page_title: Florence Wyman Richardson
section_title: Civic activities
hierarchical_section_title: Florence Wyman Richardson / Civic activities
caption_attribution_description: English: Florence Wyman-Richardson, 1920
context_page_description: Florence Wyman Richardson was one of the early workers for the St. Louis Symphony Society and assisted in organizing the St. Louis Equal Suffrage League.
context_section_description: For twelve years Florence Wyman Richardson conducted classes in theosophy, also contributed to leading periodicals. Later she became a member of the Executive Board of the Women's Trade Union League, and of the Suffrage Committee of the National Women's Trade Union. 
  Richardson originated the idea of organizing the Piano Club, of which she was the president for the first seven years. This was the first lasting music club of St. Louis. It was formed to foster piano work, only one-third of the members being vocalists and two-thirds pianists. Many of the musicales were given at Richardson's home in Cabanne Place, where the club entertained among others, Carl Faelton, of the New England Conservatory; Mrs. Eliot, wife of Harvard's president, and also gave its friends the pleasure of a recital by Adele Aus der Ohe. 
  It was again at her home, that Richardson called a meeting of women interested in music to take a part in forming a symphony organization in connection with the local choral society. This was one of the efforts which shortly afterwards helped in the founding of a home orchestra which has developed into the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra. 
  She was friends with Josiah Royce, Hamlin Garland and John Fiske; other friends included Guida Lippman, Lydia Fuller Dickinson and Charles L. Deyo. 
  Richardson was a student of theosophy. For twelve years she led classes in this field of religious philosophy. She visited for three successive seasons, several weeks each, the summer colony called Greenacre, at Eliot, Maine, on the Piscataqua River. The colony was attended, among others, by Edward Everett Hale, John Fiske, Edwin D. Meade, Charles Johnston and Nathaniel Schmidt. During her Greenacre experience she lectured seven times — the topics being Music, Genius and Theosophy. In St. Louis she presided for several years over the little local branch of the Theosophical Society, but in 1908 resigned continuing her study classes for two years later.
caption: Florence Wyman Richardson, 1920
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