BRUSH, DOROTHY ADAMS HAMILTON (14 Mar. 1894-21 June 1968) was a reformer in the area of birth control for over 30 years. She helped found the Maternal Health Assn. (MHA, later PLANNED PARENTHOOD OF GREATER CLEVELAND), managed the BRUSH FOUNDATION, and served as founding editor of the International Planned Parenthood Federation's (IPPF) newsletter and as IPPF's Honorary Adviser for Field Work. Brush was born in Cleveland, daughter of Walter J. and Jane Adams Hamilton and sister of actress MARGARET HAMILTON. She received a B.A. from Smith College in 1917 and married Charles Francis Brush, Jr. the same year. After a brief military stint, the Brushes settled in Cleve. Hts. In May 1927, Brush's 6-yr. old daughter Jane died, and a week later her husband succumbed to complications from blood transfusions to his daughter during her illness. In her husband's memory, Brush donated funds to open the MHA birth control clinic in Cleveland (1928), a project which she and others had been planning since 1921. In 1929 Brush's father-in-law, inventor CHARLES F. BRUSH, Sr., appointed her to the Bd. of Managers of his newly-created Brush Fndn.
Although Brush did not live in Cleveland after 1928, she remained active on the boards of both the Brush Fndn. and the MHA throughout her life. The Foundation funded the planning, creation and early years (1949-1966) of the New York-based IPPF largely because of Brush's international work with birth control activist Margaret Sanger with whom she was a close friend for over 30 years.
Brush married two more times: Alexander C. Dick (3 Je. 1929, divorced in 1947) and Louis C. Walmsley (1 Dec. 1962). She died in 1968 and was survived by two children, Chas. F. Brush III and Sylvia Dick (Mrs. Athan Karas).
Perkins, Charles Brush. Ancestors of Charles Brush Perkins and Maurice Perkins (1976).
Dorothy H. Brush Papers, Sophia Smith Lib., Smith College.