Born in Stockton, California, on August 4, 1863, Mary Austin Sperry was the daughter of Austin Sperry and Mary Simpson. Austin Sperry was the founder of the Sperry Flour Company and the family was prominent in the city of Stockton. Mary Austin Sperry earned her medical degree from the Women’s Medical College in Pennsylvania before studying obstetrics in Europe. She worked at the New England Hospital in Boston and later moved back to San Francisco, where she worked as an obstetrical surgeon at the San Francisco Children’s Hospital. Sperry was also a member of the Society of Women Physicians, the Collegiate Alumnae of California, and the San Francisco Center Civic League.

Sperry met attorney Gail Laughlin in 1903 when they both worked together on the campaign for women’s suffrage in California. As a National American Women Suffrage Association (NAWSA) organizer, Laughlin worked with Sperry’s mother, who was the President of the California Woman Suffrage Association. In 1907, Sperry and Laughlin moved to Denver, where Laughlin opened a law office and Sperry worked as a physician. They were well-known in social circles and recognized as one of many women couples who had committed their lives together in what is often referred to as a Boston marriage. They moved back to San Francisco in 1914.

When the influenza epidemic hit San Francisco in 1919, Sperry devoted long hours to caring for the ill, providing medical treatment to the thousands of people afflicted. Ultimately, she succumbed to exhaustion and illness herself. Sperry’s death on May 7, 1919, devastated Laughlin. Sperry requested in her will that Laughlin care for her property and physical remains. The Sperry family, angry that their daughter had named Laughlin as executor, contested her will in court. Laughlin kept Sperry’s ashes with her for the rest of her life until she died in 1952 and requested in her will that her remains be buried with Sperry’s under a headstone bearing both of their names.

For more on Laughlin and her relationship with Sperry, see Wendy Rouse, “Gender, Sexuality and Love Between Women in California's Suffrage Campaign,” California History 97, no. 4 (Fall 2020): 144-150; Wendy Rouse, Public Faces, Secret Lives: A Queer History of the Suffrage Movement (New York: New York University Press, 2022). For an OutHistory exhibit that addresses Sperry, see The Queer History of Women's Suffrage: Scholarship and Censorship in 2025, by Wendy Rouse.