The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1895-01-08
MRS. LIyERMoRE WILL RETIRE.
The Talented and Patriotic Woman to
Take a WelI-Earned Rest.

BOSTON, Jan. Mrs. Mary A. Liver
more to-day announces that after filling
three more engagements she shall retire
from the lecture platform and go into pri-
yate life This means that an active career
in the cause of humanity, extending over
a period of more than. thirty years, is to
end. Mrs Livermore is seventy-three years
old, and it is largely on account of failing
health that she retires. Another reason for
her retirement is that she is at work on a
book that must be completed before the
spring Mrs. Iivermore will retain the
presidency of the Massachusetts, Woman Suf-
frage Association, and expects to preside at
the twenty-siXth annual meeting tomorrow
Late in the spring. when her literary work
is finished, she will probably speak OCCASION
ally in Massachusetts, and other portions of
New England, but her tremendously active
work for temperance. equal suffrage and
social purity that has made her name ia
miliar to all parts, of the United States for
SO many years, Will now SubSde into a quiet
home life.
Mary Ashton Rice was born in Boston in
p. Livermore, then settled in Fall River.
She was identified with the Washingtonian
and was ON the editorial staff of a juvenile
temperance paper and organized a cold
wa, water army Of l,5Oo boys and girls for whom
sne wrote temperance stories. She read
these stories to the boys and girls and they
were afterward published under the title of
The Childrens Army in 1874" In 1857 the
Lvermores moved to Chicago where Mr..
Lvermore became the proprietor and editor
Of Of = religious weekly paper, the organ of
the Un1verSaliSt denomination, and Mrs.
Livermore became his associate editor. Her
labors for the next twelve years were her
reportorial work in those days. At the first
ncmination of Abraham Lincoln for the
presidency in the Chicago wigwam in 1860
she was the only woman reporter who had
a place at the press table. She became in
terested in the movement for better sani-
this work she naturally drifted to the lee
ture platform.
Mrs. Livermore organized soldiers aid So
cietes during the war. She was in many
places in the South during the war notably
at the siege of Vicksburg, where General
1rant gave her permission to do all she
could, and go into the Confederate lines to
Go the same if they would permit her.
sanitary commission was born Through
the northwest and elsewhere Mrs. Liver
I,,,a more delivered public addresses to stimulate
supplies and donations of money for the sick
and suffering soldiers. She wrote letters by
the hundred and answered all she received.
She wrote the circulars, bulletins and
monthly reports of the sanitary commission
made trips to the front with the sanitary
distribution. She brought back large num-
bers OF invalid soldiers who were discharged,
that they might die at home. Mrs. Liver
more assisted TO plan organize and conduct
colossal sanitary fairs and wrote a history
of them at their close. She detailed women
nurses for the hospitals by order of Secre-
tary stanton and accompanied them to
their posts. 1t will probably never be real
lzed what great amount of work Mrs
Livermore did for her fellow beings during
the troublous years from 1861 to 1865 After
the war Mrs Livermore became prominent
in the womans suffrage movement She
was the organizer and became the first
president of the Illinois Woman's Suffrage
Association, and in January 1869. she estaT,
nshed a woman suffrage paper, the Agi-
tator at her own cost and risk In 1870 She
came to Boston to be editor of the Wonan's
Journal and has lived here since.