Edith Boorstein Couturier

Edith Boorstein Couturier passed away peacefully on August 19, 2024 surrounded by family after several years of declining health.

Edith was born on January 4, 1929, the daughter of Pauline Fox Boorstein and August Boorstein, in New York, NY. She was the beloved mother of Andrew Couturier and Anna Lisa Couturier, and aunt to John Couturier and Michelle Couturier. She was pre-deceased by her older brother Allen Boorstein, her nephew Lance Couturier and her niece Denise Couturier.

Edith grew up on Long Island. Her mother was a philanthropist and earned a Master’s degree in Sociology in 1932. Her father founded the Rob Roy Shirt Company and ran it profitably for many decades. These were important things to Edith throughout her life. She attended Sara Lawrence College, got an MA at Long Island University, writing about 19th Century New York State history, and she received a PhD from Columbia University in 1965, writing about land reform movements in Mexico after the Revolution (1910-1920). She was a Mexicanist, a biographer, a family- and women’s historian, and wrote extensively about dowries and wills in colonial Mexico. She spent many decades in archives in Spain, Portugal, Mexico and at the Hispanic Reading Room at the Library of Congress. Edith taught Latin American History at Long Island University, Hofstra, SUNY Albany, American University, Northeastern Illinois University, Georgetown University, Johns Hopkins, and the University of Maryland.

Edith spent her 20s in New York City involved in the labor movement. She refused to go into American history because in the 1950s most scholars in that field subscribed to the “Lost Cause” narrative of the civil war, which was sympathetic to the slave-holding South. She was supportive of many African-American rights movements throughout her life. She was a life long feminist.

In June of 1961 she married Jean Jacques Couturier, a labor organizer with AFSCME in New York State. They moved to Washington DC when Jean got a job there. Their son Andrew was born in 1964 and their daughter Anna Lisa was born in 1967. Also in 1967 Michelle, John, Denise and Lance joined our family when Edith and Jean became guardians upon the passing of Jean’s brother and sister in law Gerard and Jean Couturier. Edith and Jean Jacques divorced in 1983, but toward the end of his life, they renewed their friendship and frequently socialized together.

Edith and Jean lived in Evanston Illinois from 1974-1980 where she did research at the Newberry Library in Chicago. Upon returning to DC, where she remained for the rest of her life, Edith worked for 14 years at the National Endowment for the Humanities (1983-1997)—a job which she truly loved—evaluating applications and doing site visits for the Summer Seminar program for college and high school teachers. During that time she was an “Independent Scholar,” receiving a Fulbright Scholarship in 1990-91 to Mexico, studying “Philanthropy, Patronage, and Women in New Spain, 1600-1810.” She was also a member of the Pre-Columbian Society and American Historical Association.

In 1976 she published, in Spanish, the book, La Hacienda de Hueyapan, 1550-1936. In 2003 she published The Silver King: The Remarkable Life of the Count of Regla in Colonial Mexico. Throughout her career she published many articles in books and academic journals on royal or wealthy families, but also one on a working-class widow who sold pulque (an agave wine) on the street in Mexico.

Edith was spiritually open to a remarkable degree. While she has always identified as a Jew, she also attended services at Quaker meeting houses for years, as well as at Catholic, Lutheran and Methodist churches.

More than anything, Edith was quintessentially a book person, and the breadth of her reading interests was extraordinary. She read about everything, especially loving the novels of Jane Austen, but also Proust, Dickens, Octavio Paz, and the Bronte sisters. She read about neurology and aging, about food and nutrition, about art history, natural history, and many, many biographies. She also read a lot of poetry, especially Emily Dickinson, and she read much Torah. She knew much about and loved trees and birds (but had a special enmity with squirrels.)

She read the newspaper daily and kept up with current events until the last week of her life. She also loved classical music, art museums, fine restaurants, opera and dogs, travel – including many countries in Europe, and trips to Russia, Israel and Japan.

Until her last days she remained curious and interested in each person she met, being described by one friend as “a very intelligent, interesting, engaged, and determined woman,” and by another, “I admired your mother's spunk, her sparkling eyes and her mischievous smile.” She will be sorely missed.

In lieu of gifts or flowers we ask that donations be made in Edith’s memory to: The Midwest Access Coalition, a grassroots abortion-access group in Illinois, a key state for women seeking reproductive healthcare -- a cause that was dear to Edith’s heart.

midwestaccesscoalition.org/donate