Margaret McKay Tee was born in 1882 and raised in Pennsylvania until her family moved to Colorado. Following her education at Colorado College, she trained at New York’s Cooper Union and Columbia Teacher’s College, where she met Frank Alvah Parsons. Tee subsequently worked for Parsons as a student instructor when he joined the faculty of the New York School of Fine and Applied Art (later, Parsons The New School for Design). Tee’s papers are held by the New School Archives.

Before her marriage to John Tee in 1913, she also apprenticed with Jean Griest, a New York decorator. The Tees returned to Colorado and eventually settled at Brinton Terrace, an artists’ colony in Denver. During World War II, Tee and her husband worked at the Ogden Air Service Command base.

For more in the New School Archives on Margaret McKay Tee, see the Margaret McKay Tee papers, 1908-1993.