brooklyn, New York to San Francisco, California by way of the Panama Canal, becoming increasingly adept at celestial navigation.

She returned from her latest voyage privileged to call herself "Captain Mary P. Converse" by virtue of a certificate witnessing the fact that she may "navigate steam and motor vessels of any gross tonnage on the waters of any ocean.

For a time she will remain in Denver, doing her best to interest youths of the Rocky Mountain region in the importance of the merchant marine and urging them to accept the challenge of the sea.

[29] Despite this accomplishment, Captain Mary Converse never sailed again; instead, she became an educator who taught navigation to officers in the U.S. Navy Reserve during World War II.

Mary Parker Converse, the only woman to hold a sea captain's papers in the United States merchant marine, is dead at the age of 89.

She spent four months in 1940 charting the South Pacific, the Indian Ocean, the Panama Canal and Alaskan waters to win her captain's rating.

She was the widow of wealthy yachtsman Col. Harry Converse.When word was received of her death, board and staff of the High Altitude Observatory issued the following statement:[38] Among the many thoughtful services the Board wishes to take note of are: (1) the donation to the High Altitude Observatory building which made possible the Captain Mary P. Converse Seminar Room; (2) her generosity in setting up the Captain Mary P. Converse Student Emergency Fund, by which many students have been helped through temporarily rough seas; (3) her annual dinner and lecture parties at the Denver Country Club… ; and (4) her years of valuable advice as a Research Associate of the High Altitude Observatory….

Mary Converse held the position of research associate with the High Altitude Observatory, an honorary post awarded to her by the organization's board of trustees in recognition of her longtime, effective support.