# Representative women of New England/Mary A. Livermore

​MARY A. LIVERMORE, LL.D., public speaker and writer, during the Civil War one of the foremost of the Sanitary Commission workers, and in these later years an able and distinguished advocate of social reform, is a thorough New England woman by birth and breeding, and through six generations of paternal ancestry. Born in Boston on December 19, 1820, daughter of Timothy and Zebiah Vose Glover (Ashton) Rice, she bore until marriage the name Mary Ashton Rice. She was one of a family of six children, only one of whom besides herself—a sister Abby, Mrs. Coffin—attained adult age and is now living. Her father served in the United States navy in the War of 1812. Her mother was a daughter of Captain Nathaniel Ashton, of London, England.
Edmund Rice, the founder of this branch of the Rice family in Massachusetts, came from Barkhamstead, Hertfordshire, England, in 1639, and settled in Middlesex County, making his home at first in Sudbury, and removing thence to Marlboro. He was known as "Goodman Rice," and was a citizen of influence, being appointed to solemnize marriages, a function not entrusted, to the clergy in those days, ​ serving several years as "Townsman," or Selectman, and several years as Deputy to the General Court. He was a Deacon of the church.
From Goodman Rice the line to Timothy Rice, father of Mary Ashton, was continued through his son Thomas; his grandson Elisha, who married Elizabcth Wheeler, of Concord, Mass.; their son Silas, who married Copia Broughton; and Silas, Jr., who married Abigail Hager, daughter of Benjamin and Abigail (Warren) Hager and a descendant of William Hager and of John Warren, two early settlers ami prominent citizens of Watertown, Mass. Silas Rico, Jr., who lived for some years at Northfield, Mass., was the father of Timothy, whose home after marriage was in Boston.
Born with a love for books, possessed of a "genius that would study," an energy that knew no such word as fail, Mary Ashton Rice was graduated at the Hancock School, Boston, at the age of fourteen years and six months as a medal scholar, then took a four years' course in two years at a seminary for young ladies in Charlestown, Miss Martha Whiting, principal, and subsequently taught* Latin and French there for two years, at the same time continuing her own more advanced studies. Her next experience was of three years as teacher in a planter's family in Southern Virginia. She returned to Boston a confirmed abolitionist and champion of human rights. The three years following saw her at the head of a school of her own for advanced pupils in Duxbury, an experiment, and a successful one, in co-education. Then came a turning-point in her course. She was married in 1845 to the Rev. Daniel Parker Livermore, an earnest, persuasive preacher of the Universalist faith, a man who did not ask or expect her to become anything less than an equal partner in life's faring. As the wife of a settled minister, for the first twelve years of their marrietl life Mrs. Livermore found abundant opportunity for the use of her varied talents. With a keen sense of the needs of the young people of the parish and warm sympathy for their aspirations, she formed circles for reading and study, and continued the literary work which she had begun some time before, contributing stories, sketches, and poems to the Ladies' Repository, the Neic York Tribune, and other publications, frecjuently lending her pen to the temperance cause. Children came to brighten the home life, which was a happy though a busy ami strenuous one, and not exempt from the cares and sorrows of sickmss and bereavement.
In 1S57 Mr. and Mrs. Livermore, with their two daughteis, lemoved to Chicago, where for a number of yeais Mr. Livcimore edited and published a religious paper. Mrs. Livermore, as a co-worker, often duiing his absence on a missionary trip had sole charge of the paper, printing-office, and its concerns. She wrote much for the paper on every topic except theology, and was also a writer for Eastern papers, their well-kept home, in the meantime, being the centre of far-reaching, generous hospitality. Her practical energy made itself felt in philanthropic work, such as the establishment of the Home for Aged Women, the Hospital for Women and Children in Chicago, and the Home of the Friendless.
When the war of the Rebellion came, with its pressing needs — suffering, hunger, and destitution — Mrs. Livermore, having always been at work, was reatly with well-developetl forces, powers keen and alert, for new service. This she rendered as an associate member of the United States Sanitary Commission with her friend, Mrs. Hoge, their headquarters being in Chicago. She organized soldiers' aid societies, planned sanitary fairs, conducted an endless correspomlence, went to the front to distribute supplies, detailed army nurses. These and many similar deeds of mercy were crowded into those years of strife. Pleading for money to meet the wants of sick, wounded, and dying soldiers, Mrs. Livermore revealed a gift of eloquence of whose possession she was ignorant, and became an effective puljlic speaker years before she would admit the fact.
When the war was ended, she returned to her literary and philanthropic activities in Chicago, using her pen as before to advocate the higher education of women and their entrance into the professions and wider industrial fields, and also urging the repeal of unjust laws, which had hindered their progress. Joining the ranks of the woman suffragists, with these ends in view. ​she took the lead in making arrangements for a woman's suffrage convention in Chicago, which was in 1868; and when the Illinois Women's Suffrage Association was organized she was elected its president. To further promote the interests of the great reform movements, suffrage and temperance, she started in January, 1869, a weekly paper called the Agitator, which she conducted successfully for a year in Chicago. Then it was merged in the Woman's Journal, established in Boston in January, 1870, by a joint stock company, and she was made its editor-in-chief. The Livermore family then returned to Massachusetts, and have since resided in Melrose. For two years Mrs. Livermore edited the Woman's Journal, and then resigned that position and all other work, to devote herself to the lecture field, which has witnessed her severest toil as well as her most signal triumphs. For nearly thirty years she has spoken from platform and pulpit on a variety of topics, religious, reformatory, sociological, historical, and ethical, and has lectured in nearly every State of the Union, and also in England and Scotland. In these later years her itinerary extends not far from the home fireside. Still, wherever she speaks, whether as presiding officer of a memorial meeting, where a tender tribute is paid to the gracious memory of a departed leader, or at a biweekly meeting of the Massachusetts Suffrage Association, of which she is president, or to voice a need of the hour, people crowd to hear, and are moved by the old-time fluent force and earnestness, the vivid expression of her powerful personality, which every good cause is sure to arouse.
Mrs. Livermore has written all her life for the magazines of the day, the York Tribune, Ladies' Repository, Youth's Companion, North American Review, Inclejiendent, Chautauquan, Arena, and other periodicals. Among the books which she has published are: "What shall we do with our Daughters?" "Thirty Years too Late" (illustrative of the Washingtonian reform), "My Story of the War" (of which nearly a hundred thousand copies were sold), and her Autobiography.
She has recently passed through the great sorrow of her life, in the death of her husband, with whom she had been united in marriage fifty-four years.
The honorary degree of Doctor of Laws was conferred on Mrs. Livermore in 1896 by Tufts College. She was for ten years president of the Massachusetts W. C. T. U.; has been president of the American Woman's Suffrage Association; president of the Association for the Advancement of Women; is president of the Massachusetts W' Oman's Suffrage Association; president of the Beneficent Society of the New England Conservatory of Music; is a life member of the Women's Educational and Industrial Union, of Boston; a member of the Massachusetts Indian Association, the Woman's Relief Corps, the Massachusetts Woman's Prison Association, and other societies, and of various literary clubs. She is practically a Unitarian in religion, holding to a creedless Christianity that shows itself in love and work, and trusting ever in the Eternal Goodness that rules both this life and that which is to come, of which this is the beginning.