Jewett was born in 1908 to Cleburne E. Gregory, a political editor at the Atlanta Journal, and Sarah Adelaide Collis. She was one of three children, with brother Cleburne Earl Gregory, Jr. and sister Adelaide Gregory Norton. She attended the University of Georgia where she was a member of Phi Kappa Phi, Chi Omega, and Theta Sigma Phi, and graduated cum laude in 1930 with a BA in journalism.
Career at Georgia Historical Commission
In 1955 Jewett started working as staff historian at the newly-established Georgia Historical Commission, where her father C. E. Gregory, who had helped to establish the agency, was in change. She succeeded him in 1960 as executive secretary. Under Jewett's 13-year leadership, the GHC expanded to employ fifty people and was nationally recognized for its pioneering preservation work. It acquired and restored twenty sites across the state, and installed 1,800 historical markers. The GHC's first museum conversion was the Crawford W. Long Medical Museum. A coworker recalled her as the "only one who knows how to get along with legislators, politicians, and preservationists." The Chief Vann House Historic Site was the first site the agency purchased, in 1952. Its full renovations unfolded over years, and the GHC ordered a study of the site by UGA archaeologist Clemens de Baillou and a translation of Moravian missionary diaries in an effort to, in Jewett's words, " every known source of knowledge and the house and grounds as clear a picture as possible of the life of the owners". However, the painstaking restoration of the house's ornate Federal–Georgian architecture also served to embody an attempt by the Cherokee to "copy the whites" — an assertion disputed by Earl Boyd Pierce, who argued that the Cherokee were forced to "center their attention on orthodox building construction calculated to excite both pleasure and respect". When the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966 became law, Jewett was the state liaison officer responsible for nominating properties in Georgia for national recognition under the program. The first National Register of Historic Places, published in 1969, included thirteen properties from Georgia. She became a leader among her peer officers in other states, helping to formulate their objectives.
Jewett retired in 1974. A long-time chain smoker, Jewett died of cancer on January 16, 1976. She had one son, George Cleburne Jewett. Today, the Georgia Trust annually bestows the Mary Gregory Jewett Award for "distinguished service in the field of preservation" in the state.
