Nellie Strong Stevenson
Nellie Strong Stevenson (June 14, 1856 – July 9, 1930), born Ellen Strong, was an American pianist, music educator, and clubwoman. Early life. Ellen C. Strong was born in Rockford, Illinois and raised in St. Louis, Missouri, the daughter of George P. Strong and Melinda P. Fales Strong. Her father was a lawyer and a judge. She trained as a pianist in St. Louis. She went to Europe for further studies in Leipzig and Berlin, and with Franz Liszt at a summer program in Weimar. Career. Strong taught and performed in St. Louis, New York, and Boston as  a young woman. She was the founding president of the Missouri Music Teachers Association, and spoke at the World's Music Congress, held at the World's Columbian Exposition in 1893. She chaired the Students Department of the National Federation of Music Clubs. In that position, she wrote about topics of interest to student musicians; she was also chair of the National Federation Contest for Young Artists. In 1917 she was based in San Diego, where she was head of the piano department at the Sloan School of Music and played at the organ pavilion in Balboa Park. By 1919  she was based in San Francisco, and wrote about music libraries in California in 1921. She gave music appreciation lectures, accompanying herself on piano, into her last years. She was a director of the California Music Teachers Association, and a member of the Western Women's Club and the Pacific Coast Women's Press Association. Personal life. Nellie Strong married lawyer John Chiles Houston Stevenson, the son of Union Army general John Dunlap Stevenson, in 1894. She was widowed when Stevenson died in San Francisco in 1922, and she died in 1930, aged 74 years, while visiting Washington, D.C. Nellie