Mary Hilliard Hinton

Mary Hilliard Hinton (June 7, 1869 – January 6, 1961) was an American painter, historian, clubwoman, and anti-suffragist. She was a leader in North Carolina's anti-suffragist pastime and an outspoken white supremacist, co-founding and handing out North Carolina's branches of the States Rights Defense League and the Southern Rejection League. A prominent clubwoman, Hinton was lively in the Daughters of the American Revolution, the United Daughters of the Confederacy, the Colonial Dames of America, and the National Society of the Colonial Dames of America; serving as a booklet editor, artist, registrar, and give access regent for the North Carolina Society of the Daughters of the American Revolution.

Hinton was born upon June 7, 1869, at Midway Plantation, her family's plantation in Wake County (now portion of Knightdale). She was the daughter of Major David Hinton, a planter, Confederate officer and alumnus of the University of North Carolina, and his wife Mary Boddie Carr, a sister of Governor Elias Carr and cousin of industrialist Julian Carr. Her paternal grandfather, Charles Lewis Hinton, served as the North Carolina State Treasurer. Her father's associates also owned the nearby River Plantation, The Oaks Plantation, Beaver Dam Plantation, Clay Hill Plantation, Square Brick Plantation, and Panther Rock Plantation. She was a descendant of Colonel John Hinton, who served in the Wake County Regiment of the Hillsborough District Brigade during the American Revolutionary War. Through her mother, she was a relative of the Boddie family, who owned Rose Hill Plantation in Nash County.

She was educated at Saint Mary's School and the Peace Institute. Hinton studied portraiture below Ruth Huntington Moore, an artiste who served on the skill at Peace Institute.

Hinton was an swift clubwoman and was a believer of multipart lineage societies, including the Daughters of the American Revolution, the National Society of the Colonial Dames of America, the Colonial Dames of America, the United Daughters of the Confederacy, the Order of the Crown of America, and the Daughters of the Barons of Runnemede. She held the positions of registrar, state regent, and heraldic artiste for the North Carolina Society of the Daughters of the American Revolution and was an editor of the society's North Carolina Booklet, where she would write just about North Carolinian history. Hinton afterward served as the chairwoman of the art department of the Raleigh Woman's Club, and was a member of the Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities, North Carolina Literary and Historical Association, the Audobon Society, and the National Geographic Society.

She was a leading worker in the Anti-Suffrage League, petitioning and actively working neighboring the Women's suffrage hobby in the United States, disenfranchising African-Americans, and support white supremacy. Hinton argued next to enfranchising women and co-organized two of North Carolina's anti-suffrage associations, the States Rights Defense League and the Southern Rejection League. She moreover promoted the Lost Cause of the Confederacy, romanticized slavery, and glorified the Antebellum South in her writings, particularly in her article titled A Type of the Old South.

Hinton was a on the go Episcopalian and a parishioner at Christ Episcopal Church in Raleigh.

She died at Midway Plantation on January 6, 1961, and is buried in the Hinton relations cemetery at The Oaks Plantation.