Martha Saxton

Martha Saxton in 2019. Saxton, a historian whose penetrating examinations of women’s lives led her to new insights into figures ranging from the author Louisa May Alcott to the 1950s actress and sex symbol Jayne Mansfield to Mary Washington, the mother of the first president of the United States, died on Tuesday, July 18, 2023, at her home in Norwalk, Conn. She was 77. (Brad Trent via The New York Times)