Mary Jeannette “Lassie” Wiedmann, a former social worker and a descendant of a prominent family in Carroll County, died of multiple organ failure Aug. 5 at her Mount Washington home. She was 100.
“She was a lovely woman who was very, very proud of her family and was interested in history and the history of her family and the Shrivers of Carroll County,” said a nephew, William P. “Bill” Jones, of Baltimore.
Mary Jeannette Shriver Jones was born at home on West Terrace Road to John Marshall Jones, a businessman, and Mary Jeannette Shriver Jones, a homemaker.
“She took her first breath there on West Terrace Road and her last,” her nephew said.
“She went by the name ‘Lassie,’ since the day she decided in grade school that she didn’t want to be called Mary Jones, because it was too plain sounding for her. Otherwise, she said, she wouldn’t go to school,” said a son, Peter K. “Pete” Wiedmann of Mount Washington.
“There was a song that was sung in her family that went something like this, ‘I’m a bonnie lassie,’ so she adopted that as her name,” her son said.
Mrs. Wiedmann’s ancestral roots dated to Thomas Greene, one of the organizing Ark and Dove passengers, who helped established St. Mary’s City in 1634.
She was a descendant of John Marshall, the fourth chief justice of the United States from 1801 to 1835.
Other relatives included Benjamin Franklin Shriver and Helen Macsherry Shriver of the fabled Shriver family of Union Mills in Carroll County.
A graduate of the old Mount St. Agnes Academy in Mount Washington, she earned a bachelor’s degree in 1947 from what is now Notre Dame of Maryland University.
She was a social worker at the University of Maryland in downtown Baltimore when she met and fell in love with Alfred K. Wiedmann, a medical student. They married in 1959.
Mrs. Wiedmann raised six children while tending her gardens, canning vegetables, and researching her family’s genealogy and history.
She was a member of the Society of The Ark and The Dove and Daughters of the American Revolution among others.
Mrs. Wiedmann, who favored an old-fashioned Maryland breakfast, cooked kidney stew most Sunday mornings.
“She served it over toast or bread and we all loved it,” her son said.
In her 50s and 60s, she swam laps at the Meadowbrook pool in Mount Washington. When she reached her 70s, she biked on the Northern Central Trail in Baltimore County.
In her 80s and 90s, she walked hilly neighborhoods and was still weeding her gardens at 98.
“Until a year ago, she was climbing up and down a flight of 18 steps several times a day in her home,” her son said. “Her diet consisted of oatmeal and eggs. She ate a lot of fruit and liked sipping red wine.”
Her husband of 56 years, an orthopedist, died in 2015.
Mrs. Wiedmann was a communicant of the Shrine of the Sacred Heart in Mount Washington, where a Mass of Christian Burial was offered Saturday.
In addition to her son, she is survived by another son, Alfred K. Wiedmann Jr., of Fort Collins, Colorado; four daughters, Jeannette S. McGowan, of Towson, Elizabeth A. Winter and Ursula M. Goldman, both of Baltimore, and Maria Maher, of Winterset, Iowa; 15 grandchildren; and 14 great-grandchildren.