"Her fighting quality for things in which she believed was no more widely known than her keen wit, raucous humor, and original turn of phrase," was the way that Marie Bankhead Owen was described at the time of her death.

The Alabama Department of Archives and History was established in 1901, the first state department of its kind in the nation. Marie Bankhead Owen assisted her husband Thomas M. Owen, the first director of the department, in all of his endeavors. On Thomas' death in 1920, Marie became the first woman in Alabama to head a department of state government. Her son, Thomas M. Owen, Jr., was an original staff member of the National Archives.

Marie Bankhead Owen moved to provide assistance to school students learning about their state and its history. She wrote and edited texts on Alabama history and she directed the growth of the Department of Archives and History. Her experience as an editor for the Montgomery Advertiser, 1910-1917, was invaluable to her skill with the pen.

Daughter of U.S. Senator John Hollis Bankhead and sister to two U.S. Congressmen (Senator John H. Bankhead and Speaker of the House William B. Bankhead), Mrs. Owen was no stranger to the ways of bureaucracy. She was known at the capital as a woman who knew what she wanted, when she wanted it, and how she wanted it delivered.

At her 85th birthday celebration, "Miss Marie" was described as "an Alabama institution, as much a part of the state as the Alabama River, the blue skies, and the rugged mountains," and was presented with a plaque by the Board of Trustees of the Alabama Department of Archives and History.