Topic: Mary Travers

Mary Allin Travers (November 9, 1936 – September 16, 2009) was an American singer-songwriter and member of the folk, pop group Peter, Paul and Mary, along with Peter Yarrow and Noel "Paul" Stookey. Peter, Paul and Mary was one of the most successful folk-singing groups of the 1960s. Unlike most folk musicians who were a part of the early 1960s Greenwich Village music scene, Travers actually grew up in that New York neighborhood.

She was born in Louisville, Kentucky, to Robert Travers and Virginia Coigney, both of whom were journalists and were active organizers for The Newspaper Guild, a trade union. In 1938, the family moved to Greenwich Village in New York City. She attended the Little Red School House there, but left in the eleventh grade to pursue her singing career.

While in high school, she joined The Song Swappers, which sang backup for Pete Seeger when Folkways Records reissued a union song collection, Talking Union, in 1955. The Song Swappers recorded a total of four albums for Folkways in 1955, all with Seeger. Travers regarded her singing as a hobby and was shy about it, but was encouraged by fellow musicians. Travers also was in the cast of the Broadway-theatre show, The Next President.