Mary Livermore

Mary Ashton Livermore (née Rice; December 19, 1820 – May 23, 1905) was an American journalist, abolitionist, and advocate of women's rights. Her printed volumes included: Thirty Years Too Late, first published in 1847 as a prize temperance tale, and republished in 1878; Pen Pictures; or, Sketches from Domestic Life; What Shall We Do with Our Daughters? Superfluous Women, and Other Lectures; and My Story of the War. A Woman's Narrative of Four Years' Personal Experience as Nurse in the Union Army, and in Relief Work at Home, in Hospitals, Camps and at the Front during the War of the Rebellion. She wrote a sketch of the sculptor Anne Whitney for Women of the Day and delivered the historical address for the Centennial Celebration of the First Settlement of the Northwestern States in Marietta, Ohio on July 15, 1788.^[2]

When the

When the war was over, she instituted a pro-women's suffrage paper called the Agitator, which was afterwards merged in the Woman's Journal. Of that she was an editor for two years and a frequent contributor thereafter. On the lecture platform, she had a remarkable career, speaking mostly on behalf of women's suffrage and temperance movements. For many years, she traveled 25,000 miles (40,000 km) annually and spoke five nights each week for five months of the year.^[2]

Early years and education

Mary Ashton Rice was born in Boston, Massachusetts on December 19, 1820, to Timothy Rice and Zebiah Vose (Ashton) Rice.^[3][4]

A direct descendant of

Livermore, like many other nurses, came up against the issue of women disguised as male soldiers. On a visit to the camp of the 19th Illinois Infantry, a captain pointed out a soldier to Livermore, asking if she noticed anything odd about them. Livermore confirmed the captain's suspicions that the soldier was indeed a woman. The captain called the soldier for questioning, and though she pleaded to stay in service near her beloved, Livermore escorted her out of camp. The soldier escaped Livermore, however, and fled.[12]

In addition to her nursing services, Livermore was also a prolific writer. She authored numerous books of poetry, essays, and stories, and was a recognized member of the literary guild. Though Livermore had to sacrifice much of her social justice work for nursing, she still managed to publish some kind of content once a week throughout the entirety of the war.^[13] She summarized her experience in her 1887 book, My Story of the War. A Woman's Narrative of Four Years' Personal Experience as Nurse in the Union Army, and in Relief Work at Home, in Hospitals, Camps and at the Front during the War of the Rebellion.^[14][15]

Suffrage and temperance activities

After the war, Livermore devoted herself to the promotion of women's suffrage (along with Lucy Stone and Julia Ward Howe ) and the temperance movement. In 1868, she co-founded the Chicago Sorosis Club with Myra Bradwell and Kate Doggett.^[16] This was the first women's group in Chicago to advocate for woman suffrage. That same year, the group organized the first woman suffrage convention in Chicago.^[17]

In 1869, the year that women suffragists in the Equal Rights Association spilt over the issue of voting rights for African American men, Livermore sided with Lucy Stone and those founding the American Woman Suffrage Association. That same year, she founded and edited a suffragist journal called The Agitator, which was "devoted to the interests of women." She published 37 issues of the journal that year.^[18] In 1870, the Livermores moved to Boston, and Mary began to be active in suffrage activities there. The Agitator was merged into the Woman's Journal, the well-known suffrage journal founded by Lucy Stone, and Livermore became associate editor.^[14][19] She served in that role for two years.^[6]

Joining with Stone, Henry Blackwell and Julia Ward Howe, Livermore helped found the Massachusetts Women's Suffrage Association. She became president of the American Woman Suffrage Association.^[11] She was also the first president of the Association for the Advancement of Women.^[20]

Spiritualism

Livermore was interested in spiritualism, which grew in popularity after the Civil War, especially among Unitarians. After her husband died in 1899, she believed she was able to continue to communicate with him through a medium.^[17]

Death and legacy

Livermore died in Melrose, Massachusetts, on May 23, 1905.^[21]

The Mary A. Livermore School in Melrose, operational from 1891 to 1933,^[22] was an elementary school named for her. In 1943, nearly four decades after her death, she became the namesake of a World War II Liberty ship, the SS Mary A. Livermore.^[23]

Selected works

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Mary Livermore.

• The Children's Army (1844), temperance stories.^[24]
• "The Twin Sisters: or, The History of Two Families," collected in The Two Families; and The Duty that Lies Nearest. Prize Stories (1848), a temperance story.
• A Mental Transformation (1848).^[25]
• Nineteen Pen Pictures (1863), short stories.^[25]
• What Shall We Do With Our Daughters? and Other Lectures^[25]
• A Woman of the Century (1893) (ed. Willard, Frances E. & Livermore, Mary A.) – online available in Wikisource.
• My Story of the War: The Civil War Memories of the Famous Nurse, Relief Organizer and Suffragette (1887/1995) with Introduction by Nina Silber. New York: Da Capo Press;
  ISBN 0-3068-0658-4
• The story of my life; or, The sunshine and shadow of seventy years (1897).
• Cooperative Womanhood in the State (1891).
  JSTOR 25102243

Bibliography

• This article incorporates text from this source, which is in the public domain: Hurd, Duane Hamilton (1890). History of Middlesex County, Massachusetts: With Biographical Sketches of Many of Its Pioneers and Prominent Men. Vol. 3 (Public domain ed.). J. W. Lewis & Company.

Further reading

• Venet, Wendy Hamand. A Strong-Minded Woman: The Life of Mary Livermore. Amherst:
  ISBN 1-55849-513-4
  .
• Eggleston, Larry G. (2003). Women in the Civil War: Extraordinary Stories of Soldiers, Spies, Nurses, Doctors, Crusaders, and Others. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company.
  ISBN 0786414936
  .
• Massey, Mary Elizabeth (1994). Women in the Civil War. Lincoln, Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press.
  ISBN 0803282133
  .
• Ruegamer, Lana. "Livermore, Mary Ashton Rice." In Women Building Chicago, 1790-1990: A Biographical Dictionary, edited by Rima Lunin Schultz and Adele Hast. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001.
• Schnell, Christopher J. "Mary Livermore and the Great Northwestern Fair." Chicago History 4, no. 1 (1975): 34–43.
• Claire Felbinger
  and Wendy Haynes. pp. 49–64. New York: ME Sharpe.

External links

Wikisource has the text of The New Student's Reference Work article about "Mary Livermore".

Wikiquote has quotations related to Mary Livermore.

• "LIVERMORE, MARY ASHTON [RICE]". Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 16 (11th ed.). 1911. pp. 803–804.
• Works related to Woman of the Century/Mary Ashton Rice Livermore at Wikisource
• Works by or about Mary Livermore at Internet Archive
• Article Archived January 2, 2010, at the Wayback Machine at PBS
• Entry Archived July 3, 2013, at the Wayback Machine at the Dictionary of Unitarian & Universalist Biography
• Mary Livermore at Find a Grave
• Carrie Chapman Catt Collection at the Library of Congress has volumes from the library of Mary A. Livermore.
• A Spartacus Educational Biography
• Online copy of "My Story of the War" Archived September 18, 2017, at the Wayback Machine