“A principal link in the life of this university.” That is how former Duke University President Richard H. Brodhead described Mary Duke Biddle Trent Semans following her death in 2012 at the age of 91.
The great-granddaughter of industrialist-philanthropist Washington Duke, for whom the university is named, Semans was born in 1920 and spent her first 14 years in her native New York. When she was 14, her parents divorced and she moved to Durham to live with her grandmother Sarah P. Duke, for whom Duke Gardens is named.
In 1935, at the age of 15, Semans enrolled at Duke’s Women’s College and graduated with a degree in art history. She was active in Durham city government and became one of the first two women to be elected to the city council. From 1953-1955 she served as Durham’s mayor pro tempore, the first woman elected to the job. While in office, she spent much of her time pushing for civil rights, funding for the arts, and affordable housing and healthcare
She married twice, once to a fellow student, Josiah Charles Trent, who became a surgeon and chief of Duke Hospital’s division of thoracic surgery. Together they had four children. He died of lymphoma at 34. She later married Dr. James Semans, a surgeon and associate professor of urology at Duke and she had three more children with him.
Seman’s connection to her alma mater was deep. She served on the Board of Trustees from 1961-1981. The atrium at Duke’s Nasher Museum of Art is named the Mary D.B.T. Semans Great Hall. In 2009, she was inducted into the North Carolina Women’s Hall of Fame.
