Rachel Kollock McDowell

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McDowell was a committed career woman, becoming the only one of the seven McDowell children who did not marry. Years later, she said, "I had many beaux and many honest-to-goodness propositions, but I wanted to be an entity, not just a Mrs. Somebody."

As a young woman, she went to work for the Prudential Life Insurance Company in a job she disliked. Seeking a writing job, at age 22 she obtained a position as a reporter covering weddings and other society topics for the Newark Evening News. In 1908, she left the Newark paper for her first New York City newspaper job.

Beginning in 1908, she developed a "brilliant career" as a religious reporter and news editor of the New York Herald but worried when the paper was sold in 1920. She was hired the same week of the sale announcement by The New York Times. She was the first Religion Editor appointed at the Times and worked in that position until 1948.

Known for her pursuit of stories, McDowell knew clergy and rabbis throughout the city, from the top of the Protestant and Catholic hierarchies on down and a variety of Jewish rabbis. She was particularly interested in interfaith movements. She featured Catholic and Protestant clergy, as well as rabbis, in her regular Saturday features. Her pre-eminence in the field of religious news reporting earned her the nickname "Lady Bishop."

The reporter Meyer Berger of The New York Times tells the following story about her:

McDowell recounted that one of her most notable memories was getting trapped in the mausoleum of Princess Anastasia of Greece after her funeral in 1923 at Woodlawn Cemetery in New York. An American heiress who married into the Greek royal family, the Princess had left instructions in her will that she should be interred with her parents at Woodlawn. McDowell had managed to learn the time and place of the secret burial, and gained access. After witnessing the funeral she went into the tomb to look at the names on other caskets and found herself locked in. She was unsuccessful in summoning help, but prayed until finally the door opened. It was an example of her persistence to get "exclusives"; she was credited with scores of them.

In 1935, Time magazine described her as "probably the ablest religious editor of any U. S. newspaper". While at the Herald, she founded the Pure Language League for newspaper writers, to discourage the use of blasphemous and profane language, and carried her campaign to the Times. She was known there for her annual message on New Year's Eve reminding writers to use pure language.

A devout Presbyterian, McDowell was invited to lecture on religion at venues across the country, with regular sessions at Chautauqua. For several years, she had a weekly program on religion on the radio. For more than 25 years, she wrote a weekly article for The Presbyterian (now The Presbyterian Outlook. After meeting with Pope Pius XI in 1935, she wrote about it and received in response more than 1,000 letters from around the world. Her short account was reprinted as My Audience with the Holy Father in 1936.

McDowell retired as result of ill health on December 31, 1948, and died less than a year later on August 30, 1949.

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