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Part of the American
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Caroline M. Seymour Severance 1820 ~ 1914
By Mrs. John A. Logan
Mrs. Severance was born in Canandaigua,
New York, in January, 1820. She is the daughter of Orson
Seymour, a banker of that place. Her mother was Caroline M.
Clarke Seymour, who must have been a devoted and wise mother to
have reared a daughter of such rare genius as Mrs. Severance.
January 12, 1840, Miss Seymour became the wife of Theodoric C.
Severance, a banker of Cleveland, Ohio, to which place Mr.
Severance took his bride and established their first home. Their
five children were born there, their mother devoting her entire
time to her husband and children; it was an ideal American home.
Mrs. Severance, meanwhile, kept abreast with the progress of the
times. Her native talent, active mind and accomplishments made
her an authority on the ethics of society. In 1853 she was
chosen to give a lecture before the "Mercantile Library
Association," the first woman to deliver a lecture before such
an association. Her topic was "Humanity; a Definition and a
Plea." She made such a brilliant accomplishment that she was
obliged to deliver it in many places in the state. "The Woman's
Rights Association," of Ohio, prevailed upon Mrs. Severance to
arrange the lecture in the form of a tract to be distributed
throughout the country. Later Mrs. Severance was appointed to
present to the legislature a memorial "asking suffrage and such
amendments to the state laws of Ohio, as should place woman on a
civil equality with man."
In 1855 Mr. and Mrs. Severance removed
to Newton, Massachusetts. The women suffragists of New England
were delighted to welcome so brilliant an advocate for the cause
of suffrage as Mrs. Severance. She demurred at taking an active
part in the work the "Woman's Rights Association" was planning
to inaugurate. She preferred to render such service as she could
as a member of the committee of the "Theodore Parker Fraternity
Association," and to aid in securing a woman lecturer for the
course. She earnestly joined her associates in requesting Mrs.
Cady Stanton to deliver the course. Mrs. Stanton was, however,
unable to accept the invitation of the committee. Mrs. Severance
wrote to Mrs. Stanton long afterwards: "I was not able to resist
the entreaties of the committee and the obligation that I felt
myself under to make good your place, so far as in me lay."
Hence she took upon herself the grave responsibility of giving
the course of lectures the committee considered of vital
importance to the cause of woman's rights. The initial lecture
was the first ever delivered by a woman before a Lyceum
Association in Boston. Mrs. Severance subsequently in writing to
Mrs. Stanton tells of her emotions while delivering the lecture:
"I will not tell you how prosy and dull I fear it was; but I
know it was earnest and well-considered, and that the beaming
eyes of dear Mrs. Follen and Miss Elizabeth Peabody, glowing
with interest before me from below the platform of Tremont
Temple, kept me in heart all through."
Mrs. Severance is a tall, dignified
woman, with a handsome face, ever lighted up by her effervescing
spirits. Her countenance reflects the brilliancy of her rare
intelligence, quickness of thought, and purity of mind and
heart. She possesses remarkable conversational powers, and is a
most effective and eloquent speaker from the platform. In years
gone by she has given "soul-service'' in many directions,
standing as corresponding secretary for the Boston Anti-slavery
Society, as one of the Board of Managers of the Boston Woman's
Hospital, and delivering a course of lectures on practical
ethics before Dio Lewis' school for girls, at Lexington, Mass.
These lectures cover the relation of the young woman to the
school, the state, the home and to her own development.
After long and prayerful thought as to
how to best utilize "the truth, the goodness, the intelligence
of the literary and philanthropic women of New England, and the
vast benefits which she foresaw would flow from such a union,"
in 1868, Mrs. Severance called the sympathetic women together in
parlor meetings to talk over her ideas. Their meetings resulted
in "the introduction to the world of a new form of social and
mental architecture." Mrs. Severance, as founder, "was elected
president of the first woman's club in our country, the New
England Woman's Club of Boston," and thereby became the "Mother
of Clubs" and was the primal force in a movement that has become
a stupendous factor in our civilization.
May 30, 1868, in Chickering Hall, the
New England Woman's Club was introduced to the world. The noble
women who had perfected this beneficent organization were ably
assisted and encouraged on that occasion by the addresses of
Ralph Waldo Emerson, James Freeman Clarke, Jacob Manning, John
Weiss, O. B. Frothingham, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, and
Bronson Alcott. The speakers for the club were : Julia Ward Howe
and Mrs. E. D. Cheney, who set forth the purposes of the New
England Woman's Club so eloquently and comprehensively as to win
the endorsement and confidence of the whole assemblage: First,
"to organize the social forces of the women of New England;" to
establish "a larger home for those who love and labor for the
greater human family;" to combine "recreation with the pursuit
of wisdom;" to provide "the comforts of the club to the lonely,
in city and suburb," and proposed useful work in a registry of
women seeking the so-called higher occupations, providing rooms
for women who came to Boston for concerts, operas, and lectures.
Among the achievements of the New
England Woman's Club has been the establishment of a
Horticultural School for women, in which the pupils erected
their own greenhouses, painted the buildings, etc. It was
subsequently merged into the "bussey," a department of Harvard.
Caused the passage of the first school-suffrage law, which
permitted women to be elected members of the Boston and other
school boards. Aided by helpers, the club established the New
England Hospital for women and children, which was officered and
managed by women, with eminent doctors of the other sex as
consulting physicians and surgeons. In co-operation with Hon.
Josiah Quincy, Dr. Bowditch and others, the club joined in the
incorporation of a successful Co-operation Building Association,
which proved a great assistance to the poor, and furnished an
object lesson to the philanthropists of the whole country. Aided
by one of its members, "St. Elizabeth" Peabody, the club
provided scholarships for studious young women and used its
potent influence to promote higher education for women,
resulting in the founding of the Girl's Latin School, of Boston.
The club began the agitation and
eventually caused the appointment of women police matrons and
placed women on the boards of all public institutions. Homes of
detention for women they also secured.
This club also aided the fund of the
Egyptian Exploration Society, joined the Archaeological
Institute of Greece, and abetted the New York Society for the
suppression of obscene literature and took an active part in the
dress-reform movement.
The club organized classes in English
literature, languages, and other higher studies. In 1876, it had
classes in political economy, and in 1891 formed a "current
topics" class, and secured able lecturers on Political
Development, Railroad Laws, Prohibition Laws, George's "Progress
and Poverty," Summer's "Obligations of the Social Class,"
Bryce's "American Commonwealth," Socialism of Today,
Municipal Reform, Rent, The Lobby System, The Silver Question,
Food Waste, Prison Reform, The Responsibility of the Employer
and Employed, as well as many topics bearing upon the standing
of woman and her influence in all departments of human activity.
Socially, the club gave many receptions to distinguished
visitors and American celebrities, among them: Monsieur Coquerel,
Harriet Beecher Stowe, Emily Faithful, Mary Carpenter, Lord and
Lady Amberly, Harriet Hosmer, Anne Whitney, Professor Maria
Mitchell, Dr. Parsons, the Dante scholar. Professors Pierce,
Gould, and Fiske and Rev. Dr. Edward Everett Hale. Thus it will
be seen that "the diversity of activities and of sympathy
illustrates well the broad purpose and intent of the originators
of club-life for American women."
In 1875, Mrs. Severance removed to
California with no abatement in her devotion to the cause of
woman's rights and the extension of woman's clubs. She was soon
actively engaged in the work of organizing woman's rights
associations and clubs, and has the satisfaction of seeing many
flourishing societies and clubs. She traveled extensively in her
early life. Wherever she went, she immediately hunted up persons
of note who were interested in the dearest object of her life,
woman's rights. Among her many friends in England were: Mrs.
Lucas, sister of Jacob and John Bright; Elizabeth Barrett
Browning, Florence Nightingale, Mrs. Somerville., Mrs. Jameson,
Harriet Martineau, Mrs. Cobbe, Charlotte Robinson and many
others.
The editor has had the good fortune to
know Mrs. Severance and to visit her in Los Angeles, California,
in her lovely home, El Nido, which is full of priceless literary
treasures and souvenirs of great occasions and honors paid to
her as "The Mother of Clubs." She has also been christened the "Ethical
Magnet of Southern California." Many contemporary authors
have contributed valuable copies of their books suitably
inscribed. Arranged in a cabinet are the autographed photographs
of her distinguished friends and co-workers, whom she calls her
"immortals," including Mrs. Browning, George Eliot, Margaret
Fuller, Lydia Maria Childs, Lucy Stone, Frances Dana Gage,
Caroline H. Dall, Louisa Alcott, Celia Burleigh, Ednah D.
Cheney, and Lucretia Mott. In a corresponding case, are pictures
of Junipero Serra, Wendell Phillips, Longfellow, Whittier, James
Freeman Clarke, William H. Channing, Lowell, Samuel Johnson, and
Charles Sumner. Another rare picture is one of five generations
of the Severance family in a group.
Among the most valued are the souvenirs
of the celebration of the silver wedding of Mr. and Mrs.
Severance, which occurred in 1865. When her literary friends and
admirers journeyed from the Middle West and every part of the
country to Boston, Mass., to participate in the festivities of
the felicitous occasion, they brought tributes of affection in
poetry and prose. Of the number, such illustrious names appear,
as Isabella Beecher Hooker, Dr. and Mrs. Dio Lewis, Mattie
Griffith, Albert G. Browne, Mrs. Satterlee, Mr. and Mrs. Henry
Ivinson (sister of Mrs. Severance), the Burrage family of Boston
and a host of others. While the letters of regret bore the
signatures of such immortals as George Bradburn, Harriet Minot
Pitman, James Freeman Clarke and Mrs. Clarke, William Lloyd and
Frank Garrison, Dr. Marie Zakrzewska. Rev. Zachos, William H.
Avery, Salmon P. Chase, Theodore Tilton, Grace Greenwood, Truman
Seymour, James F. Hall, George Wm. Curtis, Anna Q. T. Parsons,
W. W. Story (the artist), General and Mrs. Fremont, Miss
Fremont, Lieutenant Frank Fremont and George B. Grinnell.
Mrs. Severance's "Ye Geste Book"
is a rare volume, containing innumerable names of those who have
paid their respects to this remarkable woman. John W. Hutchinson
and his wife, with a record of "fifty-eight years old,
thirty-nine years singing and ten thousand concerts," made a
visit to Mrs. Severance, Ludlow Patten and wife (nee Abby
Hutchinson), Henry M. Field and wife, Helen Hunt Jackson,
Captain R. H. Pratt, J. Wells Champney and wife, William J.
Rotch, Locke Richardson, Charles Dudley Warner, George W. Cable,
Elizabeth B. Custer (widow of General Custer), J. W. Chadwick
and wife, John W. Hoyt and wife, Mary A. Livermore, Lucy Stone,
Elizabeth Cady Stanton (written in her eighty-seventh year).
Rev. William Milburn (the blind chaplain of the Senate), Mrs. A.
D. T. Whitney, Edward Everett Hale, Miss Susan Hale, Charlotte
Perkins Stetson, Grace Ellery Channing, Rev. J. Minot Savage,
Kate Sanborn, Cordelia Kirkland, Ida Coolbrith, Susan B.
Anthony, Carrie Chapman Catt, Mrs. E. O. Smith, "Vivekananda,"
(who wrote, "From the unreal, lead me to the real from the
darkness into light"), Mrs. J. S. Langrana, of Poona, India;
Miss Florence Denton, of Kyoto, Japan; Jan Krigo, of Transvaal,
South Africa; Henry Demarest Lloyd, who prefaced his autograph
with "We can preserve the liberties we have inherited only by
winning new ones to bequeath."
Rich beyond compare in experiences which
make life worth the living, and the fullness of years of
well-doing for all mankind, Mrs. Severance is one of the noblest
types of American womanhood. Fascinated by the external
youthfulness of her spirits and charming personality, one
realizes that age cannot wither.
Women of
America
Source: The Part Taken by Women in
American History, By Mrs. John A. Logan, Published by The Perry-Nalle
Publishing Company, Wilmington, Delaware, 1912.
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